Tag Archives: National Match

Who doesn’t love a Gold Cup?

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John Moses Browning’s celebrated 1911 design was adopted by the U.S. military just in time for World War I and soon after Colt began to respond to feedback to tweak the gun for further use. In January 1932, Colt responded to the common fine tuning done to service pistols by military marksmen at the National Match competitions in Camp Perry by introducing the National Match series of accurized 1911s that offered upgrades such as hand-fitted internals, match barrels, checked triggers and mainspring housings and adjustable sights. This model proved popular until it was suspended in 1942 due to the pressing needs of World War II.

In 1957, Colt rebooted the concept as the “Gold Cup National Match” line and has retained the terminology ever since.

Fundamentally, these guns have been the benchmark for right-out-of-the-box competition pistols for more than a half-decade with Colt long describing them as “the finest shooting semi-automatic in the world.”

Check out a sweet spread that covers several decades of these classics in my column at Guns.com.

Inside the CMP, and the word on M1s coming back from overseas and possible 1911s…

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To see just what the non-profit has on the shelf, I visited the Civilian Marksmanship’s South operations in Anniston. Co-located near the Anniston Army Depot — which is actually in nearby Bynum — and stores much of the Army’s stockpile of guns and items not needed for current operations, the CMP has a series of warehouses dotting the rolling hills of the area.

Unfortunately, most of them are nearly empty.

While now-retired CMP boss Orest Michaels told me back in 2010 the organization had 125,000 M1 rifles on hand including complete rifles, stripped receivers, and welded drill rifles, the group is coy about just what the numbers are today after several years of brisk sales and surging interest in U.S. martial rifles.

As Jim Townsend, CMP’s business development officer, walked me through a tour of their largest warehouse, he swept his arms over a large expanse of empty floor space and said, “When I first started here, this whole side of the building was full of M1s.” Repurposed crates that once contained M1s returning from allies in Greece and Denmark now hold everything but.

Repurposed crates that once contained M1s returning from allies in Greece and Denmark now hold everything but.

Why keep the empty space?

Check out my column at Guns.com for the answer.

Disneyland for Shooters…

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I recently had the opportunity to visit the immaculate ranges used by the Civilian Marksmanship Program to support public firearms training.

The CMP is a federally-chartered non-profit corporation tasked with promoting firearms safety training and target practice. It originated as the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship in 1903 under orders from Congress to improve the country’s marksmanship skills to minimize training in case of war.

Split off from the U.S. Army under the Clinton-administration in 1996, it still conducts training courses and holds shooting competitions and clinics nationwide but draws its primary source of funding through the sale of surplus firearms to qualifying members of the public which were donated to the organization by the Army.

With an eye to see just what all those M1 Garand sales have helped pay for, I visited the CMP’s Alabama operations to get a better idea about what they offer the public:

How about a covered 54-positon 600-yard range with targets at 100-200-600, all electronically scored with a monitor at your station…

15 different clays stands on golf-course quality grounds..

Olympic-quality 10m airgun ranges set up for 80 competitors at a time– also with electronic targets

It’s almost like they are into civilian marksmanship training or something…

More in my column at Guns.com.