Minister for Sport, Gerry Sutcliffe MP was guest of honour at a shooting demonstration hosted by the British Shooting Sports Council (BSSC) at the National Shooting Centre, Bisley, Surrey to launch National Shooting Week 2008.

National Shooting Week, which will run from Saturday 3 – Sunday 11 May, aims to make people of all ages across the UK aware of the importance of target shooting as a sport and to provide opportunities to try it out for themselves. Shooting bills itself as one of the most inclusive Olympic and Paralympic sports, where gender, age and disability are no barriers to success. According to Gerry Sutcliffe MP, Minister for Sport, “National Shooting Week is an opportunity for the sport to show itself to the wider community in the UK about how good it is for everybody to take part. With the UK teams doing so well winning medals in so many competitions right across the world shooting is high on our list of sports we want to support. So National Shooting Week gives an opportunity for all the misconceptions about shooting to be put to one side but it also gives people an opportunity to understand that this is a sport that can be for everybody."

Over the course of National Shooting Week some 200 open days will take place at shooting clubs and grounds in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, giving newcomers to the sport the chance to try shooting for the first time in a safe and friendly environment. Media coverage of the growth in gun crime and illegal guns has sometimes overshadowed the fact that shooting is an Olympic sport at which the UK excels, at the 2006 Commonwealth Games shooting accounted for 23 of the UK’s 116 medals and a crack team will travel to Beijing this summer. With London 2012 ahead, the government backed initiative aims to discover and recruit new talent, as organiser Rob Gray explains: “We’re hoping that one or two future Olympic stars will take their first ever shots during National Shooting Week”.

Beginners who fancy taking their first shot can find out where their nearest shooting event is by entering their post code at www.nationalshootingweek.co.uk.