ATLDave

Similarly, I think a lot of people who have never messed with race holsters don't understand the degree to which many of them still retain a gun amazingly well without the lock on... until force is applied along just the right vector to get the mechanism to release. Lots of people coming from kydex gun-buckets have a hard time adjusting to, say, a DAA Race Master because it will actually hold on to the gun very strongly unless your draw stroke is in-line with the channel the locking block rides in. You can hammer on the butt of the gun all day and (so long as it was properly put into the holster) the gun will not come out even if the external safety-lock has been taken off.

I'm not sure that having a retention device applied while waiting for the buzzer is actually providing any additional safety benefit.

It will make their painfully slow draw even slower, and even more painful to watch. Everyone is punished.

I can conceptually agree that, in and of itself, this is not a terribly important rule and it does have some the potential for the annoying effect wak' points out. HOWEVER, there are about a dozen other things in the rulebook I'd clean up before I messed with this one.

Devil's advocacy: A strap and a rigid, hinged bar are not the same. Webster's gives this as the first, most-common definition of a "strap": 1a : a narrow usually flat strip or thong of a flexible material and especially leather used for securing, holding together, or wrapping I'm guessing the language in the rules goes back to the days of leather holsters, and that's what they had in mind.

The rule says: 5.2.5.3 Unless specified in the written stage briefing, or unless required by a Range Officer, the position of holsters and allied equipment on the belt must not be moved or changed by a competitor during a match. If a retaining strap is attached to a holster or magazine pouch, it must be applied or closed prior to issuance of the “Standby” command. Is the lock on a race holster a "retaining strap"? No, not on any race holsters that I have seen. Is a hood a "retaining strap"? I don't know the answer to that question, but that's what you need to know. An email to DNROI may get you clear guidance on that. Regardless of the answer, it is "fair" if it is applied evenly - everyone has the same opportunity to buy (or make) gear that suits them and complies with the rules. So it's fair for the people involved. It might be "unfair" to strap-equipped holsters... if holsters were sentient beings with any claim to fairness. But they aren't.

Please re-read the question. I wasn't asking what division you think I should shoot. I was asking whether having fields composed entirely or nearly entirely of open or PCC guns is your desired outcome. Because that would be the outcome, without a doubt. I think that would be bad for the sport. You may think that would be good for the sport. I'm asking you to think about the inevitable consequences of your proposed rule change, and whether those consequences would be good. So, once more: DO YOU WANT THE ENTIRE FIELD TO SHOOT PCC AND/OR OPEN GUNS?

Right, those guns are at a disadvantage, and that's why very few who are remotely serious about this game shoot them. Division rules end up dictating what people shoot. I don't know what you mean by "true competitive equity." There are available divisions. If you choose gear that is reasonably well-tailored to those existing divisions, you will be on an equal equipment footing with others. If you don't.... well, you probably won't play the game for long. That's perfectly equitable. I don't know what equity consideration you think is being missed. As for the rest of the post, I seriously doubt that you do "understand" it, and your relentless attempts to inject "feelings" into purely rational decision making and logical effects of rule changes demonstrates that. Let me ask you this: DO YOU WANT THE ENTIRE FIELD TO SHOOT PCC AND/OR OPEN GUNS? Yes or no, is that a desired outcome for you?

IKR? Similarly, one might think that there should be 8 or 12 or 16 weight classes in, say, wrestling, but very few would think that the right answer is no weight classes (because then only the biggest guys will even bother with the sport) or 80 weight classes (because then it will be hard to find enough guys to fill the slots and have robust competition in each). What's the right number of divisions in USPSA? It's pretty obviously not 0/1 nor 16. Do we have too many right now? Reasonable people can and do differ. But the right answer is definitely not 0/1.

Revolver 6 is at a disadvantage, and that's why nobody shoots it. This nicely illustrates the dynamic I have been explaining to you. As many have pointed out, if your goal is to get 90% of the field to shoot PCC and the remainder to shoot open, you have a good idea. Otherwise, your idea is bad and will produce bad results. Also, it is very tiresome when people who have a bad idea respond to criticism by pretending that the criticism is based on "feelings." Stop it. Nobody has mentioned anything about "feelings" except you.

I'm not talking about pro athletes. I'm talking about amateur competitive golf and shotgun, which doesn't pay any more than USPSA. And YES it matters. People absolutely care about whether they are 30th or 50th or 150th. They very much care. I don't know how anyone could be unaware of this.

You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that a lot of competitive players in those other games are using seriously sub-optimal equipment. They aren't. You are comparing USPSA shooters to the full array of people who show up at a skeet range or a golf course. That's dumb. USPSA is an official competition. You need to compare the USPSA population to the competitive skeet shooters and the competitive, tournament-playing golfers. And very, very, very few of those guys don't have gear that is pretty closed to maxed-out in terms of giving them as much legal advantage as possible... with cost being the main constraint. The idea is bad, and based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how competition - as opposed to pure recreation - works.

