Potential GR&P Rule Change

When the Gallery Rifle (GR&P) discipline was founded, many of its rules were inspired by those of the World Association 1500 (WA1500), the governing body for a wide range of handgun shooting. Over time, we’ve refined the GR&P rules based on experience and common practice.

One of the common practices adopted by many UK GR&P shooters has been around reloading. Many of our events involve shooting two or more strings of 6 shots within a time limit which includes reloading. Many shooters took to loading with 6, shooting 5 and then reloading with a round still in the chamber; this gives a small time advantage, particularly with our .22 semi-auto rifles and Long Barrel Pistols (LBPs) as these would not need to be re-cocked. Other shooters stuck with the “load 6, shoot 6, reload” practice mandated by the WA1500 rules even though we didn’t specifically include it within the GR&P rules.

The UK is a founder member of the International Gallery Rifle Federation (IGRF), which is the governing body for international GR matches. Other members include Germany – where “load 6, shoot 6, reload” is a rule for GR, i.e. “load 6, shoot 5, reload” is specifically not allowed. In order to ensure a level playing field across all IGRF international matches, regardless of host country, the IGRF adopted a new rule in its 2023 Manual:

1.69 In all IGRF International Team Matches, all loaded rounds must be fired before reloading commences. For example, the historic practice of “load 6, shoot 5, reload 6, shoot 7” is NOT allowed.

This rule was of course in place for the IGRF international matches at Phoenix earlier this year. The GR&P Working Party have reviewed this and we are considering introducing this rule into the 2024 GR&P Handbook for all GR&P shooting.

The reasons for this are:

• To encourage all GR&P shooters to get used to reloading in the international standard way rather than potentially mixing two techniques depending on which match or country they are shooting in at the time.
• To ensure a level playing field for all GR shooters next time the UK hosts an IGRF World Championship, which includes individual World Champion awards (based on scores shot in the main individual events) as well as shoulder-to-shoulder international matches.

We realise that, if we introduced this rule, many shooters would have to relearn an ingrained reloading technique. We would therefore not penalise anyone for getting it wrong during the 2024 season; ROs would be instructed to remind anyone seen using the wrong reloading technique about the rule change but would not start applying procedural penalties for using it until the 2025 season.

If you have any comments on this potential rule change, please email them to gallery@nra.org.uk.