ATLDave

Yep. It's like riding around with no seatbelt in your car. Why would you do that to someone who gets in an accident with you? Put your stupid loss of life on their conscience? It's a jerk move. You want to stay home and gouge out your eyes? Knock yourself out. Want to come to where I and my friends are trying to have a good time safely and make it partially our problem when a piece of frag slices your eyeball in half? GTFO. I have absolutely no patience for this nonsense. I think the rules are clear. If they're not, that's something HQ could productively do.

Taking off ears while pasting is one thing. Taking off eyepro while someone else is shooting steel is another. It's being inconsiderate of the shooter to put that kind of risk of their splatter causing an eye injury anywhere near them.

The main reason, IMO, to shoot JHP's rather than FMJ (flat-point or otherwise) is to avoid exposed lead at the base. Lead exposure is a thing, and atomized lead from the base of bullets being inhaled is one of the things that can get it into your bloodstream. The hot gasses don't ever hit the exposed lead at the nose/cavity of a JHP, so it stands to reason they atomize much less lead. If you shoot infrequently and only outdoors, or plan to die young and leave a beautiful corpse, this may not matter to you. I do a lot of indoor shooting, and I'm already too late for the beautiful corpse plan, so I care.

Jeez, with the number of times I've been knicked by frag from steel shot by another shooter, I wouldn't even think of stepping into a bay with shooting going on without eyepro. Heck, I learned how to wear contacts just so I could wear wraparound non-prescription lenses rather than my regular eyeglasses, which leave the sides of my eyes exposed. WTF are these morons thinking?

Huh. It's almost as if some people haven't noticed that the tactical "caliber wars" go back and forth over time.

As others have said, splatter is usually towards the side, not the rear (particularly with forward-falling poppers where things are not being "driven down" with multiple shots. But here's another question - going prone usually involves a time hit (and a big one if it's not the last shooting position). Sounds like you are making the prone position the riskier position in terms of any miss hitting a no-shoot. Why? If one option is slower and riskier, that doesn't really offer a big choice. In my experience, if you want people to pick the prone option (when it is not absolutely required), you need to offer some significant benefit to doing so. Making the prone shots riskier would seem to work against that. Maybe it makes sense in the context of the rest of the stage.

Very common with any of the "long" chamberings (10mm, 45ACP, 38 super) in Tanfoglios. Has to do with the amount-of-travel with ejector engagement more than slide velocity. People can really start making problems for themselves when they start overspringing these guns chasing reduced brass ejection distance or less "primer wipe" (common term for what you've described/pictured). If you're determined to change it, changes to the ejector are required. Or, you could just ignore it. Because it isn't harmful and doesn't signal anything harmful.

Yep, radios or some other efficient method of getting hold of the MD... pretty useful to preserving competitive equity. If for some reason there's just no way to do that, I think that talking to the squad ahead of you about how they understood the WSB/start position/prop condition is pretty standard. And then making sure to tell the squad behind you. Because, as we all know, designer's intent isn't the issue... it's competitive equity. If all the squads do it the same way, then it's equitable. It may not be what the designer had in mind when they built the stage or wrote the WSB, but it's equitable. Get the MD, but if there's some reason that's not feasible, at least make sure you're not the squad that does it different and causes the stage to get tossed.

The future of USPSA:

Doors have to go. A percentage of shooters will absolutely sweep their weak hand while reaching for a door knob. Or a pull rope to open a port. It's "possible" to reduce or eliminate those unsafe actions by removing those challenges from the game. Heck, what about uprange starts? There's no doubt that some people draw the gun too fast (or turn too slow) and thus manifest an unintentional unsafe action. We could reduce those unsafe actions by having all downrange facing starts. We already did it for PCC, so it's clearly not essential to the sport. You mention fault lines as a trip hazard. You know what else is a trip hazard? Running. If we really want to maximize safety and guard against unintentional unsafe action, having all shooting done from a stationary position would dramatically reduce the risk of falls. I say again: This is just bonkers.

It should be quite obvious that I and others do not agree that the rules says what you think it says. Nobody is saying to disregard a rule - we’re saying that one reading is better than another, and that the practical effects of how the rule is read help inform which reading is better. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nobody says it is impossible. It is impracticable in many cases, though. It requires a serious additional level of effort and material and/or abandoning lots of interesting stage dynamics. CHA-LEE explained it well.

Conjecture: People who build a lot of stages/matches are more likely to think DNROI's new rule interpretation is a big deal. People who just show up and shoot are less likely to think so. People who shoot in areas where stages with lots of uprange/downrange movement are common are more likely to think this is a big deal, whereas people who mostly shoot matches where most of the targets are on the back berm and/or where most of the movement is horizontal will think this is NBD.

