I know that most folks here have other interests as far a competitive shooting goes, but one of the most prestigious international shooting events is going on right now!

Finals are done for Men's Air Pistol at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Gold: Iran
Silver: Serbia
Bronze: China

Congratulations to them for excellent shooting in a very difficult precision event under tremendous pressure!

Here's the breakdown for the finals:
Shooting - Final Results

Seems odd that in a nation of gun owners (handguns in particular!), the USA couldn't even make the cut for the finals. Whatever happened to the days of American Olympic pistol shooters like Joe Benner or Bill McMillan?

We'll see how things go in the other shooting events....

UPDATE: USA Gold for air rifle, won by William Shaner.
Congratulations!

Scroll the posts for lots of air pistol pictures!

Air pistol just isn't manly enough for Americans. I think most American gun guys think of those olympic air pistols as toys for the effete, in spite of the skill needed to do it well.

Not many folks are enamored with the today's Olympics. What with rules, repugnet dissenters and covid. Too much politiking going on. The Winter Games will be the real disaster via China!

I quit caring about the olympics when they made beach volleyball an event. Talk about hitting rock bottom. Nw there's talk of adding break dancing. Total silliness.

William Shaner, 20 year old American won gold in the 10 meter air rifle.
Congratulations to the the young man. Great job in a very tough discipline.
👍👍

Please support USA shooting.

USA Shooting Team | USA Shooting

He also did it by just over half a point over the Chinese shooter who got the silver. Bronze was 20 points back.

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The best I can with what I got

All I know is the USA Dressage Team is still in the hunt for the medal on Tuesday . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Don't look down your nose at Air Pistol until you have tried it. It is a very demanding sport, requiring intense training and concentration. I tried it for several years, (at a local/regional level) and one time at a State Championship I came within 30 points of being invited to Colorado Springs for a next level tournament. Needless to say there were several people in between ne and the top shooters. It is a good way to work on concentration. The 10 Meter "X" ring is .2" , quite a bit smaller than the 3" to 6" groups many think are great in USPSA and IDPA.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I set up our Hulu account to record Olympic shooting event coverage so I could watch at my leisure. As of Saturday night, I had a total of 3 minutes of Men's Air Pistol, and 3 minutes of Women's Air Rifle.

Maybe there's not much interest because no-one knows it exists?

Pretty sad, considering the hours of "Olympic Skateboarding" coverage...

I don't watch it that much but I did see the American Lady win Gold in Fencing !!

Sweet.

Other countries place great emphasis on the Olympic shooting sports. America seems to actually find the shooting sports distasteful. Americans have a choice as to what sports they want to compete in. These other countries, not so much. Another factor is that most Americans don't even take the time to learn, to any high degree, how to shoot the guns they own. This is a completely different country than it was in the 50's and 60's when WWII vets were in abundance. Now, most people never consider serving their country.

A half a lifetime ago, when my eyesight and everything else worked better I shot air pistol competition. I did quite well, placing in the top five in the state competition. I qualified to shoot on the state team and we went on to win the national postal competition. I was invited to shoot in the nationals in Arizona but went to a foreign university and could not attend. One of our team members, won the nationals and took the gold medal at the Olympics in South Korea. Air pistol is by no means a child's toy. It takes tremendous concentration and discipline to shoot an air pistol well, particularly trigger control and follow through. Barrel time seems to be your worst enemy if you screw up. However, all of your shooting skills will improve as a result of the lessons you learn shooting the air pistol.

And the U.S. took home gold in both men's and women's skeet!

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The best I can with what I got

Yes. Remove the distractions of muzzle blast and recoil, and any flaws in your shooting technique are abundantly clear.
Air pistol is a great sport and a great training aid for all pistol shooters.

Pictured is my old Pardini K58, a single stroke pneumatic air pistol.

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Your Pardini has the same lines as my IZH46M Russian) single stroke pneumatic. It is typical Russian as it is roughly finished on the outside, but is built pretty well and superbly accurate. Not in the same quality class as the Pardini, but will shoot along side it. Of course they all use Precharged air now, so no extra effort to cock the guns each shot.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I too used to compete in International Air Pistol. It is certainly not everyone's cup of tea. It takes someone who enjoys a big challenge, gets a lot of pleasure in putting shots in the middle of a target and has a dogged determination to control one's mind and body while trying to hit that small ten ring at 10 meters. I never was that good, but enjoyed it immensely. 60 shots slow fire gets quite taxing.

The air pistols have certainly come a long way since my competition days. I used a second hand Walther LP3 Match, a single stroke pneumatic that required tremendous effort to charge. It has a system that uses a piston to compress the air in a chamber, which is released by a trigger activated release valve. After back to back matches in the state championship and subsequent postal matches, I couldn't figure out how my hand was so sore, until the bruise appeared. A few years later, a friend let me shoot his pre-charged FWB. What a difference!

