Quantico rifle championship will crown top DoD shooters
By James K. Sanborn, Staff writer 6:28 p.m. EDT May 5, 2015
Marine officials have released details of this year's inter-service rifle competition to be held this summer in Virginia.
The annual competition — open to Marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen — has been held since 1961 and gives victors bragging rights as the best precision marksmen in the military.
Competitors have until June 24 to register for the 54th Annual Inter-service Rifle Championship via the Civilian Marksmanship Program's website, according to Marine administrative message 218/15, released in early May.
The multi-day competition, hosted by Weapons Training Battalion at the Calvin A. Lloyd Rand Complex aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, will kick off with a team captains meeting on June 23. The first ceremonial shot will ring out the following day. Competitive matches will begin June 25 at 7:30 a.m., and run through July 1, when champions will receive awards at a formal evening banquet.
Last year, Marines took first place in five of 15 individual and team events.
The matches primarily focus on Olympic-style precision shooting, which tests marksmanship fundamentals. It is not the three-gun-style competition popularized among civilian shooters and adopted by the Marine Corps in recent years as a way to encourage development of combat skills like shooting on the move and engaging moving targets quickly.
The inter-service match includes events like the 1,000-yard team match, pushing trigger-pullers to the extremes of precision shooting.
In the Marine Corps' case, the service is primarily — though not exclusively — represented by members of it shooting teams. Those are Marines who are identified through local base or command competitions and invited to qualify for the top Quantico-based teams, where they can spend up to three years before returning to the fleet.
Those include rifle, pistol and combat shooting teams.
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/sports/2015/05/05/quantico-rifle-championship-to-crown-best-dod-shooters/26932541/
