Monday, July 14, 2008 Rama: A tactical frenzy By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
FRESH from its successful hosting of the ComCentcom Cup the previous week, Kamagong Gun Club showed that good things come in pairs, Sunday, and drew some 60 shooters to the 1st Kamagong Tactical Rifle and Shotgun Challenge.
Riflemen and shotgunners from both the law enforcement, military and civilian sectors competed for three handsome glass plaques in the Open and Standard-Rifle, Open and Standard-Shotgun and in Open and Standard-Submachine gun events.
There were six separate courses of fire in the match—three for Rifle and Submachine gun and another three for Shotgun.
Kamagong Gun Club president and resident tactical shooting guru, Dr. Tyrone Mercader, designed all the courses that, in turn, were kept secret until the opening day.
In a lull between gunfire, Tyrone said keeping the shooters in the dark was in keeping with the tactical nature of the competition.
“In regular matches, everything is cut and dry. The courses are published and the shooters can prepare. But in real life, you simply can’t know when the bad guys come and how the threat against your life will present itself,” he said.
“We wanted this to be a learning experience to those who would join, from the policemen who get sent out on dangerous assignments, to the soldiers who get deployed on surprise missions, and to us civilians who suddenly come face to face with a critical incident,” he added.
The Rifle and Submachine gun stages dizzied shooters by making them shoot extremely near and unbelievably far targets.
Rifles and burp guns that are zeroed out to 50, 75 or 100 yards shoot very low from point-of-aim in proximate distances.
Competitors have to really know how to shift their aim and compensate to make their shots count.
And stress was also induced. In one course, shooters had to shoot “partial-targets” about 40 meters away, run 45 meters towards the backstop to shoot three full-sized targets at contact distance, grab a very heavy metal popper and drag it back to the firing line.
And as if it weren’t enough, the shooters then had to get inside a bunker and shoot four-inch precision bulls-eye targets and paper saucers (the small ones used to contain finger-food in cocktails), before going out and moving behind another barricade to shoot six metal plates obscured by a clump of rubber tires.
The short courses (these require only 10 to 13 rounds to finish), penalty targets deployed as hostages were the waterloo of many.
In one stage, a penalty target was tacked to a scoring paper target to block everything except half of the scoring target’s head.
In another stage, a scoring target was placed in front of a penalty target to draw volleys of direct shots. However, the stage briefing specified that every “shoot-through” (a shot fired on a scoring target but at an angle where the bullet, upon exit, would also strike the penalty target behind it) would count.
To avoid penalties, a shooter would have to contort to an angle to make sure that the shot on the scoring target won’t exit to the penalty target behind it. To score, shooters had crouch and direct their fire to what would be a humanoid target’s left eye.
“In real life, “shoot throughs” happen. You think you have a clear shot, fire and injure the innocent bystander who happened to be behind your target. We read things like this in the newspapers regularly,” Mercader said.
The clever use of penalty targets was also apparent in the Shotgun stages.
“Most people load their shotguns with double ought buckshot. There are eight .33 cal. pellets in a shot-shell. We have to train ourselves to be mindful where all those pellets will go,” Mercader said.
TOP GUNS: In Stats Director Renante Cabasag’s report, the winners were—Rifle (Open) Police Supt. Leo Tolentino (first), Dr. Allan Sacris (second), and Eldred Sait of the Army’s Light Reaction Company, (third); (Standard) myself, PO2 Cliff Ediza of the Cebu City Police Office Swat Team, and Vincent Tiu, one of the youngest shooters in the competition.
