Transcript

Travis Bader: [00:00:00] I’m Travis Bader and this is The Silvercore Podcast. Join me as I discuss matters related to hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits with the people in businesses that comprise of the community. If you’re new to Silvercore, be sure to check out our website, www.Silvercore.ca where you can learn more about courses, services, and products we offer. As well as how you can join The Silvercore Club, which includes 10 million in North America wide liability insurance to ensure you are properly covered during your outdoor adventures.

[00:00:43] In this episode, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Murray Gardner, a highly influential figure in the firearms training industry and one of the cofounders responsible for bringing the International Practical Shooting Confederation into Canada.

[00:01:00] Travis here with The Silvercore Podcast. I’m sitting down with a nine time International Practical Shooting Confederation champion. He’s the first person to ever win eight times in a row from 1978 to 1985, he’s a firearms instructor, a safety consultant. If you’ve ever done your firearm safety course and watched any of the videos, you’ve probably seen this gentleman. Welcome Murray Gardner. 

Murray Gardner: [00:01:21] Hey Travis. 

Travis Bader: [00:01:22] So Murray, I want to talk to you a little bit about IPSC, the International Practical Shooting Confederation, your time teaching in the sport, being a firearms instructor, a little bit about your journey throughout this. So can you tell me what got you into the shooting sports in general?

Murray Gardner: [00:01:39] A white milk truck. 

Travis Bader: [00:01:41] Go on. 

Murray Gardner: [00:01:43] I was building custom motorcycles. I had probably one of the largest chopper shops in Western Canada, or Canada for that fact, importing from California and building custom bikes, and I was out tooling around one morning on a Saturday at 25th and Knight headed towards Kingsway, where my shop was. I stopped, left it in gear of course, watch the rear view mirror and make sure nobody’s gonna hit me from behind. Car behind me stopped, put it in neutral and bam, a milk truck, brakes failed.

Travis Bader: [00:02:08] Ouch.

Murray Gardner: [00:02:08] Thought there was a spot open where I was, there wasn’t, knocked me down, just about broke my pelvis. All that worked was my right hand and a buddy had been talking to me about, oh let’s learn to shoot pistol Murray. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Well, now I had time. Went out and bought an Armenia’s 22 revolver, cheap version of a Python, I think it was 160 bucks. And then about five months and $4,000 worth of guns later. You have to remember my house was $45,000 at the time. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:35] This was quite an investment. 

Murray Gardner: [00:02:37] Yeah. Yeah. 10% of your house is what I spent in four months. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:39] You just jumped right into the deep end.

Murray Gardner: [00:02:41] Yeah. Go big or go home. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:42] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:02:43] Yeah. On and off my, two speeds. Yeah we had everything. We had double action this and single actions that and Smiths and 44’s and you know, everything. Anything nickel, it’s like a crow, if it was shiny, I bought it. And we started playing around and we came across something called Cooper on handguns, it’s the red book.

Travis Bader: [00:03:00] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:03:01] And it was this combat shooting, advanced combat shooting it was called. So Blair Wallsburry, where I went to his range, it was the old Duncan’s range, shooting trap down in Delta. And another guy named Rod Phillips, he was one of my motorcycle customers, also a gun junkie. We started doing these combat shoots out in the backwoods of Dunkin’s, and of course.

Travis Bader: [00:03:20] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:03:21] We couldn’t tell anybody we were doing it because we’re doing it and then Ken Rooney came along and joined us in about a 76. And we’ll give you the whole unreached digest version of this. 

Travis Bader: [00:03:32] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:03:33] In early October of 76, handguner a guns magazine came out and they talked about the Columbia Conference, may in Columbia, guy named Jeff Cooper put it together. Of course, Cooper’s the one who wrote the red book.

Travis Bader: [00:03:44] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:03:45] And they’d formed the IPSC of 16 countries, International Practical Shooting Confederation, IPSC. So I tried to track down Rick Miller, was the writer of the article and he wasn’t available, but  they said, get ahold of this Jeff Cooper guy, he’s got radio telephone at his ranch gun site in Arizona. If you think you have bad cell reception, try a radio telephone in 1976.

Travis Bader: [00:04:05] No kidding.

Murray Gardner: [00:04:06] Yeah. Couldn’t track him down. Tracked down Burn Estes, another guy in Texas and he said, Oh yeah, we’re having a Northwest championships in the week. 10 days. I went, wow northwest championships, I bet we’re going to be in Seattle 80 Bellingham would be great, even Tacoma. Then I said to him, where’s it located? It’s Northwest championships. He says it in Gridley, California. I said, where the hell is Gridley California. 55 miles North of Sacramento. I said, you think that’s the Northwest? You got a whole surprise called Oregon before you get to the Northwest called Washington state. 

 Travis Bader: [00:04:39] No kidding. 

Murray Gardner: [00:04:40] So I want to see the boys at practice, and I ask them questions in a very important sequence. First sequence was, Hey, you guys want to shoot one of the IPSC matches? Oh yeah, man, we got to do that. Okay, got them hooked. Second question when? 11 days from now. No problem, we can do that. And the question they should’ve asked first, where is it? Gridley, California. Where the hell is Gridley, California? 55 miles North of Sacramento. 

[00:05:06] Now we’ve got no internet, no Google, no maps. We’ve got a roadmap. How do we get to Gridley? I dunno, dig the map out. Okay, down I5. Rods van, we loaded Ronnie’s van up and we have no idea. We have pythons, we have 1911’s, we have about a thousand rounds of ammunition and the wheels are barely touching the ground as we drive down I5 in Rod’s loaded van.

Travis Bader: [00:05:27] No problem.

Murray Gardner: [00:05:29] Get to Gridley, look up guy named Keith Hamilton. We shoot 72 rounds, 16 hours one way. Drive home, get home at four in the morning, go to work, sorta. That was in October of 76, went back in November, shot the Hangtown hassle in Grass Valley, California with a guy named Walt Comstock and anybody who shoots IPSC knows something called Comstock count.

Travis Bader: [00:05:55] Yes.

Murray Gardner: [00:05:55] That’s Walt Comstock. I got to meet Walt Comstock. 

Travis Bader: [00:05:58] Very cool. 

Murray Gardner: [00:05:58] Yeah, took December off and went back in January with Rod and there was Elderjeske, Zeke. We go down in Rod’s van again, we shoot another match, so we’re three out of four months we’re in California. Roddy says, you know, my van is not going to do this forever. Alrighty, let’s cross our fingers. We’ll put a match on February 13th 77 Thompson Mountain, my mom’s birthday. You know, even then I couldn’t do the things I was supposed to do. We think we get 25 people, we’ll be okay. We had 42, we’ve never looked back. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:28] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:06:29] Just took off. That’s how I started. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:31] So you and these other gentlemen brought IPSC, essentially into Canada.

Murray Gardner: [00:06:36] Yeah, we were the cofounders. We then moved on and we had something called the Northwest Pistol League, uh, Western International Practical Shooting League. There you go. WIPL. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:45] Right, right.

Murray Gardner: [00:06:46] We went down and showed the Americans how to shoot IPSC. We had to do our own courses. We do training programs down across the line, border was a little more porous than it is right now. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:54] Right, yeah. Try doing that now. 

Murray Gardner: [00:06:55] Yeah. Well, we could do it, but there’s just a lot more paperwork. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:58] There is. 

Murray Gardner: [00:06:58] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:06:59] There is. So you’re still competing?

Murray Gardner: [00:07:02] I always tell people in my firearms courses, I started out as a competitive competition shooter, and now I’m a recreational competition shooter.

Travis Bader: [00:07:10] So we’re emailing back and forth just recently and you’re at a competition. Where was that one? That was in Quebec was it?

Murray Gardner: [00:07:16] I was at a record breaking match. It was the 42nd annual IPSC Canada national championships. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:22] Okay. 

Murray Gardner: [00:07:23] Record-breaking cause it was on a military base and you had to see the backstop. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:28] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:07:28] It’s four kilometres away. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:30] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:07:31] 25 millimeter Canon range. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:33] Oh beautiful. 

Murray Gardner: [00:07:34] Yeah. No way you’re shooting over that backstop.

