rehn

http://blog.krtraining.com/2019-practical-pistol-reunion-1976-target-designs/

I was fortunate enough to attend an event in Sept 2019 where many of the original IPSC founders got together and shot early 1980s courses of fire. Most recent blog post on that event has high res pics of the original ITEM and OPTION targets with the original drawings from the 1976 conference minutes. Also re-hosted the PDF of the minutes (which aren't complete, since they don't include both target drawings). Those interested in such things might find the other posts in the series of interest. Still digging through notes and pics and have a few more posts to do, including a post of the 1977 World Shoot course book. http://blog.krtraining.com/2019-practical-pistol-reunion-1976-target-designs

Levels do come down over time if you remove the big exposure risks. At one point my level was in the 40s, but cutting way, way back on indoor range time, cutting down on shooting cast lead bullets, and taking all the precautions mentioned in other posts, got my number back down into the low 10s, where it's been for many years.

I've been down both training paths (tactical and competition). Some observations: Some 'tactical' classes are pure gunhandling and shooting classes, some put more emphasis on teaching you what to do in a real situation. Most competitive shooters don't need a "level 1 handgun course" where you are standing around watching the instructor teach untrained people how to draw and how to shoot. The "weaver vs. isoceles" era is pretty much over and just about every school teaches students fundamentals that came from the IPSC GMs. Being a competition shooter usually means that you are better able to handle mental pressure than those coming into "tactical" training with no prior training or experience. It also means that you probably have training goals and measure your performance when you practice. Those are useful traits to have when you get serious about tactical training. Shooting IPSC courses of fire is like playing scales or etudes from sheet music. You know what you have to do before you do it, and you can mentally prepare to perform that skill even if you only get one chance to do it "for real". Even when swingers and bobbers are involved, there are very few totally random events that will occur to disrupt you from executing your carefully designed plan of attack. Interacting with live opponents in a real situation is a totally different mental skill: like stepping onstage to jam with the Dead in front of 50,000 people, when you have no idea what song they want you to play, or where the song is going to go once it starts. All you bring to the stage is a familiar instrument, your fundamentals, and whatever ability you have to quickly react and adapt to what is happening. If you have more diverse skills and can execute them at a high level, that frees up valuable brain cells from thinking about "how to do it" to work on the problem of "what to do right now". That mental skill cannot be learned from any type of shooting competition, except for maybe the Polite Society annual event, where half the match consists of total surprise stages where shooters are given the absolute minimum information moments before shooting the courses of fire. Any sports or arts activity (sparring, paintball, basketball, improv music, role playing games or theater) that requires you adapt to the moment, in the moment, will develop that skill better than shooting competition will. Assuming that competition shooting is all that's required to prepare someone for a self defense situation is like assuming that learning static martial arts "forms" and punching a heavy bag prepares you for getting jumped by two attackers in a dark alley. Live fire training by itself provides no experience facing a live opponent who thinks and moves and talks and shoots and hits you back. I have run plenty of competition shooters through "force on force" scenarios. They rarely do any better at the "figuring out what to do right now" part than the untrained -- because they have no more training in that skill than those that are equally untrained in the mechanics of shooting. The key difference is that once competition shooters begin to understand how to function in an unknown, dynamic situation, when gun skills are needed, they have them 'on tap' and can use them. The bottom line in my opinion is this: if you are taking a class to learn how to shoot better, study with whoever is accessible to you that has achieved the highest level of documented skill with that firearm type. That's usually someone that shoots competitively. If you are taking a class to learn all the other skills that matter in a real situation (reading people and situations, making decisions about use of force, integrating unarmed/knife/pepper spray/handgun/long gun, post-shooting response including emergency trauma care, etc.), find someone accessible to you that teaches those skills that can't be learned at a match. It's insulting to assume that those that study the entire spectrum of self-defense topics with a focus on teaching people life-saving skills are "mall ninjas" simply because they have not made shooting high scores in a particular style of shooting competition their primary life priority. Some tactical instructors know a lot about shooting and are good shooters, some are less skilled but have expertise in other areas just as important. The solution to every situation is not "shoot two on paper, steel must fall to score" and even if is, knowing what to do (and say or not say) after the shooting stops may be as important as knowing how to shoot. Learning those skills takes more than reading gun magazine articles. It's one thing to read about how to give a statement after a shooting incident; another entirely to try to do it immediately after being in a "force on force" gunfight in training when your adrenaline is pumping and you are trying to sort out what happened in an intense few seconds. "Tactical" training classes will give you opportunities to practice skills that aren't tested on match day, so that when you need that skill for real, it won't be the first time you've used it. If you are armed for personal defense and don't believe that you need training in anything other than putting rounds into inanimate targets on match day, good luck to you with that. Karl

