Shooting Merit Updates

February 20, 2020

Some time ago our National Shooting Sports Program (NSSP) leadership team was tasked with reviewing and updating all Royal Rangers shooting merits to ensure their compliance with current shooting safety practices. They were also given the objective to reduce the number of prerequisite merits that must be completed in order to earn certain merits and to separate air gun safety instruction from firearm safety instruction, enabling boys to begin shooting air guns more quickly. This process of revision has now been completed, and all related merits have now been released via TRaCclub.

The most significant aspect of this update is the development of the Air Gun Safety merit as a replacement for the Firearm Safety merit. Air Gun Safety now serves as the prerequisite to all air gun merits, specifically the BB Gun merits (blue and green) and the Air Rifle merits (green and silver). Marksmanship is now an additional prerequisite to the green BB Gun and silver Air Rifle merits only, and Advanced Marksmanship has been discontinued.

While firearm safety is an essential topic to prepare boys to safely shoot firearms, it is believed that all firearm safety content is already covered in the “safety” merits for each firearm category—Black Powder Safety, Shotgun Safety, and Smallbore Safety. It is, therefore, not necessary that this content be taught as a separate merit, so the Firearm Safety merit has been discontinued.

In total, this update effects the following skill merits:

1. BB Gun (blue)
2. BB Gun (green)
3. Air Rifle (green)
4. Air Rifle (silver)
5. Black Powder Safety (formerly “Black Powder”)
6. Black Powder Shooting
7. Smallbore Safety
8. Smallbore Shooting
9. Shotgun Safety
10. Shotgun Shooting
11. Marksmanship
12. Air Gun Safety (blue) – new merit
13. Advanced Marksmanship - discontinued
14. Firearm Safety - discontinued

We believe these updates provide a better process with fewer prerequisites and more streamlined content for boys seeking to shoot a variety of firearms and for those seeking to shoot only air guns.