I'm in the 20% percentile for PCSL shooters; I am not good when compared to them. On the other hand, very, very few people nationally compete in any kind of shooting sport. People that personally own firearms make up roughly 32% of the US population. People that practice regularly with the firearms that they own make up a much smaller percentage of that. Of the people that practice, people that compete at all, much less regularly, make up a tiny fraction of all firearm owners.

Even if the 99 truly randomly chosen people are all in the US, I've got pretty decent odds that I'll be competing against people that have no experience in shooting on the clock. If those 99 random people are people from anywhere, then, given that gun ownership is very low pretty much everywhere else in the world, the odds are very, very good that the people I'd be competing against wouldn't even know how to effectively operate a firearm, would be unable to follow the rules, and would end up getting disqualified for major safety violations.

[–] kurap1ka@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But if the challenge was international, you could get unlucky. Some countries like Germany, Switzerland, or Russia have a very popular shooting sports community. But I like your idea. I would take olympic archery. I'm fine enough to participate in national championships, but I don't stand a chance to the pros. Plus, it would be that an average person doesn't have the muscles to shoot 72 arrows on a target at competition distance.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago

While it's true that there's a popular shooting sports community in Switzerland for sure, the style of shooting done in PCSL is pretty particular to the US. Modern sporting rifles--what some would call assault-style rifles--are very strictly regulated in most countries. I would expect that countries most likely to have people proficient in that specific discipline of movement and shooting would be from Switzerland, Finland, and Czechia. Air rifle and air pistol are more popular in Russia because of the strict regulations on firearm ownership. (Technically you can compete in PCSL using a lever action or bolt action rifle, but it would be an enormous handicap.)