Pistol Shooters Promote Sport as an Endeavor for the Masses : Recreation: A Ventura County league is producing some of the nation's best shooters.

By STEVE HENSON

Dec. 24, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PIRU —

Is any word in our society more loaded than “handgun”? Certainly, few are less associated with legitimate sport.

That might all change if Yank Price and his pistol-packing legion of competitors have their way.

“This is turning itself into a sport for a broad range of people,” says Price, director of the Southwest Pistol League, an organization that stages monthly competition on a remote ranch in northeast Ventura County and boasts some of the nation’s best shooters.

“That’s something I’m trying to promote.”

Holster for now the debate on whether guns kill people or people kill people, Price says, and examine pistol shooting from the standpoint of athletics.

Shooting has been an Olympic sport since the advent of the modern Games in 1896. There are seven Olympic shooting events for men, four for women and two mixed.

Pistol shooting contains a magazine load of elements that make any sport appealing: Proper technique and fundamentals are necessary, practice improves performance, results are easily quantifiable, and participants compete both against themselves and others.

The shooting is done at a variety of stationary paper and steel targets. A sequence of shots on a given course is called a stage. Some stages require the shooter to move from position to position, taking various stances and aiming around obstacles.

Each stage is timed, and scores reflect a combination of accuracy and speed.

“The beauty of this sport is that an individual can set personal goals and, depending on the time and energy devoted to it, can become as good as they want,” says David Gentzvein of Woodland Hills, who among Southwest Pistol League shooters is No. 1 with a bullet.

Gentzvein, 31, recently won the SPL open division championship for an unprecedented third year in a row. He is the league’s only Grand Master, meaning he can enter any national competition at the highest level.

Last year, Gentzvein won the SPL equivalent of a triple crown, finishing first in all three pistol classes: open, limited and revolver.

In the revolver class, shooters use a standard double-action six-shooter. Limited shooters use a stock semiautomatic pistol. Open shooters can modify their guns with scopes that increase accuracy and compensators that increase speed by reducing recoil.

Within each division, shooters are ranked in class from A through D. Grand Master is a class above A.

The rankings serve as handicaps, and shooters can enter United States Pistol Assn. matches anywhere in the country within their class and be assured they will be competitive. The USPA has about 12,000 members and 150 belong to the SPL.

Price believes those numbers could skyrocket.

“I’ve found over the years that there is a huge group of people who want to do this,” he says, “but they don’t know how, or where. The market is huge.”

Bringing pistol shooting into the mainstream begins with making safety the sport’s No. 1 priority. Although the league boasts of having no accidents in its 31 years, the ever-present threat of injury or death is unavoidable.

During competition, no one goes off half-cocked. Shooters are disqualified for violating any of several safety rules, including:

* A shooter must keep the muzzle of his pistol pointed down-range.

* A shooter’s fingers must remain off the trigger while he is moving from station to station.

* A shooter may not leave the firing area until his gun is empty. He must display his empty chamber to the range official before holstering the gun.

* Should a gun drop to the ground, the shooter leaves it to be retrieved by a range officer.

“The safety rules are so strict you don’t see bad gun-handling,” Gentzvein said. “All the things that would make a gun discharge or put the safety of others at risk disqualifies you from the match.”

Both the safety and competitive aspects of pistol shooting were on display during a recent Sunday on the five-acre range, which also includes areas for rifle shooting, law enforcement target practice and a group called the Burbank Muzzle Loaders.

The Southwest Pistol League uses a large-enough area to accommodate three to five stages at a time.

One stage required shooters to begin by standing in a small boxed-off area with their guns in their holsters. Frank Wood prepared to shoot, taking his stance with knees flexed and feet spread shoulder width.

Harry Herbert, a volunteer range official, stood alongside Wood with a timer and a score card. “Shooter ready!” Herbert shouted. The timer buzzer went off and Wood drew his gun and began pulling the trigger rapid-fire.

Two shots were fired at each of four paper targets and one at a metal target called a pepper popper. Wood then ran to a second station and shot at a metal target that, when hit, caused a wheel full of paper targets to turn into view. Those were shot at before Wood moved to a third station where he took eight shots at paper targets through a narrow porthole.

Wood was excited about his score, saying, “I’m all fired up. I love this sport.”

Another stage required shooting through and around a cardboard tree, and a third stage required shooting at paper targets from various distances.

Score sheets are handled only by Price to ensure they are not tampered with. “We’ve gotten pretty competitive out here,” he says.

The SPL served as host to the Colt Pro Shootout in October, an event that drew shooters nationwide. Portions of the match will be shown on ESPN today at 2 p.m.

The SPL also is one of eight leagues nationwide that are host to area championships serving as qualifiers for national events. Another high-profile event is Speed Week, held in May, which consists of eight different types of competition.

These events bring out the best shooters. Their grip is firm, their stance relaxed. They reload, aim and fire almost quicker than the eye can follow.

“Shooting is much like golf, very stylistic,” Gentzvein says. “The proper grip, stance and follow-through are essential, and hand-eye coordination is needed.

“The basic discipline is to achieve fast, accurate shots, to draw from the holster consistently. You have to work on developing your skills so there is no wasted motion. That’s shooting in a nutshell.”

Practice includes dry firing--drawing and pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun--and shooting at indoor or outdoor ranges. Gentzvein manages an indoor range in Van Nuys, enjoying a situation similar to a golf pro who has the run of his course: He can shoot every day.

The same is true for Rhonda Van Tassel of Oxnard, who three years after taking up the sport has become one of the SPL’s top women shooters.

After one year of competition, Van Tassel won first place in the 1991 International revolver championships and has finished third in each of the past two years. She gives lessons at Shooter’s Paradise in Oxnard and is membership director of a shooting club.

“You can measure your improvement, which I like,” she says. “At first all I had to do was go to the bottom of the score sheet and find my name. Now, I enjoy it so much I wish I could do it for a living. It’s addictive.”

Something else Van Tassel enjoys is the camaraderie among SPL members.

“You meet great people,” she says. “It’s not how people portray guns and gun owners. This is not about being violent. It’s a sport.”

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THE RANGE LIFE

TRAP AND SKEET SHOOTING

Fin and Feather Club, Palmdale. 805-947-2884.

ATA-affiliated trap shooting. Nine-trap house

Oak Tree Gun Club, Santa Clarita. 805-259-7441. Trap and skeet shooting.

INDOOR RANGES

A Place to Shoot, Saugus. 805-296-5552

Agoura Hills Target Range. 889-0453

Firing Line, Northridge. 349-1420