Travis Bader: [00:07:35] Nope.

Murray Gardner: [00:07:36] And it was also the first time ever, nationals held in Quebec. They really.

Travis Bader: [00:07:40] Really?

Murray Gardner: [00:07:40] Put themselves, they got the military to play ball with them cause of course Quebec’s got some strange range rules.

Travis Bader: [00:07:46] Sure.

Murray Gardner: [00:07:46] Where you can’t see the sky to pull a trigger. I can’t figure out how you shoot trap and skeet, but that’s their problem. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:52] That’s one of the rules over there is it? 

Murray Gardner: [00:07:53] I think that is, and that’s why they haven’t been able to do too much outdoors or indoors or at the military base. They’ve got a great relationship with the military base. Whoever the commander is there, I need to write them and commend them for helping our sport grow even better. And the week before that, I had a week off and before that I was in Williams Lake, the Nanaimo, Salmon Arm, I’ll be in Prince George this weekend. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:14] You’re going to just be doing this on and on forever, is that the plan or? 

Murray Gardner: [00:08:17] When my wife says, when are you going to quit? One of two reasons, honey. One is not fun and I don’t see that happening.

Travis Bader: [00:08:24] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:08:24] Because so far, 42 years, it’s always been fun. Or two more likely, I can’t. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:29] Sure. 

Murray Gardner: [00:08:30] The body part says, you can’t. Now, my eyes have told me I can’t, and I fixed that with an open gun. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:33] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:08:34] And my foot speed has gone, but every now and then I get to light one up and they go, Oh no, he can still turn one on every now and again. So those are my high spots, shooting match clean. Meet all the great people involved in the sport. Have a good time. Find some new meals for my, a little web blogs I put out for good food. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:51] Yes.

Murray Gardner: [00:08:51] Chocolate cake, best Starbucks. That’s kind of where I’m at right now with my career. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:56] So I’ve looked at the original firearm safety course program. We saw the videos, even the pictures in the book, there’s a striking resemblance to yourself in there. 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:04] Isn’t that a coincidence? 

Travis Bader: [00:09:05] How did that happen? 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:07] Well, that was one of those things. I was involved with a group called the BC Federation of shooting sports back in the, Oh my goodness, that’s probably 82, 83. And it was actually a job, which is alien to me, cause usually I try and avoid work like the plague. But a guy named Bill Almond had confidence in me and he said, we need a development coordinator. We have an executive director, we want you to be the development coordinator. 

[00:09:28] You’ll be building, training people and bringing programs from national coaching certification program of the shooting Federation of Canada and teaching coaches and running those programs for us. Yeah, sure I can do that. Didn’t have a clue if I could, but my mom taught me how to lie right to get a good job. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:43] Absolutely I can. 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:44] Yeah, absolutely I can. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:45] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:46] Yeah. I passed out under the girl who does my webpage now too. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:48] Oh yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:49] And that’s for you, Tracy.

Travis Bader: [00:09:51] Absolutely she can. 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:52] Yeah, yeah sure I can make a webpage. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:54] Yup, not a problem. 

Murray Gardner: [00:09:54] Liar. But now she said, what do you want your webpage to be? I said, make it a magnet to money.

Travis Bader: [00:10:00] And how’s that working? 

Murray Gardner: [00:10:01] Well, at one point she phoned and I said make it stop. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:05] Oh, so she’s doing it eh?

Murray Gardner: [00:10:06] It’s way too busy. I’m shipping, I’m ordering, I can’t keep stocking. She said there’s no off switch. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:11] Good for her. 

Murray Gardner: [00:10:12] Yeah. So anyhow, that’s where I kind of got started. And  so I was involved with that and we ran the Hunter education core program, firearms component for the government. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:22] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:10:22] And they split it up, open learning Institute did the academic part of it. I trained 160 of the firearms instructors in the core program. We wrote the manual for that. I managed all of their results, trained them, audited everything of that. And then that changed about 1989- ish.

Travis Bader: [00:10:39] Around there yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:10:41] They then redid it. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:43] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:10:43] And the shooting sports had been sort of broken apart by government and they got their own money through their own sources. And I sat my board down one night at a board meeting and I said, you have to fire me. And they said, what? I said, you have to fire me, the programs changed, our revenue stream is changing, you can’t afford me any longer. Are you sure? I said, what do you pay me now? Well we pay you this much. Do you get good advice for that?

[00:11:05] Yeah. This is good advice, you have to fire me. So they fired me on my own advice. I’ve never, never had myself fired. I, you know, fire yourself. So it took a year off, I took EI for a year, sat down at the interview, and the woman said what do you do for work? So I told her, she said, we’re never going to find you a job. I said, I know I’m the only guy in Canada that does this. So I took a year off, got sponsored by Springfield Armory. 

Travis Bader: [00:11:29] Very nice.

Murray Gardner: [00:11:30] With Carrie Laughwell, who was ladies world champion in 86, we got to brag up on Carrie, she did a great job. And Springfield sponsored me, and I said, you guys don’t have any guns in Canada. So I took on doing wholesale Springfield guns, promoted that. That changed, and I went with the EAA Witness, Tangfolio, did that for awhile for them. And then sorta got into just shooting competitively. Started teaching a lot, about that point, around 92, 93, somebody came to me and said, we need some people to sit down to develop the Canadian firearms course, and we know you’re involved.

Travis Bader: [00:11:59] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:12:00] Yeah, sure. So let out to Richmond to SA, not Silvercore, Claymore.

Travis Bader: [00:12:06] Claymore, there ya go.

Murray Gardner: [00:12:07] That was the name of the company. Met a great guy named Tom, uh, oh it’ll come to me, it’s another senior moment. Anyhow, Tom sat us down and said, here’s how we’re going to do this, and we put all the sheets up on the wall, everybody wrote the idea down on sticky paper.

[00:12:20] We built it from there. So I helped develop the basic program, then I walked away from that scenario, it’s fine. Bout three weeks later I got a call from Tom. Listen, we’re having trouble finding somebody to write the ammunition component. Could you help us with that? Yeah, sure, I can do that for you. So I wrote that.

[00:12:34] Then they said, well, could you help us with the marksmanship component? Yeah, I can do that. Can you help us with, next thing you know, I’m in Nova Scotia teaching the master firearms instructors how to teach the firearms course. 

Travis Bader: [00:12:48] Nice.

Murray Gardner: [00:12:49] Then I’m in Iqaluit, then I’m over here and then I’m in the Island. A guy named Dorian Boswell and I with the two master instructors for the Canadian Firearms course. Between us, we trained 500 master instructors, who then trained the instructors. Plus I trained probably other instructors.

Travis Bader: [00:13:02] And after doing the firearm safety course consulting and helping put the program together, you’ve done general safety consulting. I think you’ve done range maintenance, management creation programs out there. Is that correct? 

Murray Gardner: [00:13:15] Yeah, I got into that, actually a lawyer in Seattle called me up. They had a range I shot at down there and the neighbours miles away were saying, Oh, bullets are landing in our backyard. He said, I need you to come in and doing an analysis of is that possible? Is that probable? What’s the likelihood of it? So we sat down and did all the drawings, did a research study. It was about a 40, 60 hour project, and the range was able to stay there. Surprise. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:39] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:13:39] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:40] Yeah. Well, we’ve heard that one before. 

Murray Gardner: [00:13:41] Yeah. Well, it wasn’t the last time. I worked for the greater Vancouver region water district in and Coquitlam river watershed where the mounties had a range there. I did a safety assessment on that, and I did another one at Pacific shooters in North Van where they put the new water plant in. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:54] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:13:55] Yeah. So those are a couple of, some of the projects I worked on. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:58] Very cool. 

Murray Gardner: [00:13:58] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:59] So you’re shooting in STI now, right? 

Murray Gardner: [00:14:01] I’m shooting STI. Got my first one in 91 when Chip McCormick came up with them. He had McCormick magazines, which are the way to go.

Travis Bader: [00:14:08] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:14:09] Chip and Virgil Trip and Sandy Strayer all got together and they said, we’re going to build a modular pistol. It’s interesting as we’ve been reading old American Handgunner magazines from 92, 91, 93 and it’s all coming up there, and new companies are saying, Oh, we’re going to put STI out of business, they’ll never take off. 

