JFlowers

and some people wonder why we have things like the Darwin Awards?

Since in USPSA we normalized scores as a % of the lead dawgs score, I would like to put the following thought on the table .... Given any set of stages; hard, long, hoser, run and gun, whatever; the distribution of competitors will not change dramatically. The GMs will put on GM performances and the C and D shooters will shoot to the best of their ability, but the end results will be reasonably the same regardless. My score is going to be about xx% of Chris Tilley, Jon Merricks, and Larry Browns regardless of what the stages look like. So the "setup stages to make Group A slow down" in the end accomplishes very little. Unfortunately, the "slow them down" attitude seems to be widespread among the shooting sports.

Redmist10, Your friend might have been refering to The Quick And The Dead with Sam Elliott (based on a Lamour novel) rather than The Quick and The Dead with Sharon Stone. But you have to admire the punch line ... "You're not good enough to beat me!" .... "I am today!"

When I was running the non-USPSA 3 Gun match at WGGC, I talked to a lawyer friend about this. He helped me write a fairly reasonable waiver. While state law gives the waiver no real power, his advice was that should anything ever happen the signed waiver could be used to prove that the injured competitor knew and accepted a certain amount of risk. While it did not waive the club's responsibility, it could possibly reduce the amount of liability the club had. As to dealing with clubs that force you to sign a waiver that you feel is unreasonable, I guess the best thing is to vote with your feet.

Ron, One way to deal with the issue is to buy a "generic" plaque and have screw on plates with the year, division, class, and place. That way any of the plques left over can be used the next year and if there is no 3rd Place Limited-10 D-class award presented then all you are out is the brass plate. Generic plates don't have to be dull. With the match logo or USPSA logo, match name, etc you can design a nice plaque that can still be used year after year.

Yes, there is a sequel to the Starship Troopers movie. Its called Starship Troopers:Hero of the Federation. Basically a bunch of grunts in a firebase surrounded by bugs awaiting evac while being turned one at a time by a new type of bug that burrows in and takes control of you. Straight to video crap. And there was also a Starship Troopers cartoon called Roughnecks.

Starship Troopers was written by Heinlein. Great book ruined by a movie and the sequel was worse. Battlefield Earth was wriiten by L Ron Hubbard. An semi-decent book that was made into a pitiful movie. The problem with making it into a movie is the book is a good 3 inches thick. This was written early in Hubbard's career and is a decent SciFi novel. Its two sequels are a downhill slide. His second try at SciFi Writer stardom is a decology (sp!) thats 10 books. And it was a rapid downhill slide. 2 Fast 2 Furious ... poor movie, but its been a great commercial for the automotive and aftermarket industry! Torque..... how can you not like a movie starring a bike with a RollsRoyce Jet Helicopter motor? My vote for the worse movie that was so bad it was funny ....Remo Williams:The Adventure Begins!

The problem with COMPETITIVE DEFENSIVE shooting is how do you score a stage with no rounds fired? I mean isn't that the perfect outcome of a real life hostile situation, that the presence of an armed victim or armed bystander willing to intervene stops the situation before it devolves to gunfire? How do you consider something "good training for the real world" when its starts with the premise that the primary purpose of deterance has failed?

Reading some of your responses has really made me aware of how lucky we are here in the Peidmont of North Carolina with a large group of clubs each on an average of 1 hour from each other. So from the city of Charlotte, there is a club within 60 minutes every weekend except the 4th.

Typically three a month (Spartanburg Practical on the first weekend, Rowan County on the second, Competitive Shooter of Statesville on the third) plus two or three majors thrown in and a couple of 5th weekend specialty matches. James

