GLENGARY W.Va. – Tommy Thacker is getting the job done, finding a way, succeeding, being Tommy Thacker.
He runs through the first few targets of Stage 5 at the 3-Gun Nation Eastern Regional without much problem, his Armalite M-15 firing true.
He picks up his shotgun and has trouble finding a rhythm, missing on three fairly routine shots at steel plates to his left. He’s used too many shells at this point and didn’t bring enough with him to reload.
Thacker, who has the face and exuberance of a teenager but is in fact the 41-year-old president of Armalite, scans the ground. There has to be an unused shell somewhere.
Nothing. The 7.5-second penalty for not engaging the target will probably be enough to keep him from contention. He’s lost.
What to do, though, other than move on, keep firing?
Wait. There, under the trash can where he begins to place his shotgun, is a shell.
Before releasing his grip he reaches down to the ground. There are gasps, murmurs. These events are closely watched and regulated; certain movements, like pointing your gun anywhere but down range, result in automatic disqualification.
Thacker knows what he’s doing, though. He scoops up that unused shell, stuffs in it his gun, fires off the shot he needs and dumps his shotgun gently — dropping a gun or knocking over a barrel also leads to automatic disqualification from the $275 per-registrant event — and charges toward the table where his pistol awaits. He steps into a corridor and starts firing rounds, then hurtles around a corner and unloads on targets to his right, along the ground.
His job keeps him from practicing as much as he’d like to but he’s worked too long at this to lose his form. He looks like a video game character pulled from some battle and inserted here instead, firing at steel and paper targets under the bluest of skies on a range set off from a dirt road in the corner of West Virginia.
And then, with three pops, he is done.
I couldn’t imagine being told I can’t own guns.
Aaron Reed
Thacker is perhaps not the best place to start when discussing 3-Gun Nation, the major sponsoring body of a relatively new shooting discipline that, as the name suggests, requires competitors to be proficient with a shotgun, pistol and rifle.
A majority of the competitors — at this event and the hundreds of club-level matches held across the country each year — are workaday gun enthusiasts. Greg Jordan, the best shooter here and maybe anywhere, is a quiet and reserved police officer from York, Pa. For a while he would show up at a few events each year, shoot faster than anyone, collect his winnings and slip out.
Aaron Reed, a former Navy Seal, a friend and colleague of Marcus Luttrell — the title character played by Mark Wahlberg in the movie “Lone Survivor” — remains stoic and businesslike as he works through stages at these events. There’s a long delay before he is allowed to shoot Stage 3, over in the woods, and as his squad mates discuss a rules questions with officials he is left to stand, leaning against a barrier, unable to so much as look up more than once every few minutes. His legs twitch nervously. He rests his head on his arms, closes his eyes. You have seen men like this before, soldiers in countless movie scenes riding in planes or boats or tanks on the way to a fight.
Jacob Betsworth, a cop outside of Omaha, is much the opposite. At 300-plus pounds, he moves like an NFL right guard, but also shoots things with startling precision along the way. He is also never quiet. After barreling down a 100-yard path to finish Stage 2, he yells what sounds like the f-word as loudly as he can. It seems ominous to those back at the start of the stage who hadn’t been able to see those final shots and whether they hit the mark, missed or tore into something they shouldn’t have. They are relieved when Betsworth bounds back up the path, coated in sweat, cradling his gun thoughtfully, smiling, shouting “Wooooo!” to anyone who looks at him.
Jacob Betsworth (Courtesy of 3-Gun Nation)
The average 3-Gun competitor — there are 200 men, women and juniors here — is someone who, generally because of their profession or thanks to family tradition, has learned to shoot guns and would like to compete in that endeavor. A significant number — at least 25 percent — are sponsored by companies that make guns or gun accessories, and wear shirts emblazoned with logos. This makes them look more like bowlers — if bowling required far more equipment — than anyone about to engage in battle. Each sponsorship is different, but in general they fund the continuation of the sport, paying for equipment, travel and registration fees.
