How A Gun Hating Family Produced An Olympic Shooter

An amazingly balanced, incredibly fair piece from the Boston Globe. No, I'm not kidding . . . the paper of record in Beantown!

Here are some snippets regarding young Mr. Scherer from the full story:

"Stephen Scherer fired his final shot at the Olympic trials in March, lowered his rifle, and smiled. There was no fist pumping, no chest thumping when he won the 10-meter air rifle competition and a berth on the US Olympic team bound for Beijing. Just a shy, slightly self-conscious smile. It was the first and only emotion Scherer showed during three pressure-packed days in Colorado Springs. He was as composed in victory as he had been throughout the best shooting performance of his life. Or perhaps he was in shock. Scherer had had no expectation of making the Olympic team, not as a 19-year-old with a lot still to learn about the sport. He figured the Olympic trials would offer good preparation for representing West Point - where he is going to be a sophomore - at the NCAA riflery championships a couple of weeks later.

"Not bad for a teenager from Billerica who professes a love of all things Army and his admiration for Jimi Hendrix in the same breath. And whose mother didn't even want him to have a squirt gun as a boy."

Very cool! BTW, his younger sister, Sarah, narrowly missed a spot on the Olympic air rifle team.

As far as this coming out of the Globe, one key difference from most firearms news reporting may be that it was a staff sports writer who penned the piece, rather than some general assignment newsie, a specialist in nothing, looking to impress the editors and publication ownership with their lack of knowledge of guns.

h/t to David Hardy