How safe is three-position air rifle shooting?

February 24, 2026

Civilian Marksmanship Program▸Youth 3 PAR▸How safe is three-position air rifle shooting?

Air rifle target shooting is almost certainly the safest of all youth sports! To verify this statement, we must examine the overall safety record of supervised air rifle target shooting. There were six known injury-causing incidents among all National Council programs during the 11-year period from 2004 through 2014. Injuries in high school and college sports are calculated according to injuries per athlete-exposure (A-E). Each practice or game counts as one A-E. In a recent study, boys’ football had the highest injury rate with 4.36 injuries per 1000 A-Es. Girls’ softball had the lowest with 1.13 injuries per 1000 A-Es. If school age air rifle shooting had six injuries during this period, and using an extremely conservative calculation of air rifle practice and competition A-Es during that same period, the air rifle injury rate was <0.0017 injuries per 1000 A-Es. This should be convincing evidence that position air rifle shooting is the safest sport now practiced by school age youth.