kurtm

Hmmm.....the plot thickens a bit. 10.3.2 When a match disqualification is issued, the Range Officer must record the reasons for the disqualification, and the time and date of the incident, on the competitor's score sheet5, and the range master must be notified as soon as possible.....there is no mention of erasing the competitor! 10.3.3 states Scores for a competitor who has received a match disqualification must not be deleted until the time limit prescribed in rule 11.3.1 has passed. This is the only place scores being deleted is mentioned in the entire D.Q. section of USPSA rules. and nowhere can I find anything that says the scores must be deleted. I think what we are starting to see is a bunch of "pseudo rules" being assumed because it was probably a pain to keep them in, in the score keeping program. the rules DO NOT state that the scores be removed. They certainly shouldn't be included in overall match placement, but there is no RULE that mandates they disappear. So it appears that this was not meant to "teach a lesson", or to make a D.Q. painful, or even to force safety to the forefront of the competitors thinking. it was just a quick and easy way for the scoring to be done.

And with you last statement, we now know where the hubris resides.......but I digress.....when the Puffer Fish inflates and become all spikey, was it designed emulating yourself? BTW your welcome to stay.

Hubris: (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. Are you comparing yourself to the God's? If so, I've got some questions about your design of the Puffer Fish.

It was a U.S.P.S.A. local pistol match. If I rewrote the rules, you would like them! If I got more shooters the wrong way I would not like the way you would get new shooters. I never said relax the safety rules, enforce them just like we do now. How does erasing them teach anything?? Stopping them, telling them why, and not letting them continue is the teaching moment.

Philosophical question. Makes us examine the root of our rules and see if they still make sense or not. A great example of a philosophical debate that did end up in a change was allowing red dot sights into limited. Mike Pinto and I asked the question of should they be allowed. Everyone responded with a resounding NO.....because anything with glass is an optic! After seeing that this was a case of "well that's the way it always has been, we decided to do it at our club matches anyway, and see. Two short years latter U.S.P.S.A. contacted us to ask how it was going. Since we kept the data on how much our limited division grew, and how many new shooters it attracted, they made the change as well....and then the rest of the 3-gun world followed suit. Wanna know about a philosophical debate about target size.....Trapr and I proposed the 4 M O.A. idea, and low and behold it caught on, just because of a debate. Before everything was a 10" plate no matter how far away....because that was what always had been done. I am not wedded to this particular debate per see, but I was asked by several new shooters at our local club after two of them D.Q.ed at their very first match 3/4 of the way through. Their crime?? Moving their spare EMPTY HOLSTERED pistol off of the top of their score cards in the bag when asked for them from the R.O. . Handling a pistol outside of the safety area! Funny part the R.O. stood there and watched them dig in the bag for the score sheets and never said a word untill...your D.Q.ed. They both just wanted to know how they did on what they shot. Both L.E. and both won't be back. So here in lies the question.

I was vague on what keeping your points would mean on purpose to see where the debate would go. No I don't feel that if you D.Q. you get to win the match, I just feel that you shouldn't become invisible! I agree Denise, that people still break the law and it is retroactive......but a conviction doesn't erase the person's history from the world. I.E. there are several record holders in sports that committed felonies, and yet if you look up in the record book they are still listed.

No, not trolling, using this to prove the point that no matter how much safety we "codify" no matter how much we like to say this rule keeps us safe, or this person keeps us safe, we can't react to a safety infraction UNTILL AFTER it happens! Up untill this happens the shooter was deemed to be "safe" only on the merit of not violating the rules.

And as an R.O. why didn't you stop them from doing something unsafe? Isn't it an R.O.'s job to maintain and enforce safety on the stage? Letting someone launch a round over the berm doesn't seem to be keeping anyone safe.

Yes!!! Your score is your score but doesn't count towards match placement due to the D.Q.

I don't recall ever saying you would walk the prize table after a D.Q. maybe that is what you all assumed, but I have purposefully not made any sort of connection to that.

Ihavegas, where has anyone said "water down" the safety rules? As the "rules" stand right now we can't D.Q. untill AFTER the infraction has incurred. So, in your beautiful mown field getting shot in the ass is just as likely with erasing scores, or keeping scores. There is no change in that either way. Chuck, all good points to ponder.

Hi Larry!!!!!

bimmer1980, I agree the D.Q. should and could be a teaching moment. That still doesn't answer why you don't get credit for what you did right......at least in my mind.

Ahhhhhh.....think of a match as the gorge. Think of winning as the 100%. You can't win without all stages being complete, but if we follow your analogy, which I like by the way, and take a picture of the "non complete" bridge, we can still see that most of the bridge does indeed exist. A missing section does not make the rest of the bridge disappear. Even when the wind made the Tacoma Straights bridge "not complete" you could still see that a bridge had been there!

I agree with MikeBurges who posted "My thought is the match DQ is a huge penalty for the sole purpose of making shooters consider safety above all else, for the duration of the match". But not the part where the shooter would be more careless as the match progressed if the points counted. Winning is usually decided by 10 -20 points, and no one can afford to just drop 100 points by being more careless as the match continues. I also agree with Joe4d, falling is no excuse, but once again the falling and "risking lives" has already happened before anything can be done about it, points or not. What one does or does not do with the points earned isn't really material to the question of why they are erased. As for hero or zero, this is racing no matter how you look at it, and you can't D.Q. just for the way you interpret their intent or actions, until a rule is broken, and then the action is long gone before the STOP can be issued. (and yeah I don't really care for the hero or zero mentality either, but it can't really be stopped until a violation occurres)