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U.S. champions in long-range target events
Prescott teen girls rank with world's best shots
Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic
Middleton Tompkins (left rear), also a champion shooter, is the family coach. His wife, Nancy, was the 1998 high-power rifle champion. Michelle (left front) and Sherri can outshoot most long-range snipers.
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By William Hermann
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 6, 2000
The scene: the 1999 national shooting championships at Camp Perry, Ohio.
The event: rifle targets at 1,000 yards, no telescopic sights.
The competitors: a crew of the nation's most deadly snipers from the Secret Service, the FBI, the Marines and elsewhere.
Oh, and Michelle and Sherri, two teenage girls from Prescott.
Guess who won.
Nor was last summer's victory a rare event for Michelle Gallagher, 18, and sister Sherri, 16. In fact, they know few people better with a rifle than they.
One happens to be their mother, Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher, 40, who won the national high-power rifle championship in 1998.
The other is their stepfather, Middleton Tompkins, 62, who's been champion six times.
Their mother wasn't at all surprised at the girls' success.
"I like the Secret Service guys," Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher said, "but they aren't that hot with a rifle.
"I've told Michelle and Sherri that if I'm ever in a hostage situation and a sniper is called for, I want one of you girls to take the shot."
Calling the Tompkins-Gallagher family "respected" in the highly competitive community of champion shooters is a bit like calling Bill Gates "well-off."
"The fact is, the Tompkins family has almost supernatural shooting ability," said Jim Smith of Glendale, a "master" level rifle competitor. "They've won hundreds of trophies and are among the best marksmen in the world."
Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic
Sherri Tompkins, 16, checks with her scorer Saturday after a round at the Ben Avery Shooting Range in Phoenix. The champion long-range shooter keeps a teddy bear nearby during competitions.
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The family is also famous for a less exotic trait: being really nice people.
"They are about as decent a group of people as you could find," said firearms designer Scott Medesha of Mesa.
Which may be no accident. In fact, the Tompkins family serves as compelling evidence that dedicated, expert shooters need be neither gun-crazy nor obsessed with the Second Amendment -- and certainly not macho.
Gallagher-Tompkins posits a definite link between phenomenal marksmanship and "living a proper, decent life."
"You find that most champion shooters are pretty collected, temperate people who know who they are," she said.
"A sense of inner calm and poise is important not only to holding the rifle steady, but to doing the mental work necessary to completing a perfect shot.
"There's no room for inner turmoil."
Not that these are bionic people. Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher smiles readily and likes to laugh. Michelle and Sherri giggle, joke, and talk about boys, friends, clothes and other common teenage topics.
But at the firing line, something changes.
"It's all about concentration," Tompkins-Gallagher said, recalling how she had to go through with a match on the day a beloved grandmother died.
"But on that day, like every other day, when I walked to the shooting line I put everything else out of my mind," she said.
"I believe I won that match."
A shooter aiming at a target 1,000 yards away sees a circle about the size of a car tire with the bull's-eye as the hubcap. And the rifle barrel must be aimed so that the bullet would fly 30 feet above the target if it didn't drop.
But a bullet does drop -- and winds can blow it as much as 40 feet to either side of the target.
"Judging the wind, adjusting your sights for the wind, may be the hardest thing," said Michelle, who like her sister is a straight-A student.
In fact, there might be six different winds between shooter and target, each pushing the bullet around.
"So you watch the wind flags blowing, and you watch the mirage moving around," Michelle said. "And you make a judgment and hope it's right."
Tompkins-Gallagher said that she didn't push her daughters into shooting and that they both have numerous other interests as well. Their ability, she said, stems primarily from remarkable powers of concentration.
And that, she added, "is because they are balanced and happy people to begin with."
Middleton Tompkins, meanwhile, is known as something of a maverick in the firearms community because he's willing to criticize the National Rifle Association.
Tompkins strongly defends Americans' right to own and use firearms. But he feels the NRA and the firearms industry "have done a disservice to shooters and maybe to the country."
"When the hunters and target shooters who'd controlled (the NRA) for years got run out by some people who were obsessed with the Second Amendment thing, we got into trouble."
Tompkins is especially concerned over the import of millions of cheap military rifles.
"Those rifles are good for only two things: killing people and breaking rocks," he said. "Bringing those cheap rifles in hurt us badly. The NRA should have fought it and they didn't."
As a result, he said, "reasonable people who participate in the shooting sports and in hunting get lumped in with some fanatics."
Gallagher-Tompkins agreed.
"I think most people who own firearms are like us, and no danger to anyone."
Except, perhaps, to some egos at the Secret Service.
***
Reach the reporter at William.Hermann@Arizona Republic.com or at (602) 444-8057.
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U.S. champions in long-range target events
Prescott teen girls rank with world's best shots
Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic
Middleton Tompkins (left rear), also a champion shooter, is the family coach. His wife, Nancy, was the 1998 high-power rifle champion. Michelle (left front) and Sherri can outshoot most long-range snipers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By William Hermann
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 6, 2000
The scene: the 1999 national shooting championships at Camp Perry, Ohio.
The event: rifle targets at 1,000 yards, no telescopic sights.
The competitors: a crew of the nation's most deadly snipers from the Secret Service, the FBI, the Marines and elsewhere.
Oh, and Michelle and Sherri, two teenage girls from Prescott.
Guess who won.
Nor was last summer's victory a rare event for Michelle Gallagher, 18, and sister Sherri, 16. In fact, they know few people better with a rifle than they.
One happens to be their mother, Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher, 40, who won the national high-power rifle championship in 1998.
The other is their stepfather, Middleton Tompkins, 62, who's been champion six times.
Their mother wasn't at all surprised at the girls' success.
"I like the Secret Service guys," Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher said, "but they aren't that hot with a rifle.
"I've told Michelle and Sherri that if I'm ever in a hostage situation and a sniper is called for, I want one of you girls to take the shot."
Calling the Tompkins-Gallagher family "respected" in the highly competitive community of champion shooters is a bit like calling Bill Gates "well-off."
"The fact is, the Tompkins family has almost supernatural shooting ability," said Jim Smith of Glendale, a "master" level rifle competitor. "They've won hundreds of trophies and are among the best marksmen in the world."
Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic
Sherri Tompkins, 16, checks with her scorer Saturday after a round at the Ben Avery Shooting Range in Phoenix. The champion long-range shooter keeps a teddy bear nearby during competitions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The family is also famous for a less exotic trait: being really nice people.
"They are about as decent a group of people as you could find," said firearms designer Scott Medesha of Mesa.
Which may be no accident. In fact, the Tompkins family serves as compelling evidence that dedicated, expert shooters need be neither gun-crazy nor obsessed with the Second Amendment -- and certainly not macho.
Gallagher-Tompkins posits a definite link between phenomenal marksmanship and "living a proper, decent life."
"You find that most champion shooters are pretty collected, temperate people who know who they are," she said.
"A sense of inner calm and poise is important not only to holding the rifle steady, but to doing the mental work necessary to completing a perfect shot.
"There's no room for inner turmoil."
Not that these are bionic people. Nancy Tompkins-Gallagher smiles readily and likes to laugh. Michelle and Sherri giggle, joke, and talk about boys, friends, clothes and other common teenage topics.
But at the firing line, something changes.
"It's all about concentration," Tompkins-Gallagher said, recalling how she had to go through with a match on the day a beloved grandmother died.
"But on that day, like every other day, when I walked to the shooting line I put everything else out of my mind," she said.
"I believe I won that match."
A shooter aiming at a target 1,000 yards away sees a circle about the size of a car tire with the bull's-eye as the hubcap. And the rifle barrel must be aimed so that the bullet would fly 30 feet above the target if it didn't drop.
But a bullet does drop -- and winds can blow it as much as 40 feet to either side of the target.
"Judging the wind, adjusting your sights for the wind, may be the hardest thing," said Michelle, who like her sister is a straight-A student.
In fact, there might be six different winds between shooter and target, each pushing the bullet around.
"So you watch the wind flags blowing, and you watch the mirage moving around," Michelle said. "And you make a judgment and hope it's right."
Tompkins-Gallagher said that she didn't push her daughters into shooting and that they both have numerous other interests as well. Their ability, she said, stems primarily from remarkable powers of concentration.
And that, she added, "is because they are balanced and happy people to begin with."
Middleton Tompkins, meanwhile, is known as something of a maverick in the firearms community because he's willing to criticize the National Rifle Association.
Tompkins strongly defends Americans' right to own and use firearms. But he feels the NRA and the firearms industry "have done a disservice to shooters and maybe to the country."
"When the hunters and target shooters who'd controlled (the NRA) for years got run out by some people who were obsessed with the Second Amendment thing, we got into trouble."
Tompkins is especially concerned over the import of millions of cheap military rifles.
"Those rifles are good for only two things: killing people and breaking rocks," he said. "Bringing those cheap rifles in hurt us badly. The NRA should have fought it and they didn't."
As a result, he said, "reasonable people who participate in the shooting sports and in hunting get lumped in with some fanatics."
Gallagher-Tompkins agreed.
"I think most people who own firearms are like us, and no danger to anyone."
Except, perhaps, to some egos at the Secret Service.
***
Reach the reporter at William.Hermann@Arizona Republic.com or at (602) 444-8057.
BACK TO TOP
COMMUNITY | AP's THE WIRE
BUSINESS | CARS | COMPUTING
CLASSIFIEDS | REAL ESTATE | JOBS | MEET YOUR MATCH
ENTERTAINMENT | SPORTS | TRAVEL | E-MAIL | FORUMS | HOME
Copyright 2000, Arizona Central
Search The Republic's Archives | Subscribe to The Republic
Contact us