Everyone involved with USPSA's administration of the Steel Challenge should be locked in a room and forced to review the entire history of the match, both to understand why the people that go every year keep coming back and to understand why the changes Kerby introduced nearly killed it in the 90's. What failed was recognizing class winners, falling steel, and moving the location from Piru. Everyone involved should be required to shoot the match in 2008 as a competitor so they get to see it as it was before making any changes. Go back and study why Bianchi Cup has withered under NRA and why the SC came back from a coma to be as strong as it ever was. Moving the match is like moving the Kentucky Derby or the Indy 500 or Camp Perry or Bisley. The place is part of the history and character and personality of the event. The rules and the format and all the rest of it are part of the whole package. Here's the sales pitch I give people about steel shooting in general: 1) Fewer skills to learn. Draw, shoot. 2) Scoring. Easy to understand and getting "one to throw away' is attractive to new shooters. 3) Stages are known in advance so you can practice them. How to practice is much more clear and obvious with steel stages compared to IPSC. 4) Because stage scores are well known you can easily gauge your ability level vs. the top shooters. USPSA makes the high hit factors secret which achieves nothing in my opinion. 5) Magazine capacity doesn't really matter. You don't even need mag pouches to compete - just a holster. 6) .22 friendly - great for beginners and kids 7) Matches are much faster to set up and tear down. 8) Don't have to go downrange and reset for every run. 9) Shooting steel will make you a more accurate shooter and improve your draw and target acquisition which will raise your IPSC and IDPA scores. 10) Fun, fun, fun. Why the Steel Challenge in Piru is my favorite match and the best run match held every year 1) The match staff. It's not just the two Mikes that have made the match what it is. A lot of the staff has been working the match for years (decades?). The match is NOT "just for the pros". 2) If you show up and don't get DQed, you will get your match fee back in prizes even you are dead last. Most of the time the shooter's bag alone has $100 worth of stuff in it so even if you DQ you get goodies. 3) Side matches where you get to try new guns w/ random drawings where guns are given away 4) Scheduling. Half day on, half day off if you shoot one gun gives you time to enjoy the California sun and even drive to the beach. 5) Multiple entries. I had a ball shooting Limited _and_ Open this year. 6) Puts semiauto, DA wheelgun and cowboy sixgun shooters head to head. The data from Steel Challenge is a great source of knowledge about how optics vs iron sights and race holsters vs carry holster (IDPA class) affects performance, because you can actually look at data where top shooters very close in skill compete in the different categories or have double entries. 7) .22 pre-match 8) practice range 9) continuity in courses of fire make it possible to track your improvement year to year. It's much harder to do that in IPSC. Too many variables. 10) Location. Facilities, weather, staff, the 100+ shooters that have shot the match for years that keep coming back and keep it alive. More than anything I think changing the location hurt attendance in the 90's. Don't run off the "customers" you have now thinking that others will replace them. That idea failed once already. Things USPSA could do to really totally screw it up: 1) Require people to earn "slots" to get into the match 2) Run off all the staff that are part of the character and personality of the match by requiring that all match ROs be USPSA certified and be managed by a USPSA RM unfamiliar with how things were done in the past. 3) Move it to Barry 4) Change the scoring so that no overall winner is declared and it's all separated by division. 5) Spin off so many Area and regional events that all start asking industry for prizes that the 'big match' suffers (I'm all for more steel matches but the scale of the match is part of its appeal and industry sponsorship is often a zero-sum game) 6) Put a USPSA person that has never shot the match, isn't a steel shooter already, or is similarly out of touch in charge of it. 7) Eliminate recognition of the IDPA and SASS categories because they aren't USPSA divisions 8) Eliminate double entries because they aren't allowed in USPSA matches 9) Change the scoring 10) Decide that each year's match needs "brand new stages" so it's more like IPSC The least risky path is to make as few changes as possible and just try to maintain it as it is now. It isn't broke so please don't fix it. Karl

