I was doing my grocery shopping yesterday when a gentlemen approached me and asked: “Excuse me, do you reload?” Then there was a brief moment of awkwardness until I realized I was wearing my Dillon T-shirt and Dillon hat. So we started a long talk about reloading presses, components, calibers and all that. He said his wife is actually shooting more than he does – which is still a bit unusual to hear – I guess we all agree that gender equality concept hasn’t penetrated shooting sports as deep, as, say, boxing or fencing. One thing led to another, and I told him about bullseye pistol shooting, our club, competitions and all the fun things we love and cherish. He said he will definitely check it out, so hopefully we will have a new shooter here soon.

But this made me thinking, every time I hear people complaining that the bullseye pistol sport is dying, I ask myself, how do we fix it? Well, this is one thing that seems to work so far. How many of you have t-shirts from NRA, CMP, local matches, or vendors like Dillon? If you have some, do you only wear them when you go to the range? How about wearing them on a daily basis? Prepare to answer questions such as “What does it mean CMP?”, or “Do you work for Dillon?”, or even “Do you guys shoot other people?” (no kidding about the last one, one girl in San Francisco did ask me this question). Invite people to the range, let them try your Pardinis and KC Crawford-built 1911s, wait till they hit the paper at 10 yards two-handed and get super excited about it, then shoot the X at 50 yards and tell them they can do it too! Then invite them to your local league matches.

Time to check my closet, I think I have a few more cool T-shirts to wear!