While attending the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation annual dinner in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night, one topic of lively conversation between the shooting-related industry members on hand concerned the new shooters coming into the sport.

The question was a simple one "are shooters coming into today's shooting sports different from past groups?"

After several conversations, it seems the image of today's modern shooter bears about as much resemblance to yesterday's shooter as the modern sporting rifle resembles bolt and lever action rifles. They fire bullets, but in different ways - and driven by different goals.

My generation, guys who now are the aging (OK, older) guys in the industry - looks like we qualify for senior discounts. Unfortunately, that age gap has caused some confusion when it comes to new shooters.

Not a matter of being out-of-touch as much as a generational difference. For example: those of us who were shooting in the 1960s remember how "un-hip" it was to be a shooter - unless you were from a hunter. Police were regularly referred to as "pigs" and soldiers returning from Southeast Asia weren't exactly welcomed back with open arms.

Today's new shooters are products of an entirely different baseline of experiences.

They have seen gang violence and terrorist acts.

Soldiers and "first responders" of today are revered, not reviled. Consequently, today's shooters are more interested in personal defense than hunting, and favor the kind of weaponry they see used by soldiers and law enforcement.

Those preferences make them excellent candidates for competition shooting, especially practical shooting. After all, they see firearms as being necessary for the ultimate practical purpose- personal defense.

And the younger shooters of today area a product of the video game.

From Call of Duty to Halo I through XVII or whatever, gamers are all about their equipment. On Wednesday evening, Michael Bane told me that older shooters come up to him and ask generalized questions about some aspect of shooting. Younger shooters, on the other hand, come up to him and ask questions like "do you think the SCAR -heavy is too-big to be practical in a close-quarters battle situation?"

"Kids in the video game generation," he explains, "are capable of talking about the intimate details of firearms, even if they're ten years old. It's important to them. It's also amazing that you can get that kind of question from a ten year old kid."

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