Once upon a time, I was one of those gunrag reading newbies who thought IPSC required a $3000 racegun, then I read some material about Limited 10. Hey I can shoot that with my Ruger P90...... ...... and I did. Okay it was a less than competitive gun, but I went, shot, AND HAD FUN! Loads and loads of fun! Now I bring friends whenever possible. Usually talking to them about Production or Limited-10 and often handing them my guns and gear. We need to be bring a new shooter! Using Front Sight as a newstand public magazine would be tricky. It would take a different level of writing to take articles from interesting to you and I, to interesting to Joe Blow shooter. Also, and Chuck this is not a dig on you in any fashion, the advertising would have to change. Looking at Nov/Dec 2004... inside cover Infinity Sighttracker, next big ad Brazos Custom BCG Pro Sx, next Shooters Connection with 4 guns 2495, 2295, 1995, 1795, and finally a big ad from SigArms for "reasonable" guns as Joe Blow sees it. Now I understand that high end products have better margins and allow the sponsors to take bigger ads. But the ad space would have to be much more balanced to attract Joe Blow. But we do need to get the message out, some how.... James (who now has spent the money for a tricked out L10 and an Open gun as well)

Geez! My poor pockets feel highly under appreciated and empty. Right Front - Truck Key on ring with Gerber micro Left Front - little change, folded cash Right Rear - Wallet (a very small on at that) Left Rear - Empty. Cell Phone, Pager, PDA all are worn on the belt. When not at work the Pager and PDA are replaced with the 1911 in an SOB holster.

During the Competitive Shooters Of Statesville Match today, my FirePoint sight (UK built sight in the Doktor/Optima/JPPoint family) quit. I changed out the batteries but the sight did not come back. So...... Does anyone know who might work on these sights? One of the local shooters has a CMore at a nice price so I am going to replace the Fire Point, but I would like to see what it would take to repair it. Or am I just as likely to get it fixed passing it off to one of my electronics specialists at work and letting them see what they can do? James Flowers

I am looking for some advice on mounting a red dot scope on my Rem 1100. If I use a B-Square style mount I am afraid it will interfere with the Tec-Loader brackets when I finally get a Tec-Loader. So what method are most people using? James

Its a conspiracy between the owners of the news media and the owners of the bread and milk companies!!!!!! By forecasting horrible weather, the TV ratings go up and the sales of bread and milk go up. Its a conspiracy I tell you!!!! Sorry, I will go take my medicine now.

If my memory from the days in the gun shop serve ..... The answer, federally, is yes if by resident alien you mean the holder of a green card. But you have to prove residency. Usually that is a power bill or phone bill that shows you have resided at a residence for at least 90 days. BUT you also have to meet all state requirements for the purchase of a handgun which may or may not disqualify you. During the period I worked at the gunshop we only had one non-citizen purchase a handgun and I remember it took several calls to the local ATF office to determine what the rules and requirements were to complete the transaction. The following link ATF Online concerns a green card and purchase of a firearm. Other questions around it concern other types of non-citizen individuals and firearms.

Well, it ain't much of an accomplishment, but I finally got 4 classifiers done in Open and got out of Open U. But I have been seeing my classifier scores improve so hopefully my new Open D card won't last long at all. James

Over beers one night after a day of shooting (where else do great ideas arise!) a group of shooters from multiple disciplines where discussing this very issue. Since most of us either have Shooter Connection Tournament bags or the small Dillon bag (from one of many vendors) the SC bag won out. But we ended up with two improvement that we thought would make it near perfect. (1) Sell the inside bag as a seperate item, but include one with the bag purchase. This means a shooter could have multiple inside bags preloaded for different disciplines. Personally, I find that the gear in the four outside gear pockets doesn't change, its all pretty generic (parts and tool kit, suncreen, eyes and ears, timers, etc), but when I have a USPSA shoot on Sat and a SASS shoot on Sun, it would be handy to have two inside bags. (2) Modify the big outside pocket and remove the magazine pounches. Rather than having 8 fixed magazine pockets, have two horizontal strips of velcro and detachable 1/2 width accessories. So an Open/Limited/Limited-10 shooter might order the bag with two 4 magazine inserts, while a Revolver shooter might order it with two speedloader or moonclip holding inserts. A 3-Gunner might order a spare insert that holds rifle magazines. This would greatly enhance the flexibility of the bag. But other than that its a darn nice bag! James

I use it a lot for my Cowboy guns, but the wife complains constantly that it smells like dirty socks!