I had a conversation with "Evil Roy" (cowboy action shooter) about this several years ago. He has a lot of good info about prescription glasses selection for shooting on his website. His advice (which I've used) is to take a really sharp #2 pencil with you to the eye doctor. Instead of using the eye chart as your guideline for adding correction, have the doc dial in the sharpest focus you can get as you look at the tip of the pencil with both eyes open. This eliminates the need to bring the gun in to the eye doc and actually gives you a sharper/finer object than a front sight to use for dialing in your prescription. I've had to change my prescription every year for the past several years to guarantee that I was dialed in as good as I can get. FWIW the doc said that in my case Lasik was not a good idea because of the rate of change that's going on - I'd end up needing glasses again a few years after lasik to get the quality of vision I have w/ corrective lenses now. I got a set of Rudy Project sunglasses that had a very strong curve to them. We actually had to change my prescription specific to that frame to have less astigmatism correction than my normal glasses, all because the geometry of the prescription lens insert was different. So if you have highly curved lenses a prescription that's set for more standard flatter lenses may still cause visual distortion. I picked the Rudy Project because of their "racing red" colored lens. After spending waaaay too much time comparing and learning about all the various lens colors and companies on the market I determined that if I was going to use any tint I wanted glare reduction without color distortion. The Racing Red lenses have the least color distortion that I found in my search a few years ago. For me changing colored lenses and making any change in what I see vs. what I see driving to the range and pre-match is distracting. 99% of the time these days I shoot in my normal glasses and I get the best results that way. Personally I don't recommend asymmetric correction (one eye near focus, one eye far focus) because I don't think that's how our eyes were intended to work. To have good stereo vision and depth perception you need symmetric correction. You don't want the world to look radically different with your shooting glasses relative to your normal glasses particularly if you are running and moving. Karl

I've been shooting IPSC since 1988. That's a lot of stages. Most of the stages I remember had some novel twist to them. Just off the top of my head: Stages at Wally Arida's Norco club in the mid-90's where you started the stage straddling a telephone pole and had to draw and shoot over a wall (pic) http://www.krtraining.com/IPSC/Matches/1994/Lineman.jpg - several more pics from those matches here http://www.krtraining.com/IPSC/Matches/Matches.html The first time I shot a "window washer" stage with the wobbly platform. Same for the wobbly bridge prop at Space City in Houston. The Star Wars themed Area match up in the Northwet - particularly the stage where the "shoot" targets were white Stormtroopers and the noshoots were tan. Shooting from a helicopter (on the ground) in Phoenix. The flying pig no shoot prop at three consecutive Area 4 matches. Shooting the Texas Star in a match for the first time. The windmill prop at Texas Limited http://www.krtraining.com/IPSC/Matches/200...tage2/index.htm The "Flintstones" car that you had to push backward up the track with your feet at a big match in San Antonio. Karl

We are hosting Max Michel for 3 one-day classes at our range in Central Texas. We are 1 hr from Austin, 1 hr from Bryan, 2 hrs from Houston, 2 hrs from Waco, 2 hrs from San Antonio. Hotels 15 mins away in Giddings, 30 mins away in Elgin. Friday, July 27, 2007 Advanced Steel Challenge Course. $250/person. Limited to 6 students. Must be B class or higher or equivalent skill level to attend. Saturday, July 28, 2007 Steel Challenge Course. $200/person. Limited to 10 students. Sunday, July 29, 2007 IPSC Course. $200/person. Limited to 10 students. 1/2 tuition deposit required to enroll. Balance due on class day. Most of the slots are already filled but there are a few left in each class. To enroll visit http://www.krtraining.com For more information email me at rehn@krtraining.com or call 512-377-5144. I am not on this forum site as often as I should be so email or phone is a better/faster way to reach me than posting replies here.