Travis Bader: [00:14:26] Uh huh.

Murray Gardner: [00:14:26] Surprise. Or the first one that in my serial number was MDG001.

Travis Bader: [00:14:31] I love it. 

Murray Gardner: [00:14:32] Waited, the guns came, shooting them ever since then. Yes, that’s what I’m running right now. It’s the DVC open. 

Travis Bader: [00:14:38] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:14:38] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:14:39] So you had the muzzle break, the compensator on your STI. 

Murray Gardner: [00:14:43] Yeah, I did something I tell people never to do, last year at nationals in Winnipeg. I fell in love with a gun, I always tell, don’t fall in love with guns, they’re just guns, there’s lots out there. They’re not marriages, they don’t take half of everything you own when they leave. They’re just an affair. You get together, everybody has a good time, parties over, you go your separate ways.

[00:15:00] No hard feelings. So I fell in love with this guy and then it was 5965 list and a frugal is my middle name, some people call it cheap. I said, I know where a good used one is back in Vancouver, I know the guy well. I came back, he sent me a picture, I went, yep. We set a price for the gun, some magazines and stuff, went to the range. Tack driver. Even by bad eyes, it was a tack driver. 

Travis Bader: [00:15:22] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:15:23] Ran 150 rounds through it, ran like a watch. Done deal. That’s Tuesday. Thursday I’m out at Abbotsford practicing going away to Prince George, I think I’ll run this gun this weekend instead of my main gun. Oh wait, I’ve got oil on the comp. Oh, that’s not oil, that’s a hairline crack in both sides. Oops. Back to the original picture, no hairline crack. Oh no, I’ve broken it. So with heavy heart, I sent an email off to Freedom Ventures. My buddy Shawn, Shawn, uh, not having a good day, comps broke, what’s the warranty on the comp? He writes back, there’s no warranty on the comp, we’re going to give you a brand new gun to exchange it. Really?

Travis Bader: [00:16:01] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:16:02] Yeah really. And you don’t need the silver one, if you want the new black op model, we’ll give you that. Well, okay. And if you don’t want an eight minute dot in the RTS2, we’ll put a 12 minute, cause I know you’re like a 12 minute dot and we’ll take all the accessories off the other gun and put it on the new one. No charge, this will cost you nothing. Well, if I must.

Travis Bader: [00:16:21] Twist my arm. 

Murray Gardner: [00:16:21] Yeah. Yeah, smooth talker. Gun showed up, ran it, runs great. Took it over to Joseph Wu, he just started a kind called Momentum doing trigger work and gun work, did up all red and black for me. Anybody who knows me, red and black, you got have red and black, they’re the only colours in the world. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:37] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:16:37] Took my trigger from two pound nine ounce, done a one pound seven ounce. Wow. Wow.

Travis Bader: [00:16:43] Love it.

Murray Gardner: [00:16:44] Love it. Use it at nationals, ran like a watch.

Travis Bader: [00:16:46] Nice. 

Murray Gardner: [00:16:46] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:16:47] So I’ve always wondered. The D, Murray Doc Gardner. 

Murray Gardner: [00:16:51] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:52] How’d you get that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:16:54] Didn’t know for years. People called Doc, how’d you get your name? Ahh, uhh, I don’t know. So we’re standing around talking about that ,somebody said, why did they call you Doc and Rod Phillips and says, MD, you sign everything MD Gardner, that’s your signature MD Doc. Oh. Okay, I’ll go with that. So it just kind of hung on and use it ever since. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:14] So now you’re the Doc. 

Murray Gardner: [00:17:15] Somebody says, you the doctor cause you’re always fixing things. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:17] Yeah. Well I guess that’s the nature of the game in IPSC too, always tinkering, fixing the guns, working on. 

Murray Gardner: [00:17:24] Oh no, no, no. You don’t let me touch your gun. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:26] Yeah, not, you?

Murray Gardner: [00:17:27] No, no, no. My hands do three things, anybody in IPSC will tell you, Murray’s hands do three things. First thing involves a knife and fork. 

Murray Gardner: [00:17:34] Kind of like food. Second thing involves a trigger. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:36] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:17:36] Third, count money. Other than that, useless. If you want me to put up a hammer and a nail and put a board up, I’m not your guy. You need electrical work done, find somebody who’s good at it. My wife loves the way I paint the house, takes a chequebook and a pen. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:50] Yeah, yeah. It’s about how I do it too. I’m the worst. I get paint everywhere. 

Murray Gardner: [00:17:53] Yeah. And if she doesn’t like the paint job, she’s not pissed off at me. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:56] So Joseph Wu, he’s the guy to send it to. 

Murray Gardner: [00:17:58] Joe’s getting my work right now. Man I’ve got to tell you, we put some of these guns out at the nationals and guys came by and tried triggers. We’ve got people changing religion from their gun to STI to 1911 pattern. We’ll after they try this trigger, he has a pound and a quarter trigger in his gun. 

Travis Bader: [00:18:13] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:18:14] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:18:15] So you’ve been doing this for awhile.

Murray Gardner: [00:18:19] No, I’ve been doing it a long time.

Travis Bader: [00:18:20] For a very, for a very. You know, I look on your website, you’ve got a a picture from 1978, I’m guessing it’s from one of the first nationals that you won. I was born in 78 and there you are out there shooting.

Murray Gardner: [00:18:32] I have clothes older than you are and they fit. 

Travis Bader: [00:18:35] And you still wear them. 

Murray Gardner: [00:18:36] Yes. 

Travis Bader: [00:18:37] When I look back on some of the things that I’ve done, things that have been difficult for me to do over the years. But to repeat it, it’s easy, I’ve gone down that path, I’ve been there. I’m sure you’ve can look back through your IPSC career. The learning process of course is important, but there’s some things that you could probably do to really help speed up that process or maybe pass onto somebody else so that they can get from point A to point B in a more effective, efficient manner. What would that be? 

Murray Gardner: [00:19:06] You got to get the fire in your belly. You gotta want it. You gotta be able to sacrifice for it. People always say, well, where do you find time to practice? I don’t. 

Travis Bader: [00:19:13] You make it. 

Murray Gardner: [00:19:14] I make it. 

Travis Bader: [00:19:14] Yes. 

Murray Gardner: [00:19:15] Practice is Wednesday night, 6:30 to 8 o’clock. If it’s winter, we’re indoors, if not, you dry fire. You dry fire, dry fire, live fire, five days a week. You’ll eat, sleep, breathe shooting. We shot every weekend. We shot in Seattle, we shot PPC, I shot silhouette. I shot black powder. Pullin the trigger, it didn’t matter. As long as you’re pulling the trigger. I’ve won two national titles with borrowed guns.

Travis Bader: [00:19:39] Wow.

Murray Gardner: [00:19:40] Yeah. Yeah, it wasn’t my plan. Believe me.

Travis Bader: [00:19:42] No.

Murray Gardner: [00:19:42] That wasn’t the way I planned to go. I was at the UK championships, 1980 in England and I was coming back to Calgary for the nationals, so I flew into Calgary with my ammunition and a belt, my shooting glasses. And my holster and my two match guns went somewhere in the middle East. They broke into my suitcase at thief-row airport.

Travis Bader: [00:20:00] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:20:00] Saw guns and went, where’s it going? Going West, put another belt headed East, it’ll take a while to find it. Showed up five weeks later. So I show up in Calgary, no gun. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:10] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:10] What are you going to do? Eh, let’s see it. Call the airlines, call the airlines. Finally, last day I’ve got to shoot, Randy Fisher, also one of our national champions, longtime shooter. Randy says, I’ll lend you my gun. Thanks, fish. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:21] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:22] Somebody else says a belt. I had ammo. I had about 800 rounds of ammo. Hardball. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:26] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:28] So I started shooting with his borrowed gear, Fisher’s followin me along and followin me along and followin me along, as we get near the end of the match, he turns to somebody and said, do you ever see it slipping away and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Cause he already finished shooting. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:41] Yes. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:41] I beat him by about five points with his gun. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:43] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:44] Yeah. He got me back for that in 88 when he won the national title. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:48] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:48] Yeah. And he’s still an active competitor. I’ve got four years on Randy, so he’s just a kid, he’s only in 67.

