This thread has been interesting and after over a year of trying to get someone willing to become involved in promoting youth shooting I'm glad to see its being discussed. Even though as one person pointed out we are a Collector Organization, we are all aware that if a person is not introduced to guns and shooting at an early age they likely will never develop an interest in Classic Guns later on. I hunted and shot as a youth but never owned a SxS until about 12 years ago and now should probably be in some sort of therapy group. The point is I didn't need to be shooting a Parker at age 12 or win a free gun at 13 to one day develop a huge interest in the Classics later on in life when I could actually afford such things.
The PGCA as Bruce pointed out has made considerable donations to some very well developed youth shooting programs that already had the infrastructure in place to reach many young people. We felt that this would get us the most bang for our buck and we have continued that effort by donating along with the LCSCA the proceeds from the Challenge Cup the last few years. I believe these efforts should continue but that with the help of our membership our efforts could be expanded.
Like any program there needs to be one person to act as a point of contact. Even if several people elect to work together someone has to step up and be the voice for the group to avoid confusion. I believe we could all work together to come up with some guidelines where by the PGCA could offer some type of support to qualifying existing or new youth events at the local level anywhere in the US. A budget would need to be set and possibly a means to fund it, but that will need to be determined once a plan is in place.
Obviously we've only heard from around 25 of our 1400 members but I believe if we get the right people in place and a good action plan this could be something we could all be proud of.
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