Grey Mountain shooting range in Whitehorse, Yukon, was the site for the longest running international shooting competition, known simply as “The Shoot”.  It’s an annual shooting competition between the RCMP and Alaska State Police has been running for 50 years.

Pretty impressive by any standards.

According to the Alaska Department of Public Safety press release, The Shoot was created shortly after Alaska became a state in 1959.  Then-Inspector Joe Vachon wanted to find a way to help State Troopers and RCMP members to get to know each other, and to increase cooperation between the two law enforcement agencies.

What better way than a shooting competition?  Sounds perfect to me!

The 50th Anniversary of “The Shoot” was celebrated on Friday, Aug. 13th, with the RCMP attendees dressed in their Red Serge and Alaska State Troopers in their blue tunics.  RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliot even attended to celebrate and watch some of the competition.

For The Shoot, one of the competitions has each force’s competitors trade guns.  RCMP shoots with the AST’s standard issue 9mm Smith and Wesson, and the Alaska State Troopers shoot the RCMP’s Glocks.

That actually sounds like fun.  The practice apparently dates back to a case, date unspecified, where the RCMP and AST were chasing a suspect who crossed into Canada.  The RCMP wouldn’t let the Troopers bring their own guns, instead making them use RCMP-issue handguns.

Now that sounds like typical bureaucratic garbage… one of the weird side-effects of Canada’s gun laws perhaps… but the inclusion of this cross-border gun trading in a shooting competition is just a fun (and good) idea.

Now I realize there isn’t a lot of good things being said about the RCMP these days.  I also realize they’ve earned every word of that bad press.

But I’ve got to say for myself, it’s nice to be able to write something positive about the RCMP for a change!