Travis Bader: [00:20:55] Randy’s actually the guy I did my black badge with.

Murray Gardner: [00:20:57] Yeah. Yeah. He’s still out there teaching it. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:59] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:20:59] He’s retired, but he’s also one of the, he’s not the founder founder, but he’s certainly a long time active in the sport. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:06] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:21:06] We went to California US nationals in 1978 he and I, and another guy named Ross Dunn in a Honda civic. Not the Honda civic’s you know, these were a little bit bigger than a sardine can. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:18] Right, right, yes.

Murray Gardner: [00:21:19] And that was only a 24 hour one way drive. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:21] Oh man. 

Murray Gardner: [00:21:22] You know, it’s interesting when they hear guys, we’ve got a match in Prince George’s weekends, it’s bout an 8 hour drive, we’ve got about 315 rounds we’re going to shoot. I’ll say to guys, going to Prince George this weekend? Umm, I don’t know, man, you know, it’s like an 8 hour drive, it’s only 350 rounds. Yeah, poor babies. You want to drive 16 hours one way and shoot 72? 

Travis Bader: [00:21:41] Yeah, no kidding. 

Murray Gardner: [00:21:42] Yeah. You looking for sympathy, you’re talking to the wrong guy. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:45] So black badge. 

Murray Gardner: [00:21:46] Yes.

Travis Bader: [00:21:47] For people who don’t know. If you want to get into IPSC, there’s a mandatory rule essentially talking about safety, talking about the rules. That’s your black badge course. 

Murray Gardner: [00:21:55] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:56] How did you get involved with that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:21:58] The black badge program, the national training program started back, actually started in Ontario. We were doing a similar thing here, but it wasn’t quite as stratified and organized. So they brought it out and it was very honorous, it was all kinds of things you had to do and that we said people will be lucky to do that. You’re chasing them away, you’re making, got the bar too high. As long as they’re safe and they’re having fun, bring them in. 

[00:22:21] So we put it back together about 83 it really became truly national and we built, it was called the black badge program. We made it national, did a little manual up for it. We started to standardize it and we decided that we needed a little more manual and we improved it again. We’d standardize the teaching of the instructors, we use a very similar train the trainer program that was used for the Canadian firearms course. It worked. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:42] Sure. Why reinvent the wheel? 

Murray Gardner: [00:22:44] That’s right. You know, we tried that too many times. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:46] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:22:47] And we now teach instructors. We had NBC, we did something a little different last year we had an instructor seminar. We brought in as many current instructors that could make it into the Vancouver for the weekend and poco and went through, how do you teach the group? How do you do this? We’re going to make all the program paperless, everything’s electronic now. You’re evaluations, the students do an electronic evaluation on their phones. 

[00:23:09] All your documentation is electronic, your membership forms are electronic, your course completion sheets are electronic, so we really moved ahead on that. We also did an instructor’s course for seven instructors using the train the trainer program, and now they have to go out and teach a couple of courses to get their final certification. So we increased our instructors by about 50%. The program, the redoing the manual on the national basis, and I’ve offered it what they should think about doing and hopefully they will.

Travis Bader: [00:23:36] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:23:36] Go to a professional company with all your, it’s like going to your accountant with your shoe box at the end of the year and going, fix this. 

Travis Bader: [00:23:42] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:23:43] Do you want to make money or not make money? I don’t want to make money. Okay. 

Travis Bader: [00:23:46] See, I happen to know a professional company that could probably help them. 

Murray Gardner: [00:23:49] Yeah, I’ve heard there’s a company called Silvercore that might be able to do that. Any truth to that rumour?

Travis Bader: [00:23:53] You know, I could put out some feelers but. 

Murray Gardner: [00:23:57] Hopefully IPSC Canada will do, take that advice and run with it. There’s a lot of good volunteers, a lot of technical knowledge, but trying to get them away from the professional jobs to do something for us as volunteers, it’s very hard to do. 

Travis Bader: [00:24:08] That’s always a tough part too.

Murray Gardner: [00:24:09] It is, it is. Fortunately, nobody’s willing to hire me, so I have lots of time on my hands and go out and do stuff as a volunteer. 

Travis Bader: [00:24:16] So if somebody wanted to get into teaching black badge, how would they do that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:24:21] There’s a bunch of steps. First, you have to shoot for a year, and we don’t mean just show up once a year, before you become a range officer. So after you can take the rage officers’ course, after you’re being a range officer, and again, not just showing up at one or two matches, but getting experience. 

[00:24:35] Once you become a range officer, then you can apply to take the training course instructors course. You sit that course, it’s a two day seminar where you learn the mechanics of how to teach, how people learn. You also learn how to teach people to take the material in a standardized format that we use and the primary focus, and of course there’s nothing but safety.

Travis Bader: [00:24:53] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:24:54] Cause they had, black badge course is, yes, it’s shooting, but it’s really a safety course on how to shoot IPSC safely. 

Travis Bader: [00:24:59] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:24:59] Because that’s what we want people to do is be safe. Be safe, have fun. And I always tell my class, there’s one thing I want you to do in your first match. Only one of you can do it, the rest you’re going to disappoint me. I want you to come absolutely last. Well, why do you want me to come last? Cause you can come up from the bottom. Next match, you can be second last. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:20] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:25:20] If you’re second last, you can go down.

Travis Bader: [00:25:23] Yeah it’s always hard. We are at the top. You’re top of the game. There’s only one place for you to go. 

Murray Gardner: [00:25:27] If memory serves me, I think you’re right. So we bought the black badge course in and anybody who wants to shoot IPSC has to pass the black badge course. And shoot a match. Once they’ve done that, we’re retty good, we’ve got you into the system. We’re comfortable you’ve made it through safely and  on you go. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:45] So eight years in a row, you won the nationals. 

Murray Gardner: [00:25:50] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:51] Eight years in a row. That’s crazy. 

Murray Gardner: [00:25:53] Yeah. Freaked me out too. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:55] Has anybody beaten that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:25:57] Somebody matched it. A guy named Mike Burrell back in Ontario got eight straight and he said, Mike, you can break the record. He couldn’t make it the next year for health reasons. So when I saw him the next time, I said, well, start new. Burrell’s run a lot of matches. He’s won open, he’s won other division, he is probably one of the finest, if not the best, IPSC shooter in Canada. He’ll finish in the top 16 at the world.

Travis Bader: [00:26:20] Wow.

Murray Gardner: [00:26:20] That’s no easy task.

Travis Bader: [00:26:21] No kidding. 

Murray Gardner: [00:26:22] Yeah. That’s tough to do. If you drop a point, you probably lose a position. You have a malfunction, you probably lost 10 or 15 positions. 

Travis Bader: [00:26:29] So I had a podcast here recently with a five time national service rifle winner. 

Murray Gardner: [00:26:37] Oh. 

Travis Bader: [00:26:37] And we talked about mental marksmanship, and he had a lot of really good insight on that. From the actual physical doing side for IPSC, of course, knowing the rule book, I remember just watching the IPSC guys pulling that rule book out all the time. That’s.

Murray Gardner: [00:26:51] Range lawyers.

Travis Bader: [00:26:52] Right exactly. That’s an important thing. Being able to physically pull that trigger, move your body around the basic body mechanics. But the psychological side, I got to imagine to be able to do this eight times in a row, there’s going to be a heavy psychological portion as well. Do you find that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:27:10] Yeah. I always tell my students, matches are won or lost between your hearing protection. We can all hit the A zone. No student comes to me that can’t hit the A zone. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:18] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:27:18] That’s easy. Just do it over and over, quickly. First guy, the last shot without a miss. We did a, when I was a development coordinator, I had great good fortune to be paid, to learn how to teach people to learn  and that access to that, and we brought in a guy named Lanny Bassham. Now if anybody who shoots rifle Lanny Bassham, you’ll hear a umm.

Travis Bader: [00:27:37] Oh yes.

Murray Gardner: [00:27:38] Everybody knows Bassham.