The major events, like this one, end with a ceremony wherein every shooter is awarded a prize, most of them, according to organizer Chad Adams, worth more than the cost of registration. Jordan wins the Eastern Regional and claims an Advanced Armament MPW 300 Blackout semi-automatic rifle worth more than $1,500. Because the match runs late on Sunday and the range has no lights, Jordan selects his new gun under a chandelier in a hotel ballroom off a quaint street in Winchester, Va. With the sun going down through big windows you could imagine a wedding there. Instead, nearly every table in the room is covered with guns or gun paraphernalia provided by sponsors, total value around $150,000 according to Adams.
Many of the shooters are drinking by now, beer or whiskey in most cases, and reliving the missed shots of the weekend, waiting to be called to the prize area to make a selection. They leave having been reloaded, for practice or the next event.
3-Gun events are sport in the clearest sense, and exhilarating at that. Watching Jordan storm through a stage feels no different than seeing Russell Wilson run a 2-minute offense, or Michael Phelps close the gap in a relay race during his prime.
But every 3-Gun match is also refutation of what competitors see as a flawed and easy narrative pushed largely by a liberal media — many of them include USA TODAY in that category — that does not understand guns and misses the larger problems in America by resorting to blaming the tool — guns — instead of the perpetrators of violence.
So my presence causes a stir.
Some shooters tell Adams they are dismayed that he allowed me to come. Others ask me directly whether I’m there to portray them as uncivilized or worse. Though I am taken aback by the level of their distrust, they have reason to worry: I am, in fact, there to try to understand why they so ardently fight the most basic forms of gun control even after their use in the gruesome and relentless massacres that have so marred our country.
Chad Adams, a co-founder of the operation who once worked for the NRA and is an ex-Marine, openly touts 3-Gun Nation as a leader in the fight to defend the Second amendment. From the website: “3-Gun is the ultimate expression of the Second Amendment, as the guns and gear we use are the ones the anti-gun crowd desperately want to ban. That makes 3-Gun the most important of all the shooting sports, and 3GN is the vehicle to organize, sanction and bring this great game to the world.”
Greg Jordan (Courtesy of 3-Gun Nation)
Adams is well-versed in the history of the gun and its changing place in American culture. He studied at University of Kentucky and still lives in Lexington but is a graduate of George Mason with a degree in journalism. He sees 3-Gun Nation as a media company built around a sport with inherent excitement — and therefore the ability to generate interest and money. Like any entrepreneur he hopes his idea can gain traction and make a difference — by showing his shooters as safe, law-abiding and interesting people — or at least some profit. But he is realistic. Guns are a tough sell in 2015 beyond the audience that already supports them. He produces a polished television show that splices quick action with thoughtful segments about competitors, then pays niche outdoor networks to broadcast it. He’s not expecting a lucrative television deal to ever come along; the business plan will always be tied to using the sport to market guns to the gun enthusiasts sponsors want to reach.
I don’t want them to think, ‘There’s that gun girl and she’s dangerous.’
Ashley Rhueark
Which is not to say it has not seen expansive growth. There are 4,000 official members of 3-Gun Nation and clubs host events around the world. The 3-Gun Nation Championship and Shooting Sports Expo began
Thursday at the National Shooting Academy in Tulsa, Okla. This three-day bacchanalia of gun culture and shooting sports will include 16 male pro shooters vying for a top prize of $50,000, four Ladies Division shooters competing for $25,000 and at least 200 other shooters looking for their share of what Adams says is well over a quarter million dollars in prizes. Gun manufacturers large and small will be on hand to display and sell their wares. Dana Loesch, a conservative television and radio host who wrote the book “Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America” is scheduled to make an appearance.
In some ways Adams could do without the spectacle. He views his competitors as a subtle force countering the gun-nut stereotype while rarely seeking attention. They are, to him, the vanguard of a mostly silent majority who understand why guns are an important part of what makes America great.
“Here we are, surrounded by guns, the biggest and scariest looking guns there are, the most sophisticated, and nobody has been injured,” he says to me on Saturday of that Eastern Regional event, which was held at sweeping range called Peacemaker National Training Center. “There’s nothing but respectful people out there, doing what they love, exercising the Second Amendment right guaranteed to them.”
(Chris Korman, USA TODAY Sports)
I look around. It feels something like a soccer tournament, though instead of sliced oranges emerging from the opened hatches of SUVs there are rounds of ammo. There aren’t many young kids, but there are strollers that ferry guns from one shooting area to the next. I feel no danger whatsoever. The people here are exceedingly careful and capable with guns of all shapes and sizes. They are also friendly. I picture them sitting around the table in my backyard after a barbecue.
