Tweed-wearing shotgun enthusiast Mike Yardley – once seen as a public spokesman for the sport of shooting – has launched a bizarre attack against his fellow shooters, labelling them “selfish and weird.”

In a series of increasingly erratic comments posted to his Facebook page, Yardley attacked shooters who have “some odd need to dress up and pretend they are in the SAS.”

“Get this,” he ranted. “Most people in the UK shooting community, let alone the UK general public, think this is entirely unacceptable. What you promote is selfish and weird and will damage shooting.”

UK Shooting News points out the 150 or so people who shot in the NRA Civilian Service Rifle matches (~110 individual competitors, plus entrants to the Falling Plates match) last week, and also highlights this most excellent photo album from the NRA’s media team.

“I do think certain modern weapon types should be more strictly regulated compared to traditional types because of their potential,” Yardley continued in a later post to his Facebook page, attempting to justify his outbursts.

The UKSN view

Yardley’s views are outdated, arguably bigoted and certainly not representative of the modern shooting sports. He may well be happy to pretend he lives in 1850, playing at being the Great White Hunter, but the great danger to the rest of us is that Yardley would forcibly drag us back to those times by advocating new restrictions on the shooting sports rather than accept the world has moved on.

UKSN supports those shooters who have written to UK shooting magazines calling for any existing relationships with Yardley to be ended immediately.