Travis Bader: [00:27:39] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:27:40] He’s won Olympic medal, he’s won, he won at Canada actually, in Montreal. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:43] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:27:43] He’s won world championships rifle shooter. We did a seminar, two day seminar with him and I was his host so I would go to dinner with him and pick him up and we got a chance to talk privately and yeah, it’s all won or lost between the ears. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:57] Wow.

Murray Gardner: [00:27:57] And amazing, we changed our talk. One of the things I always tell my students when I see you at a match and they say, how you doing. Not like people say, hi, how are you? They don’t really care, they’re just trying to start a conversation. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:05] Exactly, yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:28:06] I care. How you doing? Here’s what they tell me. Oh man, I hit a no shoot over there, and then I had a mike, a mike, a mike, a miss, another target, and I didn’t get to the swinger. I said, how many A’s did you shoot? Uhh I dunno. So let me understand this, you’re working and thinking real hard on everything you did wrong, and you’re not thinking about what you did right.

[00:28:26] I play bad golf very well, and one of the tricks I use with my buddy Ivan Runion, who’s also a national champion in Alberta. I said to Ivan one day, playing golf at a match, just as he stood on a tee. I said, Ivan do you breathe in or out on the downswing. You can’t believe how far he hit that ball off the fairway. I don’t think we found it. He’ll never play golf again. Put the seed in their mind. Playin golf, don’t hit the ball in the water. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:52] And that’s all you’re going to do is. 

Murray Gardner: [00:28:54] Just go throw the ball in the pond right now and get it over with cause that’s what you’re thinking about.

Travis Bader: [00:28:57] There’s a local course over here by God, every time I get that house, that roof. 

Murray Gardner: [00:29:01] Yeah, I play with that guy too. 

Travis Bader: [00:29:03] Yeah, exactly. 

Murray Gardner: [00:29:04] So what we started to do was we started to positive speak. How many days did you shoot? How’d you do in that stage? Did pretty good. If you didn’t do well, you’d do performance analysis. What went wrong? How do I fix it? Put it aside, fix it when it shows up. Start talking positive talk. I had a good run, I did this and that. Think about the positives, work on a positive. You start thinking about negative you down that rabbit hole and it’s not a good place to be. 

Travis Bader: [00:29:27] Yeah. It’s hard to come out of, isn’t it? 

Murray Gardner: [00:29:29] I’ll guarantee it the first couple of years, absolute poop house luck. Come on, we’re all as bad as the other.

Travis Bader: [00:29:35] Sure.

Murray Gardner: [00:29:36] We’ve been racing neck and neck. Got lucky in 78, didn’t do bad in 79 my 88 was wow three, 81 was oh gosh, got another one. 82, Oh look at that. 83, come on. 84, 84 was a bit of an excitement when we went to Ontario. 

Travis Bader: [00:29:55] Okay. 

Murray Gardner: [00:29:56] We had a thing called the shootoff that you did the shootoff and added points to your score, which means you could finish first over five days of shooting, going into the shootoff, have a gun jam and 16th. 

Travis Bader: [00:30:06] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:30:06] So we go to 84 and John Shaw’s there. John’s top shooter, he had a gun jam. Thank you gun gods. Guy who won the match was Mike Toma. We said to Mike, Mike, we’re going under the shutoff, you’re the national champion as far as we’re concerned. Oh, no, shootoffs a great idea. And then Mike, they’re crap, shouldn’t even be in a rule book. No, no, no shootoffs a good idea. You know where this bus is going.

Travis Bader: [00:30:27] Mhmm.

Murray Gardner: [00:30:28] Yeah. First round, Mike’s gun jams, Mike becomes 16th overall. I get lucky, the only guy to beat me in the shutoff is John Shaw. I ended up with enough points I win national title again. 

Travis Bader: [00:30:39] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:30:40] 85, thought another guy had it said, I think you got it, man. I mean, I haven’t blitzed any stages, you know, I’ve got maybe one stage went out of 15, a couple of seconds, a couple of thirds. Never out of the top five. Yup. Won that one too. Yeah. He was beaten me on stages. Guys were getting first all over the place, but when they fell off the mountain, they fell all the way to the bottom of the hill.

Travis Bader: [00:31:03] And that’s the mental side.

Murray Gardner: [00:31:05] Stay consistent. 

Travis Bader: [00:31:06] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:31:06] Yeah. Don’t worry about the other guys score. I see guys matches, they used to go look at the scoreboard they hadn’t, they barely finished pulling the trigger on the stage. I said, you think you can change that score? No. What’s going to happen is one of two things. You’re gonna think, look at how good I did, I’m invincible. 

[00:31:22] You’re going to screw the next stage up cause you go into hard or are you look and go, I’m a Turkey, I can’t do this game. And if you say you can’t, you’re right. Don’t look at a scoreboard, not going to change. Go out, take your best shot. Let the chips fall where they may.

Travis Bader: [00:31:36] So do you not look at the scoreboard until till the end? How’s that work for you? 

Murray Gardner: [00:31:39] I walk off a stage. I look at, we use tablets now. 

Travis Bader: [00:31:42] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:31:43] And some of the history in IPSC, I always fall back and say, have you got the watch and whistle? Cause we used to blow a whistle and hit a stopwatch, a manual stopwatch to time people. Now we have electronic timers to a hundreds of seconds. We have a tablet, you hit approved, your scores entered in. We could have the test results in five minutes.

Travis Bader: [00:31:58] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:31:58] We used to use four hours to shoot and five hours to scores a match. Now we score it in five minutes. I pushed the tab, I look, everything’s there, everything’s recorded the way it’s supposed to be. I hit approve and I step away. They hand me a copy, printed copy of my results, I put it in my bag. How’d you do in that stage? That was clean. What was your time? I dunno. What do you mean you don’t know? I don’t know. It was there, it was recorded. I don’t know, I can’t change it. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:20] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:32:20] You mean to tell me if I know what it is, I can make it shorter? No. Well then why would I care? 

Travis Bader: [00:32:25] And that’s what you’d suggest to anybody else? Don’t look, just.

Murray Gardner: [00:32:28] Stop looking at it, you can’t change it. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:29] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:32:30] Work on the next one. Whether you did poorly or well, write it off, it’s history. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:35] What about dry fire practice? Are you doing a lot of that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:32:38] I could lie to you like aside, Oh yeah, I dry fire three days a week, 15 minutes a day. Not anymore. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:43] Yeah. Years ago you did? 

Murray Gardner: [00:32:45] Oh yeah. Trust me, I drank that Kool-Aid. I would dry fire three days a week, live fire, then shoot a match. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:50] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:32:50] You know, we were burning lots of ammunition. Lots of time, 15 minutes of dry fire is plenty. I share that from Bassham and he said, we’re like dogs. Do you ever train your dog for an hour and at the end of the hour try to give him to the first thing you taught him an hour ago and.

Travis Bader: [00:33:02] Good luck. 

Murray Gardner: [00:33:03] Whu? We’re not much smarter than dogs when training. Focus, focus on one thing. I have what I call my a performance triangle where you train to do something which is 10 to 15 minutes a day. You do that two or three days a week. Then you go practice. Practice is live fire. You can train at home, you don’t have to go anywhere. The nice thing about training and dry fire is you don’t have to go anywhere, it’s free, but the best part is every shot’s a perfect A. 

Travis Bader: [00:33:28] Right. All part of the mental management process.

Murray Gardner: [00:33:31] That’s right. All you’re thinking about is A’s. When I teach my students to shoot out president day, I say, you turn, you shoot two alpha, two alpha, two alpha, you reload two alpha, two alpha, two alpha. Were you thinking about the D zone when I said two alpha? You can’t because your conscious mind can think of one thing at a time.

Travis Bader: [00:33:45] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:33:46] So you’re thinking about alpha. 

Travis Bader: [00:33:48] I like it. 

Murray Gardner: [00:33:49] They’ll say, did you hit? Did you, how are you gonna shoot that target with a no shoot. I’ll say, what no shoot? Well, the one over there. I saw deny its existence. If you’re thinking about it, you’re going to put the sights on it and pull the trigger. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:01] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:34:01] Just deny it exists. Our goal is to hit the brown part, put the sights on the brown part, press the trigger. Then I go to practice. Practice is live fire, does a training pay off? That’s it. I spend about an hour, shoot about 200 rounds.

