Owensboro, Ky lies on the southern bank of the Ohio River and while it may be the third largest city in Kentucky, it still maintains that small-town quality, making it an ideal place to host a Friends of NRA banquet. But this news is not new, as Owensboro is home to the Big Rivers Friends of NRA, a High Caliber committee which just celebrated their 17th Annual Friends of NRA banquet and has gained a reputation throughout the years for boasting the largest attendance and highest net profit in the state.
To produce a successful banquet year-in and year-out, a committee needs good motivators, and with the chairman of the Big Rivers committee, Scott Smith, and the Co-Chairman Dennis Duke keeping the team working hard with pre-event activities like an annual pistol shoot, they’ve got all the motivation they need.
The idea for a pistol shoot to benefit Friends of NRA came five years ago when a couple of committee volunteers decided to approach the Owensboro Rifle & Pistol Club where they were members about doing a pre-event fundraiser to benefit The NRA Foundation. Since then, the Big Rivers Friends of NRA have worked closely with the Owensboro Rifle & Pistol Club to host an Annual International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) benefit match each year.
Working hand-in-hand with Big Rivers Friends of NRA every year has brought the Owensboro Rifle & Pistol Club at the center of the Friends of NRA community. And so when they needed to raise money for range improvements, it was no surprise the club turned to The NRA Foundation for a grant.
“For some time we didn’t have anybody in our area applying for grants and the Owensboro Rifle and Pistol Club was helping us raise money long before we even convinced them to apply for a grant,” said Smith. “It is very important for any area to have a place where anyone has the opportunity to really learn about the shooting sports and shooting safety and not just about how they see guns used on TV. There are a lot of people who don’t have those chances to
learn how a gun is supposed to be used and with the grants, the Owensboro Rifle and Pistol Club is able to extend those opportunities to more people in the community.”
With a grant received by the Hancock County 4-H Organization from The NRA Foundation, the club was able to build two new shooting bays and a range shelter building with a canopy. The club was also able to provide space to build an archery range, where participants like Jon Payne, a five-year veteran of the Big Rivers Friends of NRA committee who helped construct the range, could work toward his Gold Award in 4-H – the first person in Hancock County to ever receive the prestigious award.
Local businesses in Hancock County also helped with additional supplies for construction. “Takes a team effort, not just one person to make an event happen,” said Smith. “The great thing is that anyone can get involved or participate. If you have Friends of NRA in your community, you have something you can offer them. Nobody should hesitate to get involved.”
And community is what Friends of NRA banquets and NRA Foundation grants are really all about, Smith expressed. “It starts out with a community effort and getting a lot of people involved,” Smith said. “We have many different individuals interested in keeping the heritage and tradition of shooting sports going through the next generation and they’ve been instrumental in making the banquet happen and getting grants in our community.”
And when the entire community gets involved, it brings the tradition of shooting sports full circle. From the community who supports the banquets and the money they raise, to the grants made possible and the people who benefit from them, and back to the community who grows because of them – the continued community support of The NRA Foundation is able to sustain the cycle of carrying on the shooting sports.
