SSG Horner Wins USPSA Multi-Gun Nationals Overall Title
Soldiers from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) Action Shooting team won two titles at the 2014 U.S. Practical Shooting Association Multi-gun National Championships, April 18-20. SSG Daniel Horner won the 2014 overall title, while finishing first in the Tactical Ops Division for an unprecedented sixth time. USAMU teammate SGT Matthew Sweeney won the Heavy Metal Tactical Division.
It has been an impressive April for Horner. Daniel started off the month winning the U.S. Special Operations Command Int’l Sniper Competition with teammate SGT Tyler Payne. After that, he won his second straight 3-Gun Nation Pro Series Tour win before securing this latest national championship. The win marks Horner’s sixth national title in the Tactical Ops Division, the first shooter to ever accomplish that feat.
Even after six national titles and a ranking as one of the best sniper teams currently in the world, Horner said he’ll never get to a point where he thinks he knows it all.
“I learn something every day,” Horner concluded. “I can learn something from every single person shooting and use it to help someone else or help me.”
Unlike other competitions that focus on short-range shooting and shooting on the move, the Practical Shooting Association Multi-gun National Championships test shooters using odd-positions, barricades, stage planning, and long-range rifle targets in addition to moving quickly through stages.
“This year the shooting was difficult, but the speed at which you had to make the shots was so high that you couldn’t make any mistakes,” Horner said. “You would run out of shotgun ammo at some point if you missed one shot and (that’s a ten point penalty.)”
Horner and Sweeney Train Deploying Soldiers
Highlighting the difference between AMU shooters and their civilian counterparts, after the USPSA awards ceremony, Horner and Sweeney jumped on a plane to train soldiers preparing for deployment. The USAMU applies lessons learned from marksmanship competitions to training Soldiers for combat and raising the Army’s Marksmanship proficiency.