Travis Bader: [00:34:14] Okay.

Murray Gardner: [00:34:14] Focused on particular job. Maybe we’re shooting swingers, maybe we’re having trouble with steel. Maybe work strong hand or weak hand, but I’m going to work. Then you go to a match. Match, beep. That’s it, no alibis. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:26] Just go. 

Murray Gardner: [00:34:27] Just go. You take the performance analysis from that. Say, okay, I need to improve on this. You go back, you train. Then you go to a match, then you go to practice, then you go to match, just corner to corner of the triangle.

Travis Bader: [00:34:38] So 71 years old now, how do you find? 

Murray Gardner: [00:34:43] Doesn’t sound old, does it? 

Travis Bader: [00:34:45] You don’t look old. 

Murray Gardner: [00:34:46] Well, I’ll tell you the definition of old, old is 15 years older than whatever age you are now. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:51] Yeah, exactly. 

Murray Gardner: [00:34:51] So those 86 year old guys are really old farts. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:54] Until you’re up to 86.

Murray Gardner: [00:34:56] Yeah, well when I was 56, God 71 looked a long ways away. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:00] It’s like Rockefeller, how much more money do you need? Just $1 more. $1 more. 

Murray Gardner: [00:35:04] Just another year. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:05] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:35:06] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:07] So keeping up with some of the new shooters in the sport, is that proven to be quite difficult? 

Murray Gardner: [00:35:13] No, it’s a chore. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:15] Sure.

Murray Gardner: [00:35:15] It’s a chore, little bastards are really quick. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:17] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:35:18] We have a young fellow, Thomas Hess up in Northern BC. Just a dream to shoot. He came out to shoot, the first match he said, Oh, I’ve got a Sig P226. I said, that’s too bad. I’m a gun snob, if it’s not 1911, it’s not a gun. It’s like motorcycles, if it’s not made in Milwaukee, it’s not a bike. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:33] Right, right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:35:34] Old school. So Thomas said, well, I’ll meet you at the match at 7:30 in the morning and I’ll get that holster from you and put on my rig. I said, no you’re not. One cause at 7:30, we shoot at 8, I’m not thinking about you. You know, don’t, I don’t want to bust your balloon, but you’re not the person I’m thinking about at that time of day. Why don’t you show up on friday evening, we’ll put your rig together. Showed up, watched him shoot. This kid can shoot, if he ever gets a real gun we’re in trouble. 

[00:35:58] Well the little bastards got a real gun. He’s got an open gun and does he light it up. Last year, Williams Lake, I was shooting with him. 32 round stage, which is the max, I looked at our times and I said, how old are you? He says, I’m 25. I said, okay, here’s the deal. You’ll owe me a second time for every decade older than you that I am. So you owe me four and a half seconds a stage. We were four seconds apart on almost every stage. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:23] Wow.

Murray Gardner: [00:36:23] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:24] Wow. 

Murray Gardner: [00:36:24] Now he’s seven seconds, so I’ve lost one, he’s gained one. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:28] Wow.

Murray Gardner: [00:36:28] He was great at nationals, I believe he was third Canadian. He was on our open team. Kids got a real future in this game. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:36] What do you see for the future of IPSC?

Murray Gardner: [00:36:39] If we take the path that I hope we take, which is to turn more professional, and we’re at the point now with just over 3000 members nationally, not volunteer work anymore. You need a professional to manage your business. And the professional should be someone who’s not an IPSC shooter. So I’m not pitching for a job, I don’t want a job. I never wanted a job. I’ve managed to avoid them. 

[00:37:01] Get a professional in to manage you. He’ll have about a three to five year shelf life before it’s time for him to move on and you to move on from him. Have them look at your needs, wants, requirements, have them put that together for you. We’re getting close in BC, we’re just over 720 members right now. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:15] Okay. 

Murray Gardner: [00:37:15] It’s just getting to be almost out of reach of a volunteer. We’re going to have to pay to have people manage our webpage. We’re gonna have to pay to have people manage other things, but that’s a great sign. Well, that’s going to cost money, I know that. That’s what you charge a fee, that’s why you manage your business, your sport, like a business. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:31] That’s growth.

Murray Gardner: [00:37:32] If you don’t handle your sport like a business, you’re going to be as successful as somebody who doesn’t handle their business, and we seem to be on track. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:40] Good. So I’ve got to ask. 

Murray Gardner: [00:37:41] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:42] What’s it take to get you in pants?

Murray Gardner: [00:37:44] Yeah, shorts have sort of been my trademark for the longest time, and it goes back to when I was a boy scout years ago. In our scout group, if you wore shorts, you wore shorts everywhere. You wore shorts to uniform, you wore shorts at camp. If you showed up along pants, they cut the pants off and you wore shorts and that was just sort of the trademark.

Travis Bader: [00:38:01] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:38:01] It kind of stuck with me, so I do wear long pants if my wife and I are going out. She’ll ask a non question, are you wearing shorts? It’s not a question. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:13] Right, no that’s a statement. 

Murray Gardner: [00:38:15] Yeah. Are you wearing long pants? Apparently I am, yes. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:18] Yes. No, I’m wearing pants. 

Murray Gardner: [00:38:20] Yes. And I do own them. Actually went out, bought a new pair a couple of years ago, so I go to the bank with ag, at the nationals looking good. One year I snuck away. She wasn’t there, so I got to be rogue and I wore a jacket and a dress shirt a dress tie, black shoes, black knee socks and bermuda shorts. And my tie had a fish head on the end, which you couldn’t see until I opened my jacket up. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:45] Oh, beautiful. 

Murray Gardner: [00:38:46] Yeah. Yeah. When that word got back to her, Ooh.

Travis Bader: [00:38:49] I’m sure that that went over well. 

Murray Gardner: [00:38:50] Yeah. Yeah. She, I think she burnt the tie. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:53] That’s funny. Well, is there anything else that we should be talking about? Is there anything that we haven’t brought up that we should be talking? 

Murray Gardner: [00:38:59] Some of the things that, my missionary work is to get people involved in shooting IPSC. My classes this year, I’ve taught about 85 people to shoot IPSC this year. And you consider, I’ve got about a 20 match shooting schedule, occasionally that lady I live with likes to see me, so we take some time off for that. Plus, I teach courses of course for Silvercore, help out with that. 

[00:39:22] There’s not a lot of time left, but my work is to see how many of IPSC shooters we can get and that’s my goal. I want to spread the gospel. Rod and Blair and I started it years ago, three crazy bastards with a bunch of guns running around shooting at stuff.

Travis Bader: [00:39:34] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:39:35] I always thought it was fun when we used to take it to the clubs and say, you know, we want you guys to shoot IPSC. Well, that’s dangerous. Why is that?You’re running with a gun in your hand. Yeah, tell me the part that’s dangerous. Well, you’re running with the gun in your hand. Heard you the first time. What’s dangerous? You’re running with. It’s not like we’re running with scissors, we know that’s dangerous, we’ve been told that since we were a kid. 

[00:39:54] And then eventually started to understand, no, this works. Very high standard. In our game safety is our watchword. We want to make sure that everybody on the range has passed that 16 hours. You don’t just show up with a gun like in some countries you say, yeah, you want to shoot IPSC? Yeah. You got a gun? 

Travis Bader: [00:40:12] Yeah, yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:40:13] No, no, no. You got a gun? Good, that’s a good starting point. Now let’s get you into the proper gear and we’re happy to consult with people, all of our instructors will sit out and talk to you. I always say, you can meet me at my office and pay my consultant’s fee. What’s that? It’s a venti mocha Frappuccino from Starbucks, six pumps of mocha, four layers of caramel, no whip, cause there’s too many calories. 

Travis Bader: [00:40:32] We’ve got another instructor, he’s got his G and T questions. Someone asks him a question, he says, Oh, that’s a G and T question. What do you mean? Well, that’s for after. You buy me a gin and tonic, I answer your question. 

Murray Gardner: [00:40:43] Yeah. that’s the consultant’s fee. 