It might be worth mentioning the clerk's behavior to the store owner. Either he's aware of it and doesn't care, in which case you should find a new place to shop, or he's not aware and would probably appreciate the heads-up. The clerk's not only representing the owner's business but also the entire firearms owner community. All we need is for that guy to be the one interviewed by the local paper or local TV reporter as an "expert" on gun issues before some referendum on firearms laws. Karl

I teach a lot of beginning shooters and see a lot of "gunowner/carry permit applicant" level shooters on the range in my classes. I have to deal with the results of all the bad advice people get from gunshop employees, mainly regarding equipment selection. It's a given that in every class I'll have one or two students that show up with guns that are totally wrong for them or poorly suited for their intended purpose. When people call about beginner training the first thing I tell them is "don't spend money before you take our class". Some listen. Some don't. I finally sat down and wrote up all my standard, very opinionated advice as a FAQ http://www.krtraining.com/KRTraining/Archi...rstgun2006.html One of the smaller gun shops in town is run by a couple of guys who have shot IPSC and IDPA and have been to several of the well known big schools. The largest family owned shop in town has apparently hired a few people that also have a clue, because students I get that have been in those shops are actually getting what I consider to be decent advice. Normally I avoid local shops whenever possible because I can't go in one without overhearing conversations that make me wince or laugh or bite my tongue. My most recent favorite was the guy at Sportsman's Warehouse that told a customer that he should get a .40 vs a 9mm XD because ".40 was more accurate". My thought at that point is that more than likely the customer would shoot worse with the .40 because he'll be flinching more. At least they weren't pushing him into a .357 SIG model. I assumed that the counter guy came to his conclusion because he'd probably shot a 9mm with a long heavy trigger that he couldn't reach and then shot a .40 of a different design that had a better trigger or fit his hand, so he got better results, thus (voila!) conclusive proof that .40 was "more accurate" than 9mm. Just the sort of thinking that passes for 'rigid scientific analysis' down at the gunshop. After having the 'bad equipment' problem be a continual pain we've finally decided to just get an FFL and start carrying an inventory of gear that one or more of our instructors would actually consider carrying or using on match day.

re: XD mag release. Cost for the average gun owner to grind a little polymer off the stock XD frame to make the mag release easier to hit: materials $0, labor $0 (do it yourself). Practical for street carry: yes USPSA says: illegal. The alternative is to spend money on an aftermarket part that is (in my opinion) something too large to use on a truly "practical" gun. It's not a part that's in stock at your local Big 5 or Sports Authority. The BarSto XD mag release I bought came with no instructions. I had to call BarSto and Irv gave me a good enough explanation that it only took an hour to get it installed the first time, with help. (For those that haven't installed an extended mag release on an XD, it's not easy like a 1911. Irv warned me that it was not a particularly easy install. My PhD shooter wife had to help me.) Practical for street carry: not really USPSA says: OK for "Production" (or it was when I bought mine) With the 10 round mag cap limit in Production, Production shooters have to do more reloads, thus the mag release is of more importance than it might be in Limited or Open. People with small hands that can't reach the mag release w/o shifting their grip have to choose between a reload technique that requires repositioning the gun in the firing grip twice, or a reload technique that uses a finger of the support hand to push the button. Both add extra movements (aka time and risk) thus decreasing competitive advantage. The XD at least has a truly ambi mag release that offers another option: using the trigger finger of the firing hand. You can only get the 2-pound match trigger by sending your gun to Springfield so they can install trigger parts they won't sell to gunsmiths - but that's legal for USPSA Production too. The rule against grip reductions in Production is discriminatory against people with small hands. There are physical limits to how small you can make a grip frame that holds 9mm ammo, and there are no single stack 9mm Production legal pistols with 10 round mags that' I'm aware of. Everything is either a fat gun double stack or a super-low-cap single stack like the Kahr models. The new single stack division is the only one that's truly small hand friendly since the best Lim10 gun is just a Limited gun run with 10 rounds in the mag. There's no valid argument based on cost, since trigger jobs that cost a lot more than grip reductions are legal, and neither are factory options outside the uber-custom gun market. Let's be honest: dropping the trigger pull from 6 to 2 pounds is going to make a _much_ bigger difference in scores than having a mag release that's 1/4" longer. All an extended mag release does is allow a person with small hands a chance to level the playing field against a shooter with a larger hand in a skill that's maybe worth 10% of any match. I think the biggest shame in the shooting sports right now is that between GSSF, IPSC and IDPA the rules have gotten so screwed up that my real carry gear (Kydex IWB holster, grip reduced polymer frame hicap pistol) can't be used as-is in any match. I either have to load down to less than 'street' capacity, change holsters, or change guns because the holster, capacity or grip don't meet the rules. Yet except for the manual labor involved in the hacking I've done on the grip and polishing on stock trigger parts, all my stuff is basically off the shelf gear. It's less hassle to shoot Open. "Logic is a bouquet of pretty flowers... that smells bad" - Mr. Spock