They also — and this is true of every person I asked — feel that stricter gun control laws would serve to increase violence in the United States, making it easier for criminals to commit crimes and believe fully that it is their obligation to own guns and know how to use them for the purpose of self-defense.
They see increased gun regulation as useless because criminals won’t abide by new laws and, more to the point, feel any further restrictions on buying guns or efforts to register them as precursors to the banning and confiscation of weapons by the government.
So they travel the country for events like this, firing round after round with the deadliest of tools, surrounded by friends and fellow believers, their shots ringing out to prove something to those who are not anywhere nearby. Until now.
Though 3-Gun runs are inherently chaotic, the most interesting competitors to watch are those who make them less so.
Ashley Rhueark is the best female junior shooter in the country and the top seed of the four finalists in the Ladies Division of the 3-Gun Pro Series. It takes time to recognize her talent, though. Nothing about her makes you think, immediately, that she would be worth watching. She huddles with her father, Shayne, before each round, quietly determining her strategy. She looks more like someone who takes calculus too seriously than an athlete who — to be blunt about it — has honed a skill that would make her lethally proficient if she ever happened to be in a gunfight.
But then she steps into the starting box, hears the command to begin and does, swiftly:
Crack!
Ping.
Slight swivel. No movement wasted. A second, if that, to aim again.
Crack!
Ping.
Watching her, you start to think about what this sport is supposed to represent. It is the descendant of practical shooting, which evolved in the 1950s when shooters began questioning the stoic training methods employed to prepare them for the use of their firearms. They sought to create contests that would better replicate the real-life use of guns; standing in one spot and blasting targets isn’t actually useful training for a situation in which the target might fire back or move. By the mid-1970s, competitions had spread around the country. They have multiplied and grown more intricate and therefore more game-like but, at root, this is about knowing how to use a gun in an effective way should you ever need to.
Rhueark does this with the sort of economy of motion that would make for an admirable point guard. Her shot planning — a major part of the sport is crafting your approach to each stage, usually without ever having the chance to practice on it — is impeccable, so she never hesitates. The guns seem out of place in her arms until the moment she fires them and the recoil does nothing but dissipate harmoniously into her next shot. She is a natural.
Ashley Rhueark (Courtesy 3-Gun Nation)
Her father believes she inherited this skill from her grandfather, a devoted hunter who became known as a skilled marksman. That’s about the only explanation he can find for how quickly she has taken to it. She hadn’t fired a pistol until four years ago, when they went together to a beginner’s class. After several long ski trips along quiet highways — and a few years of thinking it over — Shayne had decided to buy a handgun for protection in case the car ever broke down. The two so enjoyed the basic class that they soon found themselves at the range on weekends and entering shooting contests. Ashley had tried other sports but none stuck. This did. “Don’t think we ever imagined that it would become such a big part of our life or that she’d end up on television,” Shayne says. “It’s brought us closer and given us a chance to go all over. I’m thankful for that.”
Few of Ashley’s friends know about this part of her life. “I don’t tell the kids at school because of the climate around guns now,” she says. “I don’t want them to think, ‘There’s that gun girl and she’s dangerous.’ ” She’s active in her church youth group, and has told friends there about it (partly because competitions often keep her out of town on Sunday) but says she rarely hears her peers discussing guns in either a positive or negative way.
Rhueark, 17, will finish high school a few months early, by January, and spend the following spring focused on shooting. She expects to take college courses near her home in York, South Carolina, probably in business or marketing, to plot the course toward a career in the gun industry.
“It’s important work,” she says. “I don’t think there should be any more restrictions on gun sales, because they need to be available to those who have them for the right reason.”
Getty
Thacker is driving east, across rural Illinois, when I call him after the Eastern Regional (he finished third in his division, by less than 2 seconds.) His mind can’t help but focus on where he’s headed as we talk.
“Look at Chicago,” he says. “Strict, strict gun laws and it has more shootings than anywhere. Laws don’t prevent criminals from getting guns.”
Thacker’s message is the same one I’ve heard from every 3-gun shooter I’ve asked.
A gun is a tool, capable only of doing what its user tells it to do.
The sound of trucks and other cars rifts under our conversation.
