Good news and bad news

[Don McDowell]

Lot of misconceptions you folks back east have about shooting Raton. You state that it's good to shoot a different range.. Well yes it is, but you guys seem to be totally oblivious to the simple fact that with the exception of less than a dozen shooters, nobody lives any closer to Raton than a couple hundred miles. Very few shooters shoot at Raton other than the once a year when they go to the nationals.
To hold 2 national championship matches means there is NO national championship. There can only be 1 national match and if the NRA doesn't want to have it at Raton, at the facility the NRA built so it "will always have a world class facility , to have championship matches", then they need to pick another range and have a National Championship.
They say there MIGHT be a POSSIBLE East/West invitational match somewhere sometime. What will the qualifications be to get into this match. Will someone who "qualifies" spotter be able to attend and shoot? Like it or not, any of these matches is a team effort, and that's why folks shoot together at the same match every chance they get. What about the timing of this possible invitational match? As it stands now the Ridgeway regional match is late in September, that means this fictional invitational match would be sometime in October. A time of the year that if folks aren't gone hunting, they're not to likely to want to take off on a cross country trip due the very good chance of getting caught in a fall blizzard someplace.
If the national match is moved to the east coast, you can just about forget about any shooters from the mountain and pacific time zones. Most are already traveling 500+ miles to get to Raton, and if you tack another 1700 on top of that... don't look for a very good turn out.
The way they have things configured now, is almost a guaranteed death of the bpcr matches as a national event.
Once again if the NRA competitions doesn't want to be bothered with having the National Matches at Raton then they need to find a centrally located club to host the match and be done with it.
And those of you who want to compete on a national level, need to take the initiative to attend that national match.