Even the competitions organised then, the Hannigan Shield and Warren Shield, were confined to police personnel. It was unheard of for civilians to take part in police competitions at the turn of the century.
It took a long 22 years before shooting was introduced to civilians when the Penang Free School’s cadets became the exclusive ones to try out the sport and given proper shooting training in 1925.
As the sport grew in popularity, shooting enthusiasts, especially police personnel, felt there was a need to organise proper Inter-State competitions. Thus the birth of the Osborne Shield in 1930. It continued uninterrupted until the Japanese occupation of Malaya in 1941.
After the Japanese occupation in 1945, the British Military Forces, English plantation owners and local hunters revived shooting with impromptu competitions. They treated it more as a hobby than a sport.
The proliferation of interest led to the construction of makeshift shooting range at the Wardiburn Camp in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur where some British units were stationed in the late forties and fifties.
Interest for the sport soon gathered momentum with the new Wardiburn Camp and a group of locals, led by the late Tan Sri S.M. Yong, formed a legitimate shooting association, now known as the Selangor Shooting Association (SSA), in 1948.
Initially the small group of shooters were more interested in hunting than target shooting. Nevertheless, some 20 to 25 enthusiastic licensed gun owners, spearheaded by the charismatic Tan Sri Yong, an Ex-Chief Justice of Malaya, eventually formed SSA.
Tan Sri Yong was also the founder president of the National Shooting Association of Malaysia (NSAM).
When and how shooting was introduced - History of shooting in Malaysia.
