PRONUNCE
NOMENCLATURE
HISTORY
Many public and private shooting range already existed in Italy since the end of the 18th century, and were mostly dedicated to passionate hunters and rich target shooting sportmen.
With the quick technological advancements of the early 19th century and the consequential widespread of mass produced guns, the Target shooting sport expanded from rich noblemen to a mid-to high class endeavour.
With the recently concluded 2 wars of unification and the Garibaldi expedition in Southern Italy, the now unifed country of Italy decided to invest in its own citizens, both in culture, with mandatory school for everybody (4 year of elementary school), and in pre-military training.
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On April 1st, 1861, the Italian Parliament (still in Turin) received the request of the Interior Minister, Minghetti, to allow every town to start a shooting range club and to create a State run National Shooting Range entity, (called Società del Tiro a Segno Nazionale) in order to properly offer a common guideline. This was in order to train Italian subjects into basic shooting but also incentivise a proper marksman ability in the more inclined people.
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Garibaldi itself was asked by the government and by the newly founded Tiro a Segno Nazionale society to spread awareness about the importance of this endeavour.
In a letter dated March 28th 1862 and addressed to the Mayors of the whole country, he stated:
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Charged by the Government and by the Management of the
National Shooting Society to promote target shooting
throughout the Kingdom, I willingly accepted the mandate.
To succeed in this intent I need the cooperation of everyone, and
especially of the richest, to give such a form to the places of
(shooting) exercise that will remove danger (to other people).
The rifle is the weapon of free and intelligent peoples; it is
therefore yours.
Everyone should give his name to the National Shooting Society!
Every province should have a shooting range!
If not in every town, at least in every district of the
Kingdom there should be a daily practice of shooting.
Italians! A million Rifles led us to Palermo and Naples.
A million Marksman will sweep, without needing external
help, the soil of Italy from the foreigner who still tramples it.
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(Codogno, March 28th 1862)
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The First National Tournament for Target shooting was held in Turin by the 21st to the 27th of June 1863, with 7 different categories and a total sum of the awards reaching about 100.000 liras (about $650k in 2025) and with several thousands competitors.
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In a later letter, Garibaldi urged again rich contributors to help uniform as much as possible the equipment used in the local societies, in order to further uniform training and competitions.
At first in fact, the guns used ranged from grandpa's shotgun to top of the line rifled repeters, and despite being divided in specific categories, the difference was still sensible, even during competitions.
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