I think that's how the rules read, too. It's possible to have targets visible from past 180 (most matches have this) that nevertheless have berm behind them. It's unsafe gun handling to try to shoot them from that position, but it's not an "[un]safe angle of fire." Conversely, it is possible (though illegal and dangerous) to build a stage with targets that present unsafe angles of fire without breaking the 180. A bay with short side berms and a front fault line uprange of their end, with targets at the 175°, would present "unsafe angles of fire," without any 180° violation. Same with a stage built with targets at the top of the berms. I ran an indoor match for several years. The backstop was a backstop, but the side walls were just cinder blocks. Complying with the "safe angle of fire" requirement meant no sticking targets against those side walls such that on-target shots would risk smashing though the cinder blocks and flying outside the range.

You beat me to it.

Breaking the 180 is "unsafe gun handling" not "[un]safe angle of fire." Those are different concepts in the rules. That's how the rules are structured.

This whole discussion makes me glad I stepped down as an MD at the end of 2018! MD's don't need another, never-before-required thing to troubleshoot in their stages, much less something so labor-intensive and equipment-heavy to solve. The DNROI may or may not be correct in his reading of the rule, but casually tossing off a major change in a Q&A article is not the way to announce a reading that is at odds with extensive precedent.

I have never seen that. Or at least I've never noticed it. This is madness.

At an area match a few years ago (2015 maybe?) - a huge match with something like 600 shooters - there was a stage where the shooting area ran along the left berm. Targets were against the right berm and back berm. Shooters began at the rear of the range and had to advance down that left berm line to get access to targets behind a wall near the rear berm... along the way, shooting at targets against the right berm. Now, there wasn't anywhere in the shooting area where a shot could be taken that would hit a target and leave the range/bay. But the whole stage was basically a 180 trap, with it being very easy for a shooter to slightly overrun a target and break the 180. I thought it was kind of a stupid design and it basically dared shooters to engage in per se "unsafe gun handling." But I don't think it posed any actual safety risk in terms of rounds going anywhere other than a backstop/berm. I shot the stage very timidly and poorly. I would have been happy to see the stage tossed as an illegal stage! But it's hardly the only one I've ever seen where there are absolutely targets visible past the 180 and the MD/CRO/RO regard it as being "on the shooter" to know where the 180 is and not break it.

I read those sentences as expanding upon the concept. That's all within the concept of "angles of fire." That part of what "angles of fire" means. It's distinct from the "uprange" concept, which is relative to the shooter. I'm not suggesting that the DNROI's statement is unequivocally wrong (or right). I'm just saying it's a cavalier approach to something that is sufficiently ambiguous in the rules (no surprise that there's ambiguity in the rules... that's normal for rule documents) to warrant consideration and deliberation... especially when dropping a pronouncement that is at odds with a great deal of practice.

I think it's funny (not ha-ha funnny) that DNROI's recent answer on this question didn't seem to consider that "safe angles of fire" is a defined term in the rules - just 2 ¶'s up from the 2.1.4 rule. "Safe Angles of Fire – Courses of fire must always be constructed to ensure safe angles of fire. Consideration must be given to safe target and frame construction and the angle of any possible ricochets. Where appropriate the physical dimensions and suitability of backstops and side berms must be determined as part of the construction process." This indicates that the term "safe angles of fire" addresses things like berms and ricochets. For instance, placing a target high on a berm such that rounds are leaving the range is not a "safe angle of fire." I think that is a distinct concept from the 180° rule, which is discussed in terms of "uprange." "Uprange" doesn't appear in the definition of "safe angles of fire," and "safe angles of fire" doesn't use the word or term "uprange." Now, a target that could be shot from within the shooting area that would put the bullet so far to the rear that it leaves the bay... that would be both "uprange" and a violation of the "unsafe angle of fire." Certainly, as evidenced by this thread and by the long history of sanctioned major matches with "DQ trap" targets that can be engaged well beyond the 180° line, this is at least something reasonable people can disagree about. DNROI acting as though this is a throwaway, slam-dunk issue is silly. If DNROI wants to issue a clarification or ruling on this matter, that's fine. Either answer is perhaps appropriate... but continuing to act as though significant departures from established practice/interpretation are NBD when the text is ambiguous at best is tiresome.

I've been shooting 10mm Tanfoglios for about 10 years.* I just go with the Henning guide rod and slightly heavier recoil spring. I would note that this has mostly been the with the Match model and a little bit with the Limited, rather than the base steel or poly guns. Lots of folks go down a silly path with 10mm Tanfos because they misunderstand the role of recoil springs in tilting-barrel locked breech guns, and because they misconstrue brass ejection patterns in them. Recoil springs aren't what hold the action closed - that's what the JMB-derived locking system does. They are also relatively ineffective in "saving the frame" from "battering." And heavier springs will do more to "batter" the slide and slide stop cross-element on closing. I have found 16 or 18 lb springs to be sufficient. These guns will put 10mm brass into low earth orbit. That's not because they are "undersprung," as many wrongly believe, but because the ejector is part of the frame assembly (sear cage) and is intended to accommodate top-end assemblies of a variety of calibers including 9mm. When the slide begins to move to the rear, the extractor claw (on the right side of the chamber when viewