ATLDave

IDK about the particular stage and description the OP references, but a lot of shooters seem to think "standing, facing uprange" means tucked into a half-crouch, curled in a ball perched atop feet that are kinda square to uprange. They also seem to think "wrists above shoulders" means wrists at or around the middle of the pectoral muscle, as measured before bending at the waist. Some shooters seems very bemused when I'm running the timer and actually pay attention to this stuff.

Well there's your problem right there.

Having different preferences as to how, in a vacuum, "production" should be structured in the abstract is all well and good. However, where a division has existed for years, is extremely popular, and people have invested real money (collectively millions of dollars, to be sure) in gear that conforms to/is advantageous under the current rules, then equipment rule changes should be undertaken only in great need. It's not enough just to have some bare personal preference for less reloading, or to think that the name "production" somehow implies full-capacity use of magazines. You need to have some actual, important reason for seeking a rule change that would be detrimental to all the shooters who like the division the way it is and have bought gear in reliance on the existing rules. Consider, for a moment, the cautionary tale of USPSA's revolver division. Revolver was never the biggest division, but there was a time when it was pretty active. There were a small number of gun models that were universally regarded as optimal, and everyone who shot revolver seriously had one (or more) of them - moonclipped N-frame S&W's, mostly 625's. USPSA decided, however, that people shooting revolver would enjoy the greater capacity of 8-round revolvers. So they allowed 8-round minor revolvers. Suddenly, the previously-optimal gear was now at a serious competitive disadvantage. A few people ran out and bought new revolvers with 8 rounds. But the division mostly just lost shooters. Now, revolver is (sadly, IMO) a very marginal division. Many matches with 100+ shooters will have zero revolver shooters. Moral of the story: Don't screw with equipment rules for established divisions without a compelling need. "I wanna" is not a compelling need.

Exactly. The "production" division is not about shooting guns "out of the box." The division, as it has developed (and been embraced) is about juggling magazines 4-5 times per stage. Personally, that's not what I want to do. But that's part of why I shoot LTD. If a large majority of committed production shooters wanted to change the mag limits, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But, at least where I am, most of the non-casuals who shoot production really like the 10-round limit. That's a big part of why they shoot production. So changing it would screw them.

Correct. Of course, I don't see many people shooting "bone stock" Glock 34's in production, nor are most of the guns in limited actual custom guns.

That's not what the division has ever been in the US. As we have pointed out repeatedly, there are many, many guns that you can buy and take out of the box and be excluded from Production, magazine size aside. You can't go buy a 1911 with 7-round mags and shoot production. You cannot go buy a Glock 17C and shoot production, regardless of how many rounds you put in the magazine. Production is not defined primarily by "out of the box." It just isn't. Very, very few people who shoot more than a handful of matches in Production have a gun that is anything like "out of the box."

You say that as if it is self-evident or persuasive. Maybe I think I shouldn't be forced to compete against guys with 171mm magazines and optics just because I want to put a compensator on my gun. But I would, because the essence of limited (the division I typically shoot) involves the lack of any comps/ports. If I get it into my head that maybe I'd like one of the core restrictions removed, I shouldn't expect all the people who are currently invested (both mentally and in terms of money spent on gear) in the current division to go along with my scheme.

One of those is for-sure not legal in production. I don't know whether anyone has bothered to get the Shield on the list. 1911's, being SAO, are not production legal, no matter how many are made. Thus underscoring that mass-production is hardly the only defining characteristic of the division. You're missing the point. For those who are invested in production currently, a central part of the appeal is lots of reloading. They LIKE it that way.

You don't. Just shoot limited. The essence of production is managing DA or striker triggers, reloading a lot, doing it without magwells or thumbrests (or optics), and using some kind of gunbucket holster behind your hip. People who like that stuff shoot production. People who don't (like me!) shoot LTD or some other less-restrictive division.

