Range365.com by Barbara Baird
They dress up as gangsters, cops, flappers, and other types from the Prohibition era. They use guns from that period, and compete while in costume. They say they’re “bringing back the Roaring Twenties!”
I’d heard about the members of the American Zoot Shooters Association (AZSA), but I didn’t expect to run into any of them.
It was a hot mid-summer day at the 2015 Industry Masters, an event held to raise funds for the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s First Shots program. This year’s event took place in Kansas, near the Oklahoma border, where temperatures hovered around 100 degrees, and the humidity spiked quickly into the soaking-wet zone.
Most of the handgun, rifle, and shotgun shooters were wearing shorts, t-shirts or shooting shirts, ball caps and cooling neck wraps … except for the three guys from Colorado wearing three-piece zoot suits. They even had ties and period hats from the Roaring Twenties. The Masters’ theme centered on the 1920s, so it was fitting that the AZSA showed up to run a side match that featured Tommy guns and single-stack Model 1911 pistols.