“Think about this car,” Thacker says. “It could be used as a weapon, right? Somebody gets angry, they could drive it into a crowd, right? And would anybody blame the car? Anybody try to ban cars?”
This is something of a curious comparison. Cars are registered to their owners, and drivers must be licensed and maintain insurance. Adding that sort of oversight, as far as I can tell, is what most gun-control advocates want — and what the NRA and many of its members want to fight against.
“The difference,” Thacker says, “is that the constitution doesn’t guarantee me the right to own a car, the right to transportation. It does for guns. And I don’t think that can be infringed. You’ve got people over there burning flags based on their First Amendment freedoms, so don’t try to limit mine.”
Thacker got into the gun industry after high school by first competing in archery events. Other competitors introduced him to pistol shooting, and soon he was working at Loudon Guns, a gun store in Leesburg, Va. He became general manager, then started his own company selling firearms and providing training in their use. He spent five years as director of product management for FNH — helping to increase the company’s visibility with a strong 3-Gun team as the sport first spread — and was asked in January 2014 to save Armalite — the original designer of the AR-15 — after years of neglect.
You’ve got people over there burning flags based on their First Amendment freedoms, so don’t try to limit mine.
Tommy Thacker
He’s gotten far through moxie. “He’s just one of those people who always knows how to get [expletive] done,” Adams says. He hopes to earn his college degree from Liberty University soon. “I went for that real-world experience first,” he says. Thacker continues to use 3-Gun as an important part of the marketing push for his brand; Armalite is a major sponsor of 3-Gun Nation, and Jordan is its marquee shooter. The gregarious Thacker — he zoomed around the Eastern Regionals on an ATV — introduced himself to Jordan years ago and signed him to a sponsorship. They’ve been active in setting up camps and training sessions for young shooters.
“I think that’s one of the most important things we can do,” Thacker says. “You go back 20, 30 or even 40 years to when we didn’t have the mass shootings, and what’s the difference? Technology. Kids didn’t have an iPad or iPhone in their face the whole time. They didn’t see the gun as something on a movie or a video game where it’s just shoot-em-up the whole time. They learned gun safety and that they were dangerous and needed to be respected. Now they’re unfamiliar and taboo, and here we are.”
Reed fought in more than 60 gunfights in August 2011 while stationed in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. He scuttles my questions about the details of those fights, citing military training that advised him to stay away from sharing too much. What he will say, though, is that none of the American troops he was with were lost, and the Taliban “did not fare well at all. They lost. That’s all.”
(AFP)
It was natural for Reed to gravitate toward 3-Gun upon his return, as the sport echoed combat conditions in Afghanistan. “Guys were coming back from there and telling their commanders that they needed more training for fighting in the streets,” he said. “That traditional way of learning — where you shoot standing, kneeling or prone on the ground — wasn’t working. It used to be that only the special units got that sort of close combat training, but that’s not the case anymore.”
Reed is the son of a Marine who grew up believing it was his duty to serve his country. He attended Morehouse College while competing for the rifle team there and training to meet the requirements for becoming a Navy Seal. He’d wanted to join the Marines but was not guaranteed even a chance to attempt to earn his way onto an elite unit. The Navy guaranteed he’d at least be considered. “That was all I needed,” he says.
He spent 12 years with the Navy Seals, leaving active duty in 2012. He now runs multiple businesses in Shelbyville, Ky. One of them, Triple Countermeasure, provides training for businesses on how to deal with shooters. He advises his clients on three courses of action: fleeing, hiding and fighting back. “You’d be amazed at how many people work somewhere for 20 years and don’t think about where the closest exit is,” he says. “You’d be more amazed by the way the 50 year old ladies start throwing staplers when we tell them to come up with ways they would fight back.”
Reed is also a federally licensed firearms dealer, selling anything from a basic handgun to what are typically referred to as Class 3 weapons, including fully automatic rifles. Though he “can see a reason” to keep guns from convicted felons, he would do away with background checks.
“I don’t think there should be any restrictions at all,” he says. “I was raised right — what I consider right — and we all went to church, we saw the country as something greater than ourselves, wanted to serve our country and we all did. I couldn’t imagine being told I can’t own guns.”
Reed adheres to the National Rifle Association’s belief that any restriction would lead to further restriction.
