Quote Originally Posted by barrow_matt View Post
It does seem to be political correctness gone mad when a wheelchair bound shooter with a rest is allowed to shoot in a free-standing unsupported rifle competition making it virtually impossible for an able bodied person following all the rules to compete.

Benchrest sounds ideal!
Yeah, a rested rifle in a standing competition seems excessive. Sitting isn't so bad - I've tried shooting from a wheelchair and I found myself to be less stable than when I'm actually standing because the position you're forced into actually precludes some of the positional features you can adopt when free-standing (even though it looks like it would be far more stable because you can supposedly only wobble from the waist up!).

For example, most standing shooters thrust their waist forward to rest their elbow on. You can't do this in a wheelchair because leaning back will almost certainly end with you leaning on part of the chair or the wheel. This forces a very vertical torso position, which is actually less balanced than in standing when you can manipulate your position to bring the centre of balance back a bit (imagine trying to shoot when stood absolutely vertical with feet together - not apart. You're swaying all over the place!).

However, if they're on a table/rest, my feeling would be that they should really only be participating in prone competitions where the use of a rest or table is not offering much more stability than being prone (or indeed less stability. My prone is better than my benchrest ).

Hard to say without seeing the exemption and knowing the exact nature of the disability.
Under international disability rules (i.e. the Paralympics), prone is approximated by resting on a table/bench from a sat position (either with sling, or rest depending on classification), whilst standing is approximated by sitting but being otherwise unsupported, which in terms of difficulty are quite good approximations to the able-bodied versions.