Category: A Victory!
Vincent Hancock, right, celebrates a gold, and Conner Prince, left, the silver for Men’s Skeet in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. USA Shooting photoIt’s a wrap for the shooting events at the 2024 Paris Olympics and the world saw phenomenal shooting with five new Olympic records set in 14 different medal events and 42 medals up for grabs. China showed they are currently the ones to beat winning the most shooting medals in Paris with 10 including five gold, two silver and three bronze.
The USA (one gold, three silver, one bronze) and Korea (two gold, three silver) were next with five medals each and Italy followed suit with four medals (one gold, two silver, one bronze). India, Switzerland and Guatemala each joined the countries earning more than one medal with two apiece.
The USA saw veteran skeet shooter, Vincent Hancock, become one of only six competitors in Olympic history to win four gold medals in the same event. He joins Al Oerter (USA, discus), Paul Elvstrom (Denmark, sailing one-person class), Carl Lewis (USA, long jump), Michael Phelps (USA, 200m individual medley), and Mijain Lopez (Cuba, Greco-Roman heavyweight) to accomplish the feat and is the first Olympic shooter to do so. He won gold medals in 2008 in Beijing, in 2012 in London, in 2020 in Tokyo and now in 2024 in Paris. He also won a silver medal for his participation and finish in the Skeet Mixed Team competition.
USA Shooting Olympic Highlights
Here are more USA Shooting highlights from Paris:
- Sagen Maddalena, earned the first medal for USA in the 2024 Olympics when she won a silver medal in the Women’s 50m Smallbore Rifle. Maddalena, from Groveland, California, is a sergeant in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit and a University of Alaska Fairbanks alumna. She previously competed in Tokyo 2020, placing fifth.
- Conner Prince from Burleson, Texas, made his Olympic debut in Paris 2024 where he won silver in Men’s Skeet finishing right behind Hancock. Besides being his first Olympic medal in his first Olympics, it also marked the first time the USA secured more than one medal in Men’s Skeet at an Olympic Games. Prince’s performance, which included tying the Olympic qualification record, was a significant achievement.
- Austen Smith from Keller, Texas, is a University of Texas at Arlington student and a seasoned international shooter with over 20 medals. She made her Olympic debut in Tokyo 2020, finishing 10th. She won bronze in Women’s Skeet in Paris this year for her first Olympic medal and followed it up with a silver while paired up with Hancock competing in the Skeet Mixed Team event.
Olympic Shooting Went Viral
Olympic shooters in 2024 also became brief internet sensations with their style and approach to their games with Korean shooter, Kim Yeji, 31, landing attention for the aura of cool she projected when competing and winning a silver in the 10m Air Pistol event. While Turkish shooter, Yusef Dikec, rolling in with regular looking glasses, a white Turkish t-shirt, no muffs, gray hair and just hanging back with one hand in his pocket and the other driving tacks from his air pistol, looked more like a guy who got disturbed from reading a book and asked if he wanted to compete in a shooting event. Dikec, 51, a former officer in the Turkish Gendarmerie, won a silver along with Sevval Ilayda Tarhan in the Mixed Team 10m Air Pistol. But not until after he had already been featured in countless memes and videos on X, Instagram and YouTube. He has competed in every Olympics since 2008.
Olympic Shooting Records Broken and Tied
Five Olympic shooting records were broken and two were tied during the games as well, as reported by the Associated Press:
- Chiara Leone of Switzerland scored a 464.4 in the women’s 50m Rifle 3 Position final, breaking the Olympic record of 463.9 set by fellow Swiss shooter Nina Christen at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
- Adriana Ruano of Guatemala hit 45 of 50 targets in women’s Trap to break the Olympic record of 43 set by Rehak Stefecekova of Slovakia at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
- Nathan Hales of Britain scored a 48 in men’s Trap, breaking the Olympic record of 43 set by Jiri Liptak and David Kosteleck at the Tokyo Games in 2021, during the gold medal round.