“There are extremists on either side,” he says. “There’s no compromising with the people who want to take all guns away. We don’t live in utopia. The Nazis started by taking guns away from the German people.”
It takes me until Sunday to begin to understand why so many of the people here are aghast at even the idea of gun regulation: These are the good guys with the guns, and they are out here getting better.
They are tired of mass shootings, too, but rarely go looking for answers in the wake of them because the answer is so often the same: The violence was perpetrated in a place marked as a gun-free zone.
“We call them victim-only zones,” says Dave Staskiewicz, a police officer whose 17-year-old son Nate is the 6-seed entering nationals.
“All of these shooters have got this mental illness and feel they’ve been inadequate all their lives and they can’t take it anymore,” Reed says. “They’re suicidal at that point. They arm themselves because then the feel empowered. So of course they’re going to go to a school or a church. They know they won’t be met with equal force. If they were, they’d either drop the gun or commit suicide.”
Adams tells me early on in West Virginia that high-profile shootings of the last few years have shown that restricting guns “is a policy that has been proven without a doubt to be a complete failure.”
Tommy Thacker (Courtesy of 3-Gun Nation)
I call him the day after a gunman in Oregon kills nine people at Umpqua Community College and ask him if he’s listened to President Barack Obama’s impassioned reaction and call for more gun control.
“I haven’t,” Adams says, “but I’m sure I know what he said. I heard he was emotional. I am, too. And I’m tired of this, just like he is. It’s tragic that innocent people lose their lives because they aren’t allowed to protect themselves and the people in charge cannot protect them.”
We call them victim-only zones
Dave Staskiewicz
While it is true that Umpqua’s administration had declared the school a gun-free zone, Oregon law allows anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring their gun to campus. And according to reports, there were, in fact, armed students near where the shooting took place. They just weren’t in the vicinity of the shooter.
The 3-Gun shooters I meet are smart and decent people. They want guns to protect themselves, both at home and when they are out. They would use them well, no doubt. Even the middle-of-the-pack competitors are adept. Good guys with guns can be part of the solution, but certainly not all of it.
So can added background checks and waiting periods, a national gun registry, electronic tracking of all sales, requirements for the use of cameras and other security equipment at gun shops and stiffer penalties for those caught selling guns illegally. It is clear that criminals may not follow laws when procuring guns — though a more efficient system for running checks would have properly flagged Charleston shooter Dylann Roof — but also just as clear that we have not done nearly enough to stop the flow of legally purchased guns becoming black-market guns later. Tracking them is a way to do that, and the “registration leads to confiscation” excuse is hollow.
AFP
Most gun-control measures being pushed right now don’t even go nearly that far. Senate Democrats unveiled a plan Thursday focused on expanding background checks to include private sales at gun shows and purchases made over internet. It would also give the FBI unlimited time to complete a background check rather than just three days.
“I say it everytime I talk about this: I believe fully in the Second Amendment and the right to own guns,” Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s senior Senator, tells me.
Blumenthal has also proposed laws that would prevent anyone with a temporary restraining order against them from buying a gun; currently only those with a permanent order are flagged during checks.
“Everything we do is about keeping guns from those we’ve already acknowledged should not have them,” he says. “We are not adding to the list of people who cannot have guns.
“Let me be blunt: I’m a former attorney general and now a senator and my duty is to uphold the constitution. I have no intention of ever abridging that. I understand the fear, but a rational and objective understanding of the constitution and how this country works does not even allow for the idea of banning guns. It’s against who we are and would be impossible.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (AP)
Dave Hoover, a police sergeant who lives in Lakewood, Colo., is an avid hunter who remembers tossing his .22 in the back of the truck so he could go shoot in the woods after high school. He has also become a gun-regulation advocate because his nephew, AJ Boik, was among 12 killed in the Aurora movie theater massacre of 2012.
Hoover was also a responding officer at Columbine.
“Up to that point I was fat, dumb and happy,” he said. “But then I began to see the larger issues with guns, and how we need to do something to limit access to them for the people who shouldn’t have them. There are common-sense laws that can do this.”
I tell him that the police officers I spoke to think new laws will be useless because criminals don’t follow laws.
