Female Marksmen

You remember Kerri Strug, right? 1996 Olympics, women's gymnastics, performed an (unnecessary) vault on a bad ankle, got a gold medal, the cover of the Wheaties box, etc.?

How about Kim Rhode?

No?

As a 17-year-old American girl, in the very same Olympics, she won a gold in women's double trap shooting -- the very first time that even was in the Olympics, too.

It was historic and inspiring.

The networks tend not to show the odd sports, it's true -- but when an American wins a medal, especially when it makes a great human-interest story, they're normally all over it.

Except, it seems, if it would put guns and shooting in a positive light. Especially if it involved teens and guns.

Kim Rhode went on to win a bronze in 2000 and another Gold in 2004.

But if you heard her amazing story trumpeted by the MSM at the time, you have a better memory than I do.

It's interesting, you know, that in most sports (which are segregated by sex), there's no point in integrating them, because there would be no contest between the top men and the top women. In billiards and shooting, however, not only are women competitive at the highest levels, but also generally superior to men.

You might think this would be something the women's movement would want to celebrate and publicize, but they don't seem too excited by the top women shooters, even when the compete with and defeat the men.

How about Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher? In 1998, she was the High Power Rifle Champion at the National Matches, beating all the men, including top snipers from the military and law enforcement!

And now, her two teenage daughters are beating everybody at the National Match:

The scene: the national shooting championships at Camp Perry, Ohio. The event: rifle targets at 1,000 meters, no telescopic sights. The competitors: a crew of the nation's most deadly snipers from the Secret Service, the FBI, the Marines and elsewhere.

Oh, and Michelle and Sherri, two teenage girls from Prescott, Arizona.

In the competition, a shooter aims at a target 1,000 meters away about the size of a car tire with the bull's-eye as the hubcap. And the rifle barrel must be aimed so that the bullet would fly 30 feet above the target if it didn't drop. But a bullet does drop and winds can blow it as much as 40 feet to either side of the target.

Guess who won?

The victory was not a rare event for Michelle Gallagher, 18, and sister Sherri, 16. In fact, they know few people better with a rifle than they. One happens to be their mother, Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher, 40, who won the national high-power rifle championship in 1998. The other is their stepfather, Middleton Tompkins, 62, who's been champion six times.

Their mother wasn't at all surprised at the girls' success at the competition. "I like the Secret Service guys," Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher said, "but they aren't that hot with a rifle.

"I've told Michelle and Sherri that if I'm ever in a hostage situation and a sniper is called for, I want one of you girls to take the shot."

The first female sniper in the U.S. military, 19-year old Jennifer Donaldson, completed the program in 2001. Being in the Air Force, where snipers are considered security rather than combat troops, women are thus allowed to participate:

Donaldson was eligible to attend the school because women belong to Air Guard and Air Force security forces, Dolan explained.

That is not the case in the Army and the Marines because snipers are part of those infantry forces, and women can't be in the infantry. Dolan, however, maintains that more women should be trained as snipers.

"Frankly, women are better suited mentally for this job than most men," said Dolan who has learned the sniper craft from the Marines and from the Army and who saw duty as a Marine sniper 10 years ago during the Persian Gulf War.

"A woman is best suited to counter a woman sniper," he added. "That's important because over 50 percent of the countries that have been considered hostile to the United States, including North Vietnam and North Korea, have used women snipers.

"Women can shoot better, by and large, and they're easier to train because they don't have the inflated egos that a lot of men bring to these programs," Dolan said. "Women will ask for help if they need it, and they will tell you what they think."

Dolan has designed the counter-sniper program for Air Guard security people, and he has no reservations about training women who can handle the 15-hour days of running and shooting and camouflage lessons in the woods.

The students had to complete a two-day and night field training exercise at the Arkansas National Guard's Fort Chaffee before they graduated.

"The same standards apply to men and women," Dolan insisted.

I don't know, maybe I just like women with big guns.