Weapons to most, equipment to some: A shooting dilemma

Bengaluru: It would seem that Indians are rather good at shooting but aren’t particularly good at maintaining safety standards. 

While a large contingent of professional shooters are gearing up for the upcoming Olympics in Paris, there is a side to the sport which is oft-ignored. 

The fact that these - even air rifles - are weapons is occasionally lost on the athletes because, as far as they are concerned, their gear is part of ‘sports equipment’. 

As it is there is but a thin line between a weapon and sports equipment in the case of shooting, and when you add a layer of normalisation to it, you have a spike in accidents. 

Several instances have sent shock waves through the sport’s community, including the latest one which witnessed a teenager accidentally shooting her physiotherapist through his jaw in Chennai. 

This incident from a couple of days ago comes in the wake of a shooter losing his thumb while filling the cylinder of his pistol in Faridabad recently, and a rifle exponent pointing her gun towards the spectators’ gallery during the Nationals in New Delhi.

There is always an element of risk when it comes to sport, more so in the case of shooting, but expert shooters believe that the possibility of harm can be mitigated should the stringent safety protocols in place be adhered to. 

Divya Thadigol Subbaraju, an Asian Games medallist from Karnataka, noted that she has witnessed shooters being callous when it comes to safety protocols. 

“People come to the range, and some of them have a passion for showing off the weapon. I have professionals doing it too,” she says. “I think people are a bit more relaxed when it comes to air rifles, but if you’re in close range and the pellet hits your soft tissue, maybe your eyes, you will hurt or lose vision. It’s very dangerous.”

“But, yeah, a lot of people, including me rarely, do just think of the gun as part of my job and forget that this is an actual weapon,” she adds. 

Olympian Joydeep Karmakar revealed that there have been more shooting incidents which have not seen the light of day of late and that the problem has to largely do with the quality of coaches in the country.  “Anyone and everyone starts a shooting range or an academy these days,” he says. “A lot of those coaches don’t practice good, expected safety measures, and the kids learn from them so they are just as disinterested in these measures.”

“Last week, there was a coach who went past the firing line, which no one should do, to try and make a point to a kid, and he was accidentally shot through his palm. You’re dealing with weapons here, this is not a joke, and people don’t seem to understand that.”

Asian Games gold medallist Ronjan Sodhi seconded Karmakar’s take but added another dimension to it. 

“They coach across disciplines. Like, skeet shooters become trap coaches and so on. That can’t work because their idea of the equipment is also different,” he explains. “We need more renowned shots to become coaches and coach their discipline, not something else just because that too involves a gun. 

Another aspect of the accident involving the teenager in Chennai is that she was at the hotel at the time of the incident. According to reports, the shooter did not remove the pellet from her rifle while cleaning it and accidentally pressed the trigger just when the physio was entering her hotel room.

“In other parts of the world, you will not be allowed to enter the hotel with a weapon,” says Karmakar. “Here, save for some big hotels, you can take your gun into the hotel. Elsewhere, we go straight from the airport to the hotel and leave our guns at the range before going to our hotels.”

Safety locks, safety flags, coordinated commands, Pelican cases, stringent rules from the National Rifles Association of India, and more are in place to ensure an accident-free environment. But, as Karmakar noted, an element of fear needs to be instilled in shooters so they understand the gravity of what’s in their hands. “…if not, we will see more of these instances,” says Sodhi.