The homologation rule exists for production, but it is not the only equipment rule. Just as in motorcycle racing, there are typically other rules around things like horsepower or other characteristics. Lots of single-action-only guns are "produced" in large quantities. Should those be "production" guns? DAA has cranked out a heck of a lot of their Race Master holsters over the years. Should those be legal for production division because they are "produced" in large numbers? Just because the name of the division is "production" doesn't mean that the only, or even most important, equipment rule defining the division is homologation. I mostly shoot limited, and my limited gun is definitely a production gun - not custom-made. It came from the factory with a single-action-only trigger and a magwell and a frame drilled for a thumbrest. It violates a whole bunch of production division rules, even though it was certainly produced in numbers well above the 2,000 unit threshold.

?

Only once or twice. Not for 6+ stages.

Heavy steel guns and light polymer ones definitely behave differently in recoil, and the trigger of a striker-fired gun versus a nicely-tune hammer-fired gun is certainly different. I think for shooters who have really, really learned to manage recoil effectively and track sights well during recoil, the differences in recoil are actually not quite as noticeable. Similarly, shooters who have a very straight-back/neutral trigger pull ingrained are not as much impacted by a longer and heavier pull. I think the difference in feeling is bigger than the difference in measured performance, but I do think both are real... and more real for some shooters than for others. Comments from very proficient shooters about how gear doesn't matter often strike me as being similar to a golf pro saying blade irons versus cavity-backs don't make any difference. If you're puring it off the sweet spot, that's true... but most non-pro's aren't. And most USPSA shooters don't have perfect shooting skills, and aren't likely to get perfect in the next couple of months.

I have dipped the spring ends in Testor's enamel paint. A good deal of it will flake off during use, but enough will remain for ID purposes through many, many rounds. You do have to pick a color standard and stick to it!

That's true, insofar as it goes, but the situation is not presently better. The N-minus-1 thing causes serious misclassifications now. The PCC thing, as you note. Similarly, most semi-auto shooters who put in 6 classifiers in revolver would likely come out overclassified. That's not really a percentage-versus-percentile issue, it's just a function of the anti-sandbagging/N-minus-1 rule. We could keep or drop that separately.

I think that goes without saying.

It's almost as though some people have never RO'ed huge numbers of new-ish shooters or something. I'm with you - safety is first.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The language is very clear. Safety warnings are expressly authorized. There's no doubt whatsoever that the plain language of the rules permits them. All that is open to discussion is whether they "should" be avoided or not given for some reason OTHER than the plain language of the rules. So if you want to stick with the strict rules, safety warnings are clearly, expressly, unequivocally, categorically A-OK. If you want to go beyond that (such as how you want the rules used or how you want RO's to behave or how the rules ought to be changed), then you necessarily get into the why of rules.

The rules explicitly allow safety warnings. 8.6 Assistance or Interference 8.6.1 No assistance of any kind can be given to a competitor during a course of fire, except that any Range Officer assigned to a stage may issue safety warnings to a competitor at any time. Such warnings will not be grounds for the competitor to be awarded a reshoot. The reasoning for this should be self-evident: it's because safety rules (and warnings and DQ's) aren't there for competitive reasons. They're there for safety reasons. Safety is paramount.

You are assuming that the safety rules are there for competitive reasons. They aren't. They are there for safety reasons. In the example given (advising the shooter to safe the SA gun before holstering), no competitive assistance is being given. Not a single thousandth of HF will be gained. No target will be made easier, no time will be saved, no penalties will be avoided. A safety infraction (for which the only remedy is the end of competition for the shooter) will be avoided, which is to the non-competitive, but real-life, advantage of everyone in the match.

A very thoughtful and well-articulated post. I agree.

That looks like it may be a really powerful, cool tool. Sadly, not being a coder of any sort (my grade matched the programming language when I last attempted coding in college some 20 years ago - C+), I have no idea how to use that. I have a passing familiarity with stats, but writing code queries is beyond me.

Thanks! That’s what I was curious about. That’s also similar to what I think HQ ought to provide publicly for all classifiers and all data/scores within some window of time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

How are you pulling this data? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A percentile-based system would continuously adapt. That's one of the main things it would do and one of the reasons it would be a superior system.