Et In Arcadia Ego

The Harvard Shooting Club has been reestablished

By Michael W. McLean

Founded in 1883, the Harvard Shooting Club (HSC) is one of Harvard’s oldest student organizations. Though it was disbanded in 2003, the club is back on campus after a six-year hiatus and has attracted a surprising level of interest among students.

The idea of reestablishing the club became a reality in September when the Harvard Law School Target Shooting Club invited a group of undergraduates to an event at the Minuteman Shooting Club in Burlington, Massachusetts, the largest gun club in New England. Shortly after that fateful day, undergraduates Andrew Badger ’10-’12 and Tian Wang ’11-’12 organized the effort with the help of Professor Stephen Rosen, the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs, who will serve as the faculty advisor.

On Sunday, October 25, the club embarked on its first official outing. Over seventy undergraduates responded to the club’s advertising, and 43 attended the event at the Minuteman Club. Members were briefed about gun safety and firing technique before heading onto the range to give the guns a try themselves.

Sunday’s event was trap shooting with twelve-gauge shotguns, the object of which is to shatter a flying orange clay disk, called a pigeon, which is launched by a machine at various angles from the marksman. Scores are based on how many clay pigeons the marksman hits out of a round of 25.

Until the 1950s, the Harvard Shooting Club participated in intercollegiate competition, which Co-President Andrew Badger intends to restart in the spring. Specifically, the HSC hopes to take part in a tentatively planned New England college shooting tournament hosted by the Minuteman Club to take place this spring.

Though guns are a serious matter, the Shooting Club is not without humor. In the original constitution of the club, the founding fathers of the HSC were astute in describing the two biggest threats to the club’s existence, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Harvard College:

“In the occurrence that the Harvard Shooting Club remains inactive for three or more years, any Harvard Shooting Club Alumni Officer may assume possession of any or all files, residual moneys, guns or other possessions of the Harvard Shooting Club. This provision is made expressly for the purpose of continuing the shooting sports should a strict gun control climate or official University discouragement temporarily set back the noble purposes of this club.”

After laughing about the wisdom of this provision, the current club officers realized there may still be a cache of guns and funds somewhere in the possession of a former HSC stalwart. The hunt for said cache has begun in earnest.

When the men of the Harvard Shooting Club posed for the club’s annual photograph on the steps of Sever Hall in 1889, they never could have imaged Harvard and the world as they exist today. Despite the best efforts of gun control advocates in liberal New England, a common interest in shooting sports has brought a reinvigorated Harvard Shooting Club back to campus 120 years after that photo was taken, linking a part of Harvard’s glorious past with its politically correct present.

Any undergraduates with or without shooting experience who are interested in joining the Harvard Shooting Club should contact Andrew Badger (harvardbadge2@gmail.com) or Tian Wang (tianwang2011@gmail.com) for more information.

Michael W. McLean is the vice president of the Harvard Shooting Club.