These Would-Be Olympians Are Shooting for 2004

So I’m in bed, prone and dozing, with my 9-millimeter semiautomatic in the night stand 10 feet away. And--I can’t tell you the number of times this has happened--a twig snaps outside. Intruders. Man, I hate when that happens. You gotta pounce over to the night stand, pull out your piece, race to the window and BAM! BAM! BAM! smoke a bunch of creeps just aching to rob you and cuss at your children. It’s happened so often now, I’m getting danged good at it. The kids want me to buy a stopwatch and start timing myself.

Or I’m down at Denny’s, cheese soup night, and I’m slurping away in my booth, and naturally my Lady Beretta is right there on the table, muzzle facing away from me. For the umpteenth time, bad guys come in. And of course, if you want something done right, etc., etc., etc. I can’t even finish my coffee, I have to jump up and blast some sense into another bunch of nitwits, for which, I might add, they don’t even give you free dessert.

Right now you’re probably shaking your head and muttering: “This is my life exactly, right on, sister.” And who hasn’t come up against the need to just shoot somebody in these modern times? These situations are so common, they should make an Olympic sport out of them. That’d be the practical thing, so that young athletes could develop a practical skill instead of fooling around with girlie-man sports like fencing. Or that acey-deucey Greco-Roman wrestling that always makes Aunt Reva launch into one of her hymns.

Well, mutter no more. A quest has been launched to get practical combat shooting into the Olympics, and--knock wood--a demonstration is being planned to coincide with the 2004 Athens games. Of course, the liberals are fighting it, and the powers-that-be say it has a snowball’s chance of approval. Hah. Evidently they think Messrs. Smith & Wesson give up easily.

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OK. There’s no piece in the night stand and no such action at Denny’s. Your correspondent got carried away. But it’s such a fat target, this loony campaign to turn armed paranoia into an Olympic competition. The front page story last week by The Times’ Steve Berry confirmed the remarkable rumor: Firearms enthusiasts from around the world are lobbying the International Olympic Committee to get Dirty Harry-style combat shooting into the Games.

For the uninitiated, the pastime involves obstacle courses in which competitors run and shoot their way through simulated self-defense situations--fake houses that are being “invaded,” or fake restaurants that are being “robbed.” According to mail-order videos put out by and for enthusiasts--and included in a report last week from the Violence Policy Institute--the contest was created in the mid-1970s and pushed by a handful of men in California and Arizona who “envisioned pistol competitions that featured action scenarios.”

What started as “combat” shooting or “action” shooting now is called “practical shooting.” Practical in what sense isn’t clear, though you never do know when it might be handy for your kid to know how to leap up out of his desk and hit three human silhouettes from the schoolhouse window in 11.19 seconds. (Yes, kids participate. There’s even a summer camp for it, Camp Shootout. The father of Andrew Golden, the kid involved in the Jonesboro massacre, was reportedly the founder of the practical shooters’ association in that town.)

“I like, probably, the combat of it,” a female contestant with very broad hips and very tight jeans tells the camera in one of the excerpted videos. “It’s more situational, practical shooting, so that if I have to use it down the road. . . .”

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Some might wonder if this uproar is just paranoia breeding more paranoia; if the videos are any indication, never have so many would-be Olympians had such close-set eyes. But there are deeper issues: Federal law prohibits the import of combat-style firearms unless they serve a legitimate sporting purpose. Guess what happens to the argument that assault rifles aren’t sporting goods if they become equipment for the Olympic Games?

IOC officials stated Friday that they’re not even considering inclusion of practical shooting, nor do they sanction the 2004 demonstration. (It’s been set up by Greece’s Hellenic Shooting Assn., which is IOC-sanctioned but a far lesser entity.) One IOC official has vowed that this pipe dream “will not happen. Ever. Period.”

Still, when it comes to the gun lobby, a lot that you’d think would never happen, ever, period, manages weirdly to happen. Some would have said after Littleton that Congress couldn’t possibly continue to sit on its thumbs while children got gunned down in schools. Guess what happened? Which is why underestimating this loony effort would be, well, impractical.

Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.