View source for Rifle Shooting as a National Pursuit

''Rifle Shooting as a National Pursuit'' is a letter written by [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] first published in [[The Times]] on 14 june 1905.



== Rifle Shooting as a National Pursuit ==
[[File:The-Times-1905-06-14-rifle-shooting-national-pursuit.jpg|250px|right|thumb|[[The Times]] (14 june 1905)]]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir, — Will you permit me, as one who has had some small   
experience of the founding and working of such clubs, to say a few 
words, now that Lord Roberts's splendid appeal to the nation is  
likely to give the movement a fresh impetus, and to turn what has  
been a sporadic development, depending upon local spirit and  
generosity, into a truly national organisation?

The first point which is worth insisting upon is that a man  
trained at a miniature range (whether Morris tube or otherwise)  
does become an efficient shot almost at once when he is allowed to  
use a full range. What with the low trajectory and the absence of  
recoil in the modern rifle the handling of the weapon is much the  
same in each case. I am speaking now of an outdoor miniature  
range, a hundred yards long, where a man must allow for windage,  
and where he must raise his sights to fire. Such a range is not a  
mere toy, but can and does produce riflemen who speedily become  
excellent service shots. If the country were covered with such  
ranges we could soon realise Lord Roberts's ideal of a nation of  
marksmen. Since it is becoming more and more clear that our  
alternative in the future will lie between some form of actual  
compulsory service (a hateful but possibly an inevitable measure)  
and a great development of the rifle club movement, it is a very  
serious matter to consider what are the easiest and most practical  
steps to bring the latter into existence.

This leads me to the second point worth insisting upon, which is  
that the miniature rifle range, besides being efficient, is  
exceedingly cheap. Given the land, which should be not less than a  
hundred yards long and twenty yards broad, with a natural or  
artificial bank at the end of it, the remaining cost of rifles, targets,  
markers pits and the rest of it should not come to more than £50. 
There are few parishes, one would hope, where some landowner 
would not spare a strip of his land for a patriotic purpose. 
Common land or heath land which has no other value, is exactly 
that which is best adapted for a small range. Therefore, in many
cases the young club would only be faced by the necessity of
finding the small sum already mentioned, with some additional 
subscriptions for the purpose of providing small prizes or badges 
for successful riflemen.

At present, in hundreds of places, this money has been found by 
local effort, and the club has been duly started. In many cases it 
has gone on running successfully. In many others it has 
languished after the first novelty was past. The reason for the 
latter state of things is sometimes, as in the district where I reside, 
that most of the young men have actually learned to shoot to some 
extent, and the clubs have therefore done their work. But 
indifference is also due to the fact that the man has to pay some 
small fee towards the upkeep of the club, and has also to pay for the 
cartridges which he uses. A poor working man feels very naturally, 
that instead of paying he should rather be paid, since he is giving 
up his time to the services of the State. With free clubs and free 
cartridges a great stumbling-block would be removed. As the long 
Morris tube cartridges, which are, in my opinion, the best for the 
purpose, can be retailed at four a penny, the drain upon the public 
purse would not be a serious one.

If the ranges are, as I have tried to show, both efficient and 
cheap, the next point is to determine how they could be best 
organised as a public institution all over the country. As Lord 
Roberts says, it was the skill acquired at the parish butts which 
made England the first military Power in Europe during the 
fourteenth century. My suggestion is that the parish butts be 
restored in the shape of a parish miniature range. For the 
establishment and control of this we have an existing organisation 
in the shape of the parish council. I think that if the matter were 
handed over to the parish councils in rural England, and to the 
town councils (or committees thereof) in the small towns, with 
definite orders to construct such ranges and with power to levy a 
small rate towards their formation and upkeep, we would within a 
twelvemonth have exactly such a network of rifle clubs as is 
needed to realise that condition which is our alternative to 
national service. With a controlling head in London and a local 
inspector in each county to check or encourage the parish councils, 
a great question could be solved with a ''minimum'' of friction and 
expense.

What would be needed then to attain this great end? Simply a 
law by which each parish council must establish a rifle club, with 
power to levy the money for that end. Also a trifling addition to our 
war budget for the inspectors and central authority. It seems a 
very tiny matter when compared to the revulsion of our habits and 
dislocation of our lives implied in national service. Having got the 
butts, would it be necessary to pass a further law making some use 
of them compulsory for every adult in the parish? We could only
answer that question when we saw how far they were voluntarily 
used when a couple of hundred rounds were given free to every 
applicant. But suppose that it was eventually necessary to pass 
such a law, it is surely the very smallest demand that any country 
in Europe makes upon its citizens. 

In conclusion, we should have to consider the question of 
Sunday shooting. It was the Sunday shooting which gave the 
nation the benefit of the archery butts in the Middle Ages. What is 
the use of the most perfect machinery if the individual has no time 
in which to use it? So long as the workmen have only one half 
holiday a week it is. I fear, useless to hope that any but a very small 
proportion of them will voluntarily spend it at the butts. Sunday 
shooting, out of church hours, is equally permitted in Catholic and 
Calvinistic countries - indeed, it is more characteristic of the latter 
- so that its reprobation seems to be not so much a matter of 
religion as of local custom and prejudice. For my own part it seems 
to me that our young men would be better employed in learning to 
serve their country than in standing round doing nothing at the 
road corners. No doubt this introduces another and very 
controversial subject; but I am convinced that it is bound up with 
the first, and is very essential to its solution. 

Yours faithfully,

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.<br />
Undershaw, Hindhead, Haslemere.



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* [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:Complete Works|Back to Complete Works]]
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