When the 2025 NRA World Shooting Championship kicked off last October, it brought together some of the best shooters in the country and served as a proving ground for one of the NRA’s most modern competition programs. The NRA America’s Rifle Challenge program, better known as ARC, stepped into the spotlight with two stages that emphasized practical shooting and real-world rifle skills.
In this video filmed at the 2025 NRA World Shooting Championship, NRA Competitive Shooting Division Director Cole McCulloch walks viewers through the ARC stages and explains how the program is designed to scale from local clubs to national-level events. It is a reminder that ARC is not just a match format. It is a framework for building skills, community and confidence with the AR platform.
ARC is the NRA Competitive Shooting Division’s answer to a simple question: how do you create a structured competition that also functions as meaningful training for today’s responsible AR owner? The result is a three-part program made up of ARC Level One, ARC Level Two and ARC Two-Gun. While all three components are available to clubs nationwide, the 2025 NRA World Shooting Championship featured ARC Level One and ARC Two-Gun, giving competitors and spectators a clear look at how the system works in action.
ARC Level One is designed to be accessible. It can be run on indoor ranges as short as 25 yards or outdoor ranges stretching to 100 yards, making it viable for clubs with limited space. At the NRA World Shooting Championship, the Level One stage was modified to fit the match environment while preserving the program’s core purpose. Each shooter was equipped with a Fostech Stryker rifle chambered in 5.56 mm NATO with a Vortex LPVO Viper 1x8 optic and suppressor. (All firearms and ammunition are provided at the NRA World Shooting Championship.)
Shooters began the stage by loading magazines and moving to a purpose-built barricade, engaging a 100-yard flash steel target that provided immediate visual feedback with every hit. From there, competitors advanced to close-range drills around the 10-yard line, focusing on speed, accuracy and reload efficiency under time pressure.
The stage blended positional shooting, rapid target transitions and deliberate reloads, all while keeping shooters shoulder to shoulder. At the championship, competitors fired roughly 20 rounds on the modified course of fire. In a standard ARC Level One match at a local club, that round count expands significantly, reinforcing repetition and skill development. The emphasis remains the same: solid AR manipulation, consistent accuracy and confidence across distances.
If ARC Level One is about fundamentals, ARC Two-Gun turns up the tempo. At the 2025 NRA World Shooting Championship, the Two-Gun stage added a high-capacity handgun to the mix. Guns for this stage were the LWRCI IC-MkII rifle (5.56 mm NATO) with Vortex LPVO Viper 1x8 optic and the SAR9 Sport pistol (9 mm FMJ). Shooters began with the handgun, engaging paper and steel targets while making constant decisions about positioning. Efficiency mattered as much as marksmanship. The best runs came from competitors who minimized movement, planned engagements in advance and avoided unnecessary steps.
After safely placing their handguns in a bucket, shooters transitioned to the rifle portion of the stage. Cardboard barriers forced engagements from specific angles, preventing shortcuts and rewarding stage planning. The course finished with steel targets at 100 yards, shot from a barricade under time pressure. Every miss added cost, reinforcing the core principle of action shooting: speed only matters when it is paired with precision.
ARC Two-Gun reflects the program’s broader philosophy. Winning is not just about pulling the trigger quickly. It’s about managing equipment safely and executing a plan under stress. Those same principles translate directly to training value, which is why ARC has gained traction with clubs looking to offer something beyond static drills.
Beyond what was seen at the 2025 NRA World Shooting Championship, ARC as a whole supports rimfire ARs, pistol-caliber carbines and suppressors where permitted. ARC Level Two, which focuses on dynamic AR-only stages in bays or open terrain, rounds out the program and bridges the gap between flat-range fundamentals and full multi-gun competition.
ARC’s blend of competition and training continues to grow nationwide. For clubs and shooters interested in bringing NRA America’s Rifle Challenge to their home range, more information is available at arc.nra.org.
