Occasionally, you have the mild excitement of being allowed to do this in competition, and a “spoon” is given you if you make top score, paid for out of your own money less a percentage which the gallery keeps.
Your skill does not avail you long, as the next time you shoot, by however many points you have won, by that number of points you are handicapped, so it is possible that if you get very proficient, you can have the pleasure, when making all bull’s-eyes, of being beaten by a man who has not made a single bull’s-eye, and beats you by handicap, and the list of spoon winners appears in the papers with his name on top and yours at the bottom, and people say, “How badly X shoots.”
This is not very encouraging to X or conducive to a desire to gain proficiency.
However bad a shot you are, you have an equal chance of winning this spoon.
Even the possibility of gaining a spoon applies to only a few shooting clubs. The shooting galleries in black cellars, do not give prizes. You are supposed to be fully compensated, after being deafened by a man with a full charge revolver or automatic pistol blazing away into the darkness beside you, by paying for your targets, ammunition, and hire of a greasy revolver with a trigger-pull hard enough to break your finger and a report like a cannon, whilst you strain your eyes to see a black front sight in the darkness.
There is no sport, or comfort, in all this. Under such circumstances nobody can be blamed if he gives up pistol shooting in disgust.
I shall describe later, how a gallery should be built (see Plates [15] and [16]), or an open range planned and conducted, but I here merely indicate why pistol shooting in England is deservedly unpopular as at present conducted.
There should be no handicapping. Being able to shoot well should be an incentive, not a handicap.
Next, there should be the excitement and amusement of a game.
Who would go to look at a game conducted under the following conditions?