Now that some of the "Why" is on the table, I do have definate opinions on those issues. Sponsorship: If Kimber, Wilson, Colt, etc where sitting at the table with respectable sponsorship deals based on changes to the rules, then that would be a reason to consider change. "If we make these changes, sponsors might come" is NOT a sufficent reason to consider change. Membership: I agree with many of peers here that this will not affect membership. You can shoot L10 and Production today with a minimal (no gun-based purchase is cheap, but relatively minimal) outlay. Heck, I started with Ruger P90 and aftermarket 10rd mags. I have started a friend of mine shooting L10, his Springfield WWII Mil-spec 1911, my 10rd magazines (sometimes shared), whatever gear we could cobble together. He is having a blast. He doesn't get to shoot as much as he would like, but thats life not rules, divisions, or anything else. Anti-Gun States: Guys I hate to sound like I am putting you down, but we as a national division of an international organization can not bow to the whining liberal {descriptive terms removed} anti-gunners. And we need to stick to our guns, the rules should reflect that with those areas under unconstitutional laws asking USPSA for and being granted local variances to keep playing under the laws. So some poor guy living in Arizona has this huge box of S_I 140mm and 170mm magazines in a closet, bagged by who owns them and the California guys pick them up or have him ship them out when they go to competitions out of state, while they play with the same guns and 10rd magazines in state. The 10rd rule for Production should be an administrative rule to level the playing field between all brands of guns (Kahr, Glock, Spingfield, ect), not a concession to the Brady Bunch. In the end, I do not see a goal here which I find sufficent to support a change in Limited 10 rules. I like Limited 10 the way it is, and like shooting my Kimber with McCormick 10rd mags out of old discontinued Safariland gear I found on EBay (who says you can't do this on a budget). And as far as Limited 10 goes, why not just change the Production rules to allow any factory gun limited to 10 rounds for administrative purposes. Thats makes as much sense to me as changing Limited 10 does at this point. The most change I would support is making Limited 10 into Single Stack only with Limited's rule set. And I would only support that as the lesser evil if Leave It Alone was not gonna a viable option.

Change in and of itself is neither good nor bad. What makes a change good or bad is the reasons for that change. Personally, I have no problem with change, but I don't think change without reason is a good idea. I shoot L10 with a dressed out Kimber .45 using 10rd singlestack magazines. I like that setup and I think its as competitive as I can be. If we change to SA guns, SS magazines, and non-race gear, then we have created two Production classes and I don't see why we would need them. So, Gary my question becomes... Why? What is the long range goal and does the current L10, a new SingleStack, or something else fit that goal better. Is it membership? Legal? If a proposed change creates a better fit for those long term goals then I would support that change. But I don't see any information here that leads me to support it.

Shot a "Polite Society" style match. They gave away Death Certificates (score below some threshold), Arrest Warrants (Darn no-shoots!), and "I Survived" Certificates (score above a certain threshold) depending upon your performance. No high scorer or anything, everyone got one of those three certificates. I still have the Arrest Warrant. Darn no-shoots!

Thanks guys for the info. I emailed John Amidon and he got back to me very quickly. His opinion matched most of those here. While he did not think removing the scope cover was a violation of 10.5.1, his recommendation was to get in the habit of removing it as part of my response to LAMR.

10.5.1 is the same in both the Jan 2004 IPSC rulebook and the Dec 2004 USPSA rulebook. So I would like to hear Vince's opinion.

Rule 10.5.1 in the Dec 2004 USPSA Green Book states "10.5.1 Handling a firearm at any time except when in a designated safety area or when under the supervision of, and in response to a direct command issued by, a Range Officer." Now, I know at one time there was some discussion of "popping" guns in holsters, in other words, pulling the pistol just past the lock of a holster and the letting it relock. John Amidon hand issues a rule interpretation that this was "handling" the firearm and even if it was just a tension habit needed to stop. My question concerns FirePoint/Optima/JPPoint sights. Does removing the cover from the sight mounted on the firearm (which acts as the sights on/off switch) and throwing it in the range bag while a shooter is "on deck" or "in the hole" count as "handling" the firearm? Or should this be done under the "Load and Make Ready" command only? Just looking to not develop bad habits that no one cares about at the local level and get me in trouble at the major match level! Thanks