- Sheng Lihao of China scored 252 in men’s 10m Air Rifle, breaking the Olympic record of 251.6 set by William Shaner of the United States at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
- Ban Hyojin of South Korea and Huang Yuting of China each scored a 251.8 in women’s Team 10m Air Rifle to tie the Olympic record set by China’s Yang Qian at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
- Yusef Dikec and Ilayda Tarhan of Turkey scored a 582 in Mixed Team 10m Air Pistol to tie the Olympic record set by India’s Manu Bhaker and Chaudhary Saurabh at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
- Oh Ye Jin of South Korea scored a 243.2 in women’s 10m Air Pistol, breaking the Olympic record of 240.3 set by Vitalina Batsarashkina of the Russian Olympic Committee at the Tokyo Games in 2021. Roommate Kim Yeji also surpassed the previous mark with her score of 241.3 and won the silver medal in that event.
Complete Olympic Shooting Results
Following is a complete rundown of the 2024 Paris Olympic shooting events and medal winners:
10m Air Rifle Mixed Team
Gold: China
Silver: Korea
Bronze: Kazakhstan
10m Air Pistol Men
Gold: China – Xie Yu
Silver: Italy – Federico Nilo Maldini
Bronze: Italy – Paolo Monna
10m Air Pistol Women
Gold: Korea – Oh Ye Jin
Silver: Korea – Kim Yeji
Bronze: India – Manu Bhaker
10m Air Rifle Women
Gold: Korea – Ban Hyojin
Silver: China – Huang Yuting
Bronze: Switzerland – Audrey Gogniat
10m Air Rifle Men
Gold: China – Sheng Lihao
Silver: Sweden – Victor Lindgren
Bronze: Croatia – Miran Maricic
Trap Men
Gold: Great Britain – Nathan Hales
Silver: China – Qi Ying
Bronze: Guatemala – Jean Pierre Brol Cardenas
Trap Women
Gold: Guatemala – Adriana Ruano Oliva
Silver: Italy – Silvana Maria Stanco
Bronze: Australia – Penny Smith
50m Rifle 3 Position Men
Gold: China – Liu Yukun
Silver: Ukraine – Serhiy Kulish
Bronze: India – Swapnil Kusale
50m Rifle 3 Position Women
Gold: Switzerland – Chiara Leone
Silver: USA – Sagen Maddalena (first medal for U.S. Shooting at the Olympics)
Bronze: China – Zhang Qiongyue
25m Pistol Women
Gold: Korea – Yang Jiin
Silver: France – Camille Jedrzejewski
Bronze: Hungary – Veronika Major
Skeet Men
Gold: USA – Vincent Hancock (first shooting gold medal and record set)
Silver: USA – Connor Prince (Prince’s first medal)
Bronze: Taipei – Lee Meng Yuan
Skeet Women
Gold: Chile – Francisca Crovetto Chadid
Silver: Great Britain – Amber Jo Rutter
Bronze: USA – Austen Smith
25M Rapid Fire Pistol Men
Gold: China – Li Yuehong
Silver: Korea – Cho Yeongjae
Bronze: China – Wang Xinjie
Skeet Mixed Team
Gold: Italy
Silver: USA (Vincent Hancock & Austin Jewell Smith
Bronze: China
Absent from Competition
An obvious absence among the medal winners is Russia , always a nemesis in the Olympics for the USA, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia was banned, along with Belarus, from this year’s games by the IOC for their country’s involvement in the war in Ukraine. Their athletes can still technically compete as Individual Neutral Athletes, but not under their nation’s flags.
Correction: The winner of the Women’s Skeet medal event was incorrectly identified and should be from Chile, not China. China also won 10 medals, not 11 and only five gold, not six. Russian and Belarus was banned from competition, not their athletes. Athletes can still compete as Individual Neutral Athletes without a country as their designation. This story updated Aug. 5 at 11:17 EST.
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Some good news for us!
Gov. Janet Mills’s office referred critical social media posts to the police. The FPC pushed back.
Talk about your thin-skinned politicians! Apparently, it doesn’t take much more than an insult from critics these days to get the governor of Maine to scream for the police.
Since When Is Criticism a Crime?
Back in December, during an interview with a local NBC affiliate about blunders by official in the lead-up to the Lewiston mass shooting, Maine Gov. Janet Mills left the door open to tighter gun restrictions, including a ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
That segment was picked up and publicized by The Maine Wire, a conservative-leaning news site. That outlet’s post, in turn, drew a pungent comment from the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), a pugnacious self-defense rights group that pulls no punches when it comes to defending individual liberty. So, of course the governor’s office went crying to the cops.
The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is for you.
“Documents obtained by the Maine Wire via a Freedom of Access Act show that Gov. Janet Mills’ personnel referred social media posts from the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Maine Wire to the State Police, flagging them for the governor’s Executive Protection Unit,” The Maine Wire‘s Steve Robinson reported last week.
The posts in question were entirely unthreatening, except perhaps to sensitive feelings. The Maine Wire added nothing to the video clip except for a short summary of the content: “Governor Mills is leaving the door open for a possible assault weapons ban following the Lewiston shooting.”
The FPC was, characteristically, a little sharper: “Hey @GovJanetMills, Three words: Fuck you. No.”
That’s short, to the point, and perhaps a bit sharp, but it implies no threats whatsoever.
Nevertheless, The Maine Wire found emails showing that Mills’ press secretary passed a link to the post around the office, and that “another staffer immediately forwarded the post to the Maine State Police employee responsible for protecting the governor.”
According to Robinson, this isn’t the first time officials in the Democrat-led state government have tried to get the outlet in legal hot water. Emails revealed the office of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows questioning if an article illustration depicting a stylized presidential ballot featuring only the Joe Biden–Kamala Harris ticket qualified as a “fake ballot” since it showed the state seal. This happened after Bellows tried to boot Republican Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot.
Part of a Pattern of Weaponized Law
The Maine spat is part of a flurry of cases across the country involving government officials attempting to misuse the legal system and regulatory power to punish political opponents. While not as high-profile or as high-stakes, it’s reminiscent of NRA v. Vullo, a case recently given new life by the U.S. Supreme Court, in which Maria Vullo, the former head of New York’s Department of Financial Services, very clearly used the power of her office over banks and insurance companies to twist their arms until they denied services to the National Rifle Association.
“Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ against a third party ‘to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment,” Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote for the court in the unanimous opinion. “Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”
Such coercion came in the form of the abuse of regulatory power over financial institutions in the Vullo case. But it can come as old-school referrals to the police of anybody who criticizes government officials and their policies. Anything like that violates free speech rights.
The Firearms Policy Coalition Fights Back
“The disdain for natural rights by government officials like Maine Governor Mills and Secretary of State Bellows bolsters our commitment to our mission to render them irrelevant,” the FPC responded to the dust-up over the X post referral.
In a July 18 letter to Mills and Bellows, FPC President Brandon Combs vowed, “we take First Amendment-protected rights just as seriously as we do others.”
“You must surely be aware that our X post responding to Governor Mills’s discussion of an immoral ban on protected arms is clearly protected speech as there is absolutely no uncertainty about the law regarding this form of speech. If not, some education is in order,” the letter continued. “Naked authoritarianism, such as efforts to chill free speech, is not acceptable to FPC and our members. We strongly encourage you to learn more about protected speech and arms.”
For what it’s worth, the first letter of each line of the letter, read vertically, spells: “Fuck You No.”
The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
The state police commissioner was copied on the letter. That seems a handy shortcut given the propensity of the governor’s office to share mean messages with the cops. It cuts out the middleman and ensures police get a timely heads-up about sharply worded criticism of government officials.
A Practice That Needs To Stop
The weaponization of law, the courts, regulatory agencies, and tax collectors is despicable, but nothing new. The IRS has been used by presidents at least as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt to torment political enemies. Operation Chokepoint put federal regulatory pressure on banks to cut off access to financial services for legal but politically disfavored industries. The practice is extralegal and destructive of whatever remains of respect for government. It’s also becoming increasingly common.
When abusing the power of the state to punish critics becomes the norm, it erases the line between people who have committed actual criminal acts, and those who have just pissed off the powerful. That’s what lands us at the point when the office of a state governor refers insulting social media posts for the state police to do something about.
We’ll discover the hard way what that something is, unless those on the receiving end push back the way the FPC did. That means mocking thin-skinned government officials, calling them out publicly, and taking them to court. Intolerant officials want to hurt their critics with powers that were never meant to be used that way. That can only be discouraged if such abuses come with high costs of their own.