Travis Bader: [00:40:44] Yeah, exactly. Same sort of thing there.

Murray Gardner: [00:40:46] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:40:46] The politics behind firearms in the world, in Canada, there’s a lot that we read about, quite often it’s from a negative side. There’s a negative connotation behind it, around owning firearms. It can elicit some very visceral, emotional responses from people, and it’s not something that I see going away anytime soon. Where do you see the future of just firearms, firearm ownership? Just being able to use them in a competitive way or just in a personal way here in Canada at least? 

Murray Gardner: [00:41:20] I got run down at 74 I had to go to the Delta police department to get a permit to pick up the gun at hunter sporting goods in Kingsway. So I went in and they had all these rules and all these standards yet great, good, I like rules. Fill all the rules out. There’s gotta be a purpose for this, otherwise, why would they do it? 

[00:41:35] Government would just come up with a bunch of things to do. Then we got into the FAC in 1978, about that point I’d been at it four or five years and I started to realize that this has got nothing to do with people’s safety. This has got to deal with people deciding they’ve got an agenda.

[00:41:50] And what that agenda is, is it stayed the same 42 years later. I asked the same question every time a new law comes up, when you mandate this law and it goes into place, what positive change will we see? In other words, if we have X number of crimes committed with firearms, it will be X minus this. They say, we’re going to, I was watching the news last night, we’re going to ban handguns in Toronto. From who? 

Travis Bader: [00:42:16] Yeah. Very important question. 

Murray Gardner: [00:42:17] From the people who are legally using them, following all the rules, not the bad guys, that’s why they’re bad guys. The term outlaw has meaning outside the law. So whatever law you make, they don’t care. They don’t care what your magazine capacity is when they’re going to commit a crime.

Travis Bader: [00:42:31] And people don’t see that.

Murray Gardner: [00:42:33] Well, it’s emotional. You got to understand it. I found that gun control is very emotional. It’s not with the head, it’s with the heart, and you can’t switch people over. Gun laws don’t stop crime. Not going to happen, never has. We’ve got tons of them. Other countries have more prolific gun laws than we do. Even more honest ones, they still have crime with a firearm. You can’t stop a bad guy being a bad guy. That’s the nature of the beast. But the good guy is paying the price for the bad guy. Every time there’s a crime with a gun and every gun owner sympathizes with people who are victimized by crime and guns. 

Travis Bader: [00:43:07] Oh absolutely. 

Murray Gardner: [00:43:08] There’s no firearms owner who says, Oh, we don’t need any gun control. That’s ludicrous. We need common sense controls, and we’ve had governments who’ve done that. They’ve said it’s not the firearm, let’s bring in laws that make it harder for people to get firearms. We’re good with that, but the people who have got them, you’ve already tested them. 

[00:43:25] You’ve already said you’ve gone through 20 hours worth of training. You’ve passed a whole bunch of exams. You’ve sat with an instructor for a whole weekend. Who’s taught you all the standards that the government set. 

Travis Bader: [00:43:36] You’re getting criminal record checked on a daily basis. 

Murray Gardner: [00:43:38] Yeah, so this is all done. The good guys are being checked, they’re the good guys. Certainly people have mental problems, and mental health is something we should be spending money on. If they took the billion dollars they spent on the unsuccessful long gun registry and put it someplace else where mental health issues, crisis hotlines, that would have been great. Train more people in helping people who need help. 

Travis Bader: [00:43:58] Think about the good that could have been done. 

Murray Gardner: [00:43:59] Oh, unbelievable. And now they keep talking about doing it again. Come on, we got to learn. If it didn’t work the first time.

Travis Bader: [00:44:07] And I’m wondering, I’m wondering when people will start learning. Like just locally here in Delta number of years ago, we had a while where a city of Delta now, but we’re the corporation of Delta then and corporation of Delta said, look, we’re looking at banning any new firearms business in Delta, and they wanted to have a bit of a council meeting. 

[00:44:25] I showed up, I had all of my notes prepared. The other business owners were in there as well, some actually supported it and I just shook my head. I get the reasoning behind it. They thought this is great, now if I want to sell my business, I can sell it for more because no one else can be in here, I’m going to be grandfathered in. I never agreed with that mentality and that thinking. 

[00:44:45] I think it’s shortsighted. I had all my objections in place, I did all my research and I’m standing up feeling pretty good about myself as I go through, and I’m trying to remember the individual’s name. I think it was Barry. Anyways, he says Travis, I’m going to stop you right there. I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. He says, but this is politics like.

Murray Gardner: [00:45:06] Isn’t that the shock? 

Travis Bader: [00:45:07] Yeah, and I didn’t know what to, he says it’s got nothing to do with what the statistics. If we think this is something that the people want, then we’re going to explore doing it. 

Murray Gardner: [00:45:16] Gun control is about money and votes.

Travis Bader: [00:45:18] Right. 

Murray Gardner: [00:45:18] We sat down with the attorney general and when the magazine capacity standard came in, in 93. Couldn’t have high cap magazines, 10 for a handgun, 10 for a five for semi-auto centrefire rifles. We said there was a caveat in it said exceptions could be made for competitive shooters. Great, we’re competitive shooters. We’ve been doing this in 93 what’s that, from 78 up, we get about 15 years doing this. Good. 

[00:45:44] So we got together with Colin Gableman who was AG at the time, and we brought in the BC rifle association, we brought in law enforcement shooters association, couple other groups. Set the meeting up with him, showed up, sat down and started to say, here’s what we’re talking about. And he says, well, they’ve got a firing pin or something in them.

[00:46:01] I looked around the room and said, why are we here? He hasn’t given us the courtesy to understand the subject matter. And as he walked out, most truthful politician I ever heard was when he said to me, Murray, I can get  more votes by not supporting your position than by supporting it.

Travis Bader: [00:46:16] And that’s essentially what it boils down to. 

Murray Gardner: [00:46:17] That’s what it boiled down to. I thought, so it’s not about public safety, we don’t care about your public safety, will you vote for me? Will you keep me at the trough here so I can keep getting my index pension after five years of a job. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Travis Bader: [00:46:30] Yeah, no kidding. Pension, what’s that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:46:33] Yeah. I get those. By the way, everybody who’s working, I thank you in the last Wednesday of every month when my checks arrive. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:41] Yeah. And those magazine capacities that’s another  whole issue, I mean. 

Murray Gardner: [00:46:46] It’s trying to make people who don’t understand. It’s like trying to make rules about brain surgery and said Murray, we’re going to do this in brain surgery and I go, great, I think that’ll be wonderful. What do you know about brain surgery, Murray? Nothing. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:56] Absolutely nothing.

Murray Gardner: [00:46:57] But God, that sounds good. So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to ban guns. That sounds great, never happened. We’re going to get rid of handguns. No, you’re not, never going to happen. What about doing something with a criminal? I had a policeman say to me one time, want to get the guns off the street. Okay, so you’re going to leave the criminals on the street and take the guns off. Well, uh. No, no, the gun on the street will do anything all by itself, but the criminal in and out of jail. Doesn’t make any sense. 

[00:47:27] But again, it’s emotional. Somebody uses a gun and commits a crime. Yes, that tears people’s hearts apart, as it does everybody gun owner or not gun owner. Now we need a whipping boy. We have to punish somebody for this crime. Normally they will take their own life. So we have to punish somebody. We can’t get the guy who’s committed suicide with a gun, who’re going to pick on. Look at those guys, they got guns, they’re exactly the same. They have a gun, they must be bad like this guy was.

Travis Bader: [00:47:51] Yeah. If we could just get rid of all of those guns, the bad guys will go.

Murray Gardner: [00:47:54] And I’ve watched it for 42 years. It’s the same language, the same bureaucrats. 

Travis Bader: [00:47:58] Is it getting worse?

Murray Gardner: [00:48:00] It’s getting more honorous, but it’s not gettin, I mean, I still jump on an airplane, fly somewhere and shoot a match. I got more paperwork, I have to spend a little more money. I have to educate the person at the gate, at the airlines. We always joke how we went through this one airlines four, we went through four different stalls. We all filled out the form. I came out one side, I had a white piece of paper, person beside me had a yellow, person beside had a pink, person beside had nothing. 

