Vlad

You can want it to work that way, but it doesn't. The organizer, range, and rule making body are always going to be held responsible. We are dealing with guns which puts us a disadvantage to start with you. Plus big boy rules as an excuse is never going to fly if the person hurt is a junior.

Did you check the match hotel? Hampton Inn N/Convention Center 1204 Berryville Avenue Winchester, VA 22601 If that fails, try the Hampton in in Martinsburg WV, that one is actually closer, but less stuff around it.

Well we are just circling around arguments that have been made and answered on both sides now. Damn it. He did find the end of the internet. FML.

Your forgot the getting sued part, the insurance liability part, the new/young shooter, the RO interference part, the unsportsmanlike DQ thing, etc. Also, here you go: http://www.endoftheinternet.com/

You can also do it this way: The quads are not perfectly aligned, they are ever so slightly stair stepped, but I can't tell the difference in practice. Note the critically important high strength polymer ELS anti rotational device (ie: ziptie)

I didn't know there even were multiple length of that piece, it was whatever came in the mail. Invictus needs a chart of all their stuff, or at least offer a night class graduate level course in "Assembling Invictus Gear"

Oh come on, you should have seen my first attempt at that post, I was linking alternate ways for him to entertain himself on the internet, but then I decide to just be mildly sarcastic so I don't get banned

Yep, and that's the same thing. I'm of the mind set that asking the shooter to run back to get his ears while handling guns, getting annoyed at the poor stage run, losing focus, etc is a safety issues. I know that some people can do it safely, maybe even most, but how about that 15 year old? How about random new shooter? I know we want to think we are all big boys, and maybe in something like 3GN that stuff can fly, but 3gun is no longer an exclusive club of well experienced shooters. It is the price you pay for growth. If you want a mature sport, it needs mature rules sets.

Forget a the explicit .357 sig, base it on case diameter. What everyone worries about is a equipment race for more rounds in 140mm mags. Set the limit not on 40S&W or 357sig but case diamter no smaller then .420". This way even if your undersize die makes the 40 case smaller then the nominal 0.424" all its good. Then if someone wants make major with a neck downed 40 they can knock themselves out. I wonder if you can make major with a .224 bullet in a 40 case.

I'm sorry that a conversation about gun safety has disrupted your afternoon.

Bah .. I'll be impressed when you do it in a match on a backup stage, turn around and engage targets backwards while walking away

Any handheld can take input from paper scoring, it isn't as if EZWS has a scanner plugin with scribble recognition. You can run android and iOS software in emulation on your desktop. It isn't the simplest thing but that could be packaged. Money is a different issue.

The X-die does what it says on the tin, but that doesn't mean it "works" if process is broken. What I mean by that is that keep track of every case you've used and when and making sure no other random brass gets in there and so on, its just a pain. I can't figure out a process that keeps that straight with zero failures so my x-die is there now as a final check and popping media from the flash hole. I size/decap with a lee die on a turret press, clean the brass of lube (sometimes), check it for length with the dillon gauge, trim it if needed, then run it through the 550 with an x-die in place. I need a better method, but it is what it is for now.

I'd say shoot it and keep an eye it. If the hole starts to wear or crack, send it back to S&W with a "how about now?" note

Actually, I think it is a stage design failure, but that is a different conversation. I should clarify something. As a shooter, I don't care about this, I'll shoot under almost any rules. I care about this as an RO. Here is the scenario that concerns me: Shooter runs around and his visible ear pro comes off. Shooter does not indicate he has noticed and he is setting up for rifle shot. There are two possible scenario's here. The shooter has plugs and all is fine or the shooter does not and he either doesn't care or doesn't know he has lost his ear protection, but as an RO I can't tell if he has plugs or not. What do you do as an RO? According to this thread, I let the shooter shoot and then DQ him, or I start asking him questions without stopping him. I find both options unacceptable. If I allow him to shoot and he doesn't have ear protection, through my inaction I have allowed a shooter to be injured. That is simply not acceptable for an RO, and dare I say a decent human being? DQ'ing after that is just adding insult to literal injury, an injury I could have prevented. If he turns out to have had plugs and I distract him asking him about it without offering him a reshoot, I may have ruined his match or altered his order of finish. No reshoot for him, so my interference has directly affected his match. I don't find that acceptable either, to say nothing of the possibility of abuse by a cheating RO. That never happens, right? The only reasonable option to me, wearing RO clown shoes, is to STOP the shooter before he hurts himself. If he has plugs, I will apologize and he gets to re-shoot the stage. If he doesn't, then I just saved his hearing. You can say that at that point the shooter gets whatever score he has, or a stage DQ or a match DQ, but if you go down that path you inviting shooters to do other possibly unsafe gymnastics to restore their hearing pro if they notice it. I find that to be a poor choice as well. And for what? SO we can say its his problem?