The big difference between OC and the Taser is that it's possible to continue functioning (at reduced capacity) after being sprayed with OC. The Taser's a lot more effective and has fewer after effects. Some OC training programs require trainees to punch a heavy bag or shoot an Airsoft gun after being sprayed in order to teach the trainees that if sprayed that they can continue fighting. One local dog trainer told me about a police K9 program that will spray OC into an area and then have the dog move in to go after the target - because that situation occurs and they have to condition the dogs to be willing to go into the OC zone. This link http://www.krtraining.com/KRTraining/Archive/KarlTaser.AVI is video of me getting a pretty good dose of the 26 watt Taser (the new high power one) at a trade show awhile back. Watch how tight the booth guy grabs me when the juice goes on. OC basically causes pain. The Taser jams your nervous system so you just can't do anything. At the trade show the Taser guys were giving away free T-shirts to anyone willing to "take a ride". They ran out of shirts and I foolishly agreed to do it anyway on the promise that they would send me a shirt later (which they did). In the video it doesn't look so bad but when the juice is on the connections between your brain and body basically cut off and you have no control over your muscles. When the juice is off your heart rate goes way up like you just ran as fast as you could for longer than you can. But after I sat down for 5 minutes and drank some water I went back to my booth and was fine for the rest of the day. There's a big controversy locally and nationally about the Taser and the one point that law enforcement fails to make w/ the public is this: ask anyone that's been hit with an open hand, hit with a baton, OCed and Tasered which one they would pick if they had to pick one to experience again. Of the small set of people I know that have had all those experiences they all pick Taser because of the minimal aftereffects (compared to bruises and burning). As for whether it's a good idea to have police experience all those things: absolutely yes. The downside to that approach (at least locally) is that Taser use has gone up (with lots of protests from people who don't understand or accept that it's less 'bad' than other options) because those that have been exposed to all the options reached the same conclusions I did about it.

I"ve broken and bent a lot of decapping pins on my 1050 -- almost all RCBS parts because I replaced the Dillon die with an RCBS. I'm using the EGW (Lee) die now for .38 super and its design seems to be more robust. When pin contacts something it can't get through it gets pushed back up into the die rather than bending. Karl

Several years ago I looked into this. It's not a simple problem. The PACT timer outputs in an infrared format that Windows can't understand. It's the old HP calculator printer driver protocol, and I found some PC software that emulated that HP printer, but could not find the source code for the HP emulator so that I could grab the data and stuff it into a Windows application. The problem I ran into was also that I could not directly access the IR port on the PC, because the OS handles all the access at a higher device-driver level. It appeared that solving the problem was going to take some serious development effort which was disappointing. I ended up ditching the whole idea, bought the HP printer from eBay and spent the time I would have spent developing the interface on the range instead. Good luck! Karl

There are a lot of great BBQ places here in Austin, and if you all you want is brisket or ribs, then maybe Leonard's is not the best place. However: the Friday night buffer has every kind of southern "soul food" you can imagine, all made with massive amounts of grease and fat and flavor. In Feb, Tom Givens took all the guest instructors to a Brazilian steakhouse place downtown, next door to the Peabody hotel (the one with the ducks). It was pricey but extremely good. I always come back from Memphis a few pounds heavier. re: gloves for Airsoft. I don't like using gloves because 9 times out of 10 the people using them end up having problems manipulating and shooting the Airsoft guns. I haven't found what I consider to be "ideal" gloves for FoF training yet. Hand hits are extremely common because skilled shooters always hold their guns center-mass - where the other experienced shooters are aiming. A lot of gun- and hand- hits happen that way. In some of the drills I told the 'bad guys' to shoot one handed to simulate an untrained shooter, but most people can't override their training under stress (good and bad). By shooting one handed and leaving the center chest area more open that prevents some hand hits. But sometimes people fixate on the weapon rather than the shooter and shoot the hand and gun anyway. (All things you simply can't learn by doing live-fire training, BTW). Can't promise I'll be a regular poster here. I've been a lurker for a long time off and on. Just can't seem to find the surfing time I used to a few years ago. Karl