Travis Bader: [00:48:24] Well, it wasn’t that long ago we had a guy from, where was he flying from? From Vancouver to Ontario or, maybe it was the other way around. But he gets on, I think it was Air Canada is with, and they didn’t understand the rules and they ended up giving him his trigger locked lockbox gun.

Murray Gardner: [00:48:39] Yes.

Travis Bader: [00:48:39] To take on a plane. 

Murray Gardner: [00:48:40] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:48:41] And he gets to the other side, even though he explained hey here’s the rules, here’s all the things, and they said, no, no, this is what you have to do. And they put him on the plane, gets to the other side, and they tried to charge him. I don’t know what happened with that one. Did you ever follow that one?

Murray Gardner: [00:48:54] No, I never did follow that one up. I had an interesting event when I went to nationals a couple of weeks ago. The ?? went to nationals and they pull my bag and I’m standing in line waiting for it. They’re inspecting it and they’re inspecting this girls in front of me. They pull out a little pocket knife. They open the knife up, but I think, Oh, that’s too nice a knife, you’re going to lose that. They it up and hand it back to her.

[00:49:12] So she walked by and I said, well, you got lucky. She said, yeah, it’s the right length, I can carry it. Now this year I go to get on, they drag my bag out. What’s in there that’s electronic? Oh, I’ve left a timer in my bag. That’s fine. What’s this? It’s a holster. What’s this? Oh, that’s an UpLULA mag charger. Anngg! Wrong answer. I should have said it’s a hand strengthener. 

[00:49:32] Oh, well, hang on. Now my plane’s getting ready to leave, I’m watching this guy walk around and then the guy in the suit comes up and I think, Oh no, I’m buggered. There’s 50 bucks down the drain. We can’t give this to you, sir. I said, it’s a piece of plastic, but if you need to keep it, you keep it. They also took all my allenhead wrenches that were longer than about four inches.

Travis Bader: [00:49:48] Oh c’mon.

Murray Gardner: [00:49:49] But they let me keep the three inch ones. So I don’t know if I’m going to dismantle the plane with the bigger ones while I’m in the air.

Travis Bader: [00:49:57] Or weaponize the Allen keys. 

Murray Gardner: [00:49:58] Yeah. Or, I don’t know what I was going to do with that UpLULA mag charger. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:01] That’s a dangerous item.

Murray Gardner: [00:50:03] Apparently, according to them. And I was all incensed that I was going to write to traffic people and say, you know your people, this is what this is, you. I thought, you know, something. Pearls before swine. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:12] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:50:14] Not worth the energy. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:15] Oh, that’s it. 50 bucks for that. How long is it going to take you to put this out and the effort that’s going to be involved. 

Murray Gardner: [00:50:19] Yeah. Yeah. And fortunately, the guys on my squad and when I told them that, they all laughed and they gave me a Mag charger, so I had went anyhow.

Travis Bader: [00:50:24] It all worked out in the end.  

Murray Gardner: [00:50:25] So I’m borrowing magazines, I’m borrowing mag chargers. I should’ve borrowed a gun. I always do better when I borrow a gun.

Travis Bader: [00:50:29] You did well with a borrowed gun. Oh man. I wonder if Randy ever looked back and regretted lending you that firearm at the time. 

Murray Gardner: [00:50:36] Probably, but you know something. He’s one of those athletes that goes, God damn, I got beat by a guy who shot better than I did. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:41] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:50:41] Then he came along and thumps me all the time now so.

Travis Bader: [00:50:43] Yeah.

Murray Gardner: [00:50:44] Vengeance is mine. One of the times at the world shoot in Florida, they came up to me and they said, we want to do a group conversation with a bunch of people who are out the match with some of the top shooters from around the different countries, and it was Rob Letham and it was myself. I don’t think Todd Jared was at that one. So I said, sure. We’d like you to be on the podium with these guys. I said, okay, how long do you want? And they said, well, what do you mean? Well, how long do you want me to talk? 

[00:51:04] Five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days. You pick. And I always feel a warmth in the room when they stand up in one of our meetings and I say, ?? and they hear, Oh God. But it’s something I like to do. I like to share my knowledge, and I always tell guys, if you need an answer, call me. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll send to somebody I know can help you. If I know it, I’m not trying to keep secrets.

Travis Bader: [00:51:25] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:51:25] I’ll tell you everything I can to help you be successful and get involved in the sport. And as I tell all my classes, when I share my information with you, it’s not about you, it’s all about me. Because if I get you involved, you’re going to pick up the workload somewhere and I don’t have to do something. If I manage things well, I don’t pick up anything, I just listen to reports. 

Travis Bader: [00:51:43] That’s what a good manager is, right?

Murray Gardner: [00:51:44] God, I hope. 

Travis Bader: [00:51:45] Yeah, exactly. 

Murray Gardner: [00:51:46] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:51:47] Well, how can people get in touch with you?

Murray Gardner: [00:51:49] There’s a couple of ways, you can go to the infamous MDGardener.com webpage, there’s a thing there that says, call me, I’m big on the telephone, old guy. Email me, I respond, text me, never hear from me again. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:00] Right.

Murray Gardner: [00:52:01] Not a text guy and somewhere, a buddy of mine is laughing because he knows he texts me, but he puts a dollar sign in, he knows I’ll look. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:08] So not a text guy, but an email guy. 

Murray Gardner: [00:52:09] Yeah, and telephone. Because I found when I answered a question on email, it raised two more. While that domino just kept going and going, a pyramid kept building, I said, just phone me. In 10 minutes I can give you all the answers you need, you don’t have to type and my fingertips aren’t bloody from pounding on a keyboard. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:25] With technology changing, the advancements in IPSC and your own personal business, how do you find keeping up with that? 

Murray Gardner: [00:52:33] Pretty easy. I just stay in my old rut. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:35] Yeah. 

Murray Gardner: [00:52:35] Every now and then they drag me into the 21st century kicking and screaming. You know, I found some things, like when the tablet training came alive for scoring. I looked at that and went, absolutely. And IPSC BC, our provincial organization put aside $25,000 last year. So we have kits in six zones in the province. So when you’re in Prince George and you use a tablet and then you go to the Island the next weekend, it’s the same tablet and printer. When you go to the Kootenays and next weekend, same tablet and printer.

[00:53:01] And we returned to our members. We were financially very sound in IPSC BC so we return it to the members, they get a return on their investment. And when the technology changes, we’re just changing our webpage and our IPSC BC webpage, we’re going to do online memberships. You know, we’re wrestling through some of that, but we’re going to relook at that, update it.

Travis Bader: [00:53:20] Yeah. That’s something I think we could probably help IPSC BC with as well too. 

Murray Gardner: [00:53:23] Well, and they should come to you and I think that that’s good if both groups reach out to each other because I don’t think I’ve got all the best ideas in the world. I like my ideas. 

Travis Bader: [00:53:32] Sure. 

Murray Gardner: [00:53:32] But if somebody’s got a better one, I’ll steal that from you in a heartbeat.

Travis Bader: [00:53:34] And you know, it’s the same thing we tell everyone too. Said, here’s the idea that we have, here’s a solution that we have in place, but if someone else can do it better, go with them, use them. That only makes sense. 

Murray Gardner: [00:53:44] Yeah. Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:53:45] Thank you very much for coming on this podcast, really appreciate your time. I mean, that’s our most precious commodity is our time and you’ve. 

Murray Gardner: [00:53:51] I’m 71 you’re absolutely right.

Travis Bader: [00:53:54] Well, I better book you in for another podcast quickly if we want to make sure we get more here. 

Murray Gardner: [00:53:58] Yeah, yeah, let’s go to lunch and come back and we’ll do another one. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:01] That’s right. I love it. 

Murray Gardner: [00:54:03] Well anytime, I love to do it and happy to share with the audience and yourself anything I can about shooting, shooting sports, my perspective on business, whatever it takes. I’ll share it. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:12] Awesome, Murray, thanks. 

Murray Gardner: [00:54:14] My pleasure. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:14] And that concludes this episode of The Silvercore Podcast, thank you for listening.