How about getting a re-shoot because the trees along the path in the woods for the stage are not exactly trimmed for 6+ ft people and snag your ear protection? Is the answer that must tie them to my head? This isn't a hypothetical, its something that happen to me many years ago. Mind you, I fixed my gear and kept going while ducking vegetation, but I wouldn't really call that a gear failure.

Do we all at least agree that we might be able to spare another half sheet of paper in the rule pamphlet to least document this?

So what does this accomplish or prove? I get what you think should be done, what I don't get is why. How does it enhance the experience for everyone, or affect the competitive fairness? How does doing it different affect it? I mean, I get that if the answer is "real men mind their ears pro, and we are testing if you are real man" then I suppose we can stop discussing it, I'm asking about what you are trying to test with this sort of rule in the context of competitive shooting event, specially when you look at the possible negatives folks like to ignore or fail to address (such as lawyers). As my buddy joked today, there are at least two sets of rules at every 3 gun match, if you are lucky, the rules written on paper and the rules of the world outside the paper. You can't really ignore the second set for too long before they catch up to you. If you are unlucky, then you also have unwritten match rules you are supposed to somehow guess.

Huh. I actually bought both lengths of mending plates and for some reason the 5.5" ones didn't seem to line up for me. Maybe they do and I was looking at the wrong holes to align, but if the 5.5 ones work then they are the answer of course.

Do you shoot 3 gun regularly? Yep, and I RO them and sometime even help put them on. I'm a Renaissance man! Yes resetting takes longer, but you know what, if I'm paying hundreds of dollars for a match, travel, hotel, ammo, etc, do us all a favor and take the time to reset a stage now and then for a reshoot. If you are talking about a local match, do as you wish, at a serious match with travel expense and prize tables and all that jazz, we need to make sure it is a shooting competition, not a penis measuring contest about who is the manliest man all men that have walked this man's earth. If "it takes longer" is the only valid reason for doing a reshoot, I personally don't think that is a very good answer. Additionally, to all the people that glorify 2 page rule books and make funny noises in the direction of the USPSA rule book, what range commands do your RO's use? Most of the two page rulebooks don't specify any. Can RO #1 say Make Read, RO #2 say "Get it on, cowboy" and RO #3 start the range commands with "Stoke it, stroke it, flip it, stick it"? Probably a bad idea, right? Yet almost everyone falls back to USPSA rules for that for some reason. I'm the last person to sing the praises of USPSA rule making, I rant about their goofiness all the time, but making simple and insufficient rules almost a badge of pride in opposition to the USPSA rules dictionary is just ill advised. If you haven't read the latest USPSA multigun rule book, you probably should, it is almost completely compatible with the "outlaw" rule sets, but addresses such meaning less things like range commands and hearing protection so you don't end up with one RO doing it one way and the next RO a different way. Unless somehow inconsistency is one of those man things I have to go look up.

So besides an issue of manliness and "life is hard, get a helmet" what exactly is the issue with stop and reshoot. I get the whole "but it's not my problem" thing, but what is the actual problem with doing so?

So you are saying you stop the shooter and presumably interfere with the shooter, but not allow him or her to reshoot? If the shooter was double plugged and would have been fine but now spent 5 seconds of his run answering the RO, he doesn't get a reshoot even though nothing about his performance or actions caused the delay? Personally, I'm thinking once the RO stops a shooter that stage is over. Either the shooter screwed up badly then that stage is what it is, or he didn't and then he deserves a reshoot. But thats just me.

it isn't just feelings, it is liability as well for the match, officials, and range. Plus there is the flip side, if the rules include a "must have hearing protection" and you don't stop a shooter who lost theirs, is THAT grounds for a contest?

I think an MD or rule set has issues if it doesn't include a requirement for RO's to do everything in their power to prevent injury to the shooters. Hearing damage is injury. If the MD has a problem with me as an RO preventing injury, then I don't want to be an RO for that MD, so really I couldn't care less if he looked up or down in my direction. Edited to add: and speaking of rules: http://www.rock3gun.com/files/ProAm%20Rules%202013%20%281%29.pdf Presumably if you have that rule you expect your RO's to enforce it.