The Morini that BE Mike has pictured above is amongst the most current advanced designs. It uses compressed air in a detachable cylinder under the barrel. It's good for about 100-150 shots usually. Then, you refill it. Takes just a couple minutes.
You may notice the little switch and LED on the grip. That's for the electronic trigger. Very fast lock time and very clean trigger break (widely adjustable, of course!)

In the '90 I used to shoot air pistol.While far from olympic scores,I was pretty proud to shoot in the high 540s or low 550s/600.Couldn't repeat that today but I've done it for a few years enough to know that the concentration it needs is exhausting.
I've seen guys(olympic participants)who could shoot in the 560s on a regular basis and one guy who could break regularly the 570;he was a guy who had evaded the iron curtain a few years before and was a trainer for the olympic athletes on the red(communist) team.Needless to say we always were gathered around him trying to get a''free consultation''for improving our scores!

As a way of showing the cross-training potential for air pistol, sometimes I shoot air pistol on the TQ-9 free pistol qualification target. This is somewhat like the old gallery matches. The targets shown are intended to be shot at 25 feet with a .22 cal free pistol. Usually, for that match, you'd receive 5 or 10 targets and shoot 2 or 1 shot(s) respectively for a total of 10 shots scoring out of a potential 100 points.
I shot these on my basement 10 meter (33 ft) air pistol range with my Pardini k2s. It's uses compressed air and has a finely adjustable trigger. The grip is non-regulation for air pistol, being more like a true free pistol grip that wraps mostly around the hand.

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I shot both air pistol and Free Pistol when I was younger and my eyes worked. I sold my Hammerli M162 Eltctronic, but still have my Walther CP2. (Shows just how long ago I was active....)


I will have to say that there really wasn't much difference in the discipline between the two.

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Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

My sportsmen's club has a bunch of loaner Olympic grade air pistols and sets the range up for 10m competitions sometimes. Those are WAY more accurate than I could ever dream to be. The triggers are crazy sensitive.

Record low ratings, wokeness, virtue signaling and the gold goes to a member of the IRGC (a US designated terrorist organization) ..... meh.
No thanks.

What are some entry level pistols?

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The best I can with what I got

Daisy 747 or if you can find a nice used one a Daisy 777. The IZH-46 (Russian import), The FWB 65. If you want to get into non-cocking air pistols and don't mind messing with a CO2 tank, there are plenty of deals to be had for used ones, i.e. FWB 2 or 20. The pre-charged air pistols start to raise the price. There is a wealth of information on pilkguns.com. Here is an example: TenP Files Feinwerkbau Pistols - Pilkington Competition

Good stuff. Great athletes representing the greatest country in the world!

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Jorge

I just got an e-mail from my sportsmens club. Next Wednesday's August meeting they will have the range set up for 10 meter air, and we get to run through the Olympic events with the club air rifles and pistols. I've never seen our semi-auto air pistols that are used in rapid fire events. Should be fun. And a dessert potluck too!

Agreed, and the drama queens , the duping and petty disqualifying...

I haven't had any interest

Follow up. Yesterday was our club meeting and I got to use some of the air pistols we have, and the 5 round repeater ones for rapid fire events. We even have one of the Olympic laser scoring systems. Really cool.

I even found out that a club member in his early years when his family lived in Seattle, learned to shoot at our range, and competed in the Olympics twice in Rapid Fire in '92 and '96. Gold twice in international competitions. Roger G. MAR | Olympics.com

And this is why I know, no matter how good I get, there are stealth state, national and world class shooters lurking at our little range. That keeps me humble.

The Russian IZH46M was an entry level (cost wise) pistol for a number of years. The prices on them have crept up in the last few years though. Also look at used pistols. About ten years ago I picked up two used Finewerkbau match pistols for about 1/3 of the their new price.

The market for used older, but still useful, quality air pistols in not great. You can often look for quite some time to locate one you like. Even the big sites often have only 3-4 used pistols for sale. I did a lot of my shooting in the 80's with a Crossman Skannaker, but I had to have the seals replaced a couple times, it was a CO2 powered. Single stroke pneumatic are about the most dependable over a long period.

For some reason I find people tend to hang on to the air pistols, even though they haven't shot for a few years.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I was mentored in Free Pistol way back in the 70s with ambition on the Montreal Olympics. But life, family, Coach's health, lack of time and $$$ got in the way. I still have two more recent air pistols, along with too many BE guns. One AP is a Hammerli 480k I got from Doc Young. The other is a Steyr LP10. I actually shot the Hammerli better. The Hammerli air tanks are way over 10 years.