“That’s something cops say,” he replies. “They’re fatalistic. They have a right to be. They deal with a lot, they see the worst in humanity. But the fact is, we can make a difference. It’s been proven over and over.”
I begin to ask whether the measures he advocates — background checks on private sales and keeping guns from those accused of domestic violence — will eventually lead to the loss of gun rights and he cuts me off.
“No, no, no. Of course not,” he says. “That’s a fear the NRA has put out there and fostered for years. For God’s sake we just legalized marijuana here. Who is going to come for your guns? We don’t have time for that. There are too many other things to deal with.”
The NRA doesn’t just uphold the spectre of gun prohibition. Through stealth political campaigning, of which it does better than most, it stemmed the flow of funding for gun research from reaching the Center for Disease Control and the National Institution of Health which has left a dearth of non-partisan gun research. That means that very often the gun debate never gets past basic questions like how many times guns are used defensively each year — with gun-control leaders scoffing at the figure of 2.5 million put forth by a Florida State researcher — or how many guns are bought without background checks (the NRA once again refuted a commonly used figure of 40 percent in a story posted on its website earlier this summer).
They’re fatalistic. They have a right to be. They deal with a lot, they see the worst in humanity.
Dave Hoover
The eighth stage of the 3-Gun Nation Eastern Regional is located about a half mile uphill from where the shooting bays are, across from a field of gently waving Queen Anne’s lace and about 50 yards off from an old house huddled in the woods.
It is the most challenging stage. The initial shots trigger the tossing of clay discs into the air that must then be shot. There are targets nestled in the shade of the tree line, making them hard to quickly identify. Finally there’s a sprint over to a gun rest overlooking a deep valley with seven targets spread throughout, anywhere from about 225 to 330 yards away.
Up there the shots from the rest of the ranges barely register. It is peaceful.
I am here to watch Reed, who was the top shooter in his Navy Seals sniper class. These are, in fact, not very long shots for a trained marksman and do not require calculations and adjustments like those used by elite snipers in the field. Yet they are unique for this competition, and this competition offers a glimpse at some of the best shooters anywhere in the country; both Adams and Reed say a good 3-Gun shooter is far more skilled with his weapons than an average soldier or law enforcement officer.
Reed tells me later that 3-Gun competitions also approximate the feeling of real combat. “It’s probably closer than people would think in some ways. You’re introducing the stress of doing it as quickly and cleanly as possible. Nobody is shooting back, but the challenge is similar: you have to do what your training and practice have prepared you to do under duress.”
After making quick work of the shotgun and pistol targets, Reed arrives at the barricade and grabs his rifle. The range officer uses binoculars to spot the target, which swings up and down — as if nodding in the affirmative — when hit.
Reed fires.
Crack.
“Hit!”
The sound of the bullet on steel takes a half second to make its way back up the hill to where I am standing.
Thwack.
I can’t help but imagine Reed now in Afghanistan, running one of those missions he can’t tell me about, doing what his father told him must be done to protect our way of life.
He fires again.
“Hit!”
Thwack.
But now I see 11,208 people — the number of Americans killed in 2013 by firearms used in homicides — lined up in the valley below, staring up at the barrell of the gun.
He fires again.
“Hit!”
Thwack.
Now the valley in front of me is filled with America’s guns, all 300 million of them, an unfathomable pile.
He fires.
“Hit!”
Thwack.
I see a woman with a concealed carry permit fighting off a would-be assaulter. I see a home owner in a desolate part of the country checking his gun cabinet before resting easy for the night, another in West Baltimore doing the same.
“Hit!”
Thwack.
I see myself a few years from now taking my son to his first day of school, eyeing the building, wondering where a gunman would try to enter. Do I want an armed guard there? Wouldn’t he just get taken by surprise? Then what? The principal has a gun? The teachers? More guards?
“Hit!”
Thwack.
Now there’s a table in the middle of the field below, and I try to picture the conversation that needs to happen. Maybe Tommy Thacker and Richard Blumenthal are talking. Maybe Dave Hoover and Jacob Betsworth — who has written eloquently against gun control laws — are debating. It is hard to tell. Maybe there are just mobs on the left and right, shouting.
The August sun is bright, the sky blue and the valley silent, of course.
In the moment of emptiness before a shot is taken it almost seems like the answers and solutions hang right in front of you.
Thwack.