No. Bad idea. And the idea of classes as handicap does NOT solve/help the issue. There are no equipment divisions in golf... and everyone who is doing any kind of competitive golf plays the most advantageous gear they can get. There is nobody still playing persimmon-headed drivers in tournaments, and then counting on their handicap to make up the difference. The only time you see wooden-headed drivers are either the specialty tournaments that require such gear (the equivalent of a division) or from guys who are literally not trying to compete and are just playing "for fun." Similarly, if you did away with divisions in USPSA, everyone who was trying to win anything would shoot PCC or open; at this point, I think most people would find it easier to win with PCC, so that's what the game would become. Only the guys shooting "for fun" would shoot something else. You know how long guys who just shoot "for fun" tend to last in this game? Not very long.

If you're bothering to upgrade off the M&P, I'd get the heavy metal frame... that's where a lot of the nice-ness versus an M&P or Glock comes from.

Yes. Same here. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, that’s what I do, too. Seems like telling the production shooter to lower his/her hammer is similarly appropriate. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So, is the handgun being loaded on an unloaded start not something that falls within the scope of RO's not starting shooters until they're in the correct start position? What is an RO supposed to do if a shooter loads their gun on an unloaded-start stage and assumes the rest of the start position? Should they start the shooter and assess penalties? Or should they not proceed with the rest of the commands until the shooter unloads their gun in accordance with the WSB?

The definitions section of the rulebook says: " The location, shooting position and stance prescribed by a COF prior to issuance of the “Start signal”" On its face, this doesn't appear to encompass equipment stuff. However, equipment stuff is routinely included in start positions, such as the location of guns and magazines (on barrels, on tables, etc.) and even their condition (loaded, unloaded, loaded-magazine-empty-chamber, etc.). ETA: 3.2.1 sets forth what each stage briefing must contain. It separately lists "the handgun ready condition" and "the start position." This would suggest that handgun status is not part of the start position, and thus would be excluded from the things the RO is supposed to ensure is correct before giving the stanby or beep. However, that would mean RO's are supposed to start shooters on unloaded-start stages, even if the shooter has loaded their gun at "make ready" and then... what? The rules were not written by lawyers. Everything in them doesn't connect perfectly. Some reasonableness is required on the part of the reader.

Everyone including himself!

I don't know about that. I have a Limited with the cut, but I think with the old-style frame.

Any MD who puts in tighter/harder shots to screw with PCC shooters is a real dumb@$$. Remember when Tiger Woods first came out on tour and was blasting the ball 60 yards further than everyone else (excluding drunken John Daly)? And a bunch of old guys got bothered by that, and set out to "Tiger-proof" various courses, by making them much longer and tighter? Well, that's exactly when Tiger started to completely dominate the game. The longer holes were only marginally tougher for him, but were vastly more difficult for the "traditional" tour pros. PCC-proofing courses of fire by adding harder/tighter shots is the same thing... of all the divisions, PCC is best-equipped to shrug that stuff off.

A great deal of stage design is "screwing with" shooters, anyway. PCC really is different. Unlike the other divisions, the differences in the game for them go beyond restrictions (or lack thereof) on their gear. A bunch of substantive challenges that are integral to the game go away (such as turning draws). I don't think there's anything nefarious or suspect about MD's trying restore rough analogues for those challenges. If the PCC shooters aren't there to just shoot matches on "easy mode," that should be seen as a positive by them.

The point is just that there are (or should be, if MD's aren't dimwits) a fair number of stages where 10-vs-15 does make a difference, because they're not all multiples of 8.

In USPSA, while stage designs cannot require more than 8 shots from a single view/location, only very lazy and hackneyed stage design will consistently have one 8-round array after another. Good field courses will often have many targets available from multiple locations, and/or things broken up into "uneven" batches of targets, thus posing interesting choices about where to reload and how to choose which targets will be engaged from where. Of course, in matches with MD's who don't have any understanding of what makes good stage design, we do sometimes encounter nothing but one 8-shot array from an obvious shooting location after another. But barring those kind of lazy designs, a 10-to-15 switch absolutely can make a difference in terms of strategy and choices.

Correct. That's exactly what it is currently "all about." Exactly that. It could be about something else. But juggling lots of reloads (without a magwell), dealing with a non-SAO trigger, and minor scoring is precisely what it is all about. It could be about something completely different. But all the people who are invested in the division as-is and who like it as-is might be put off. That's worth more than the opinion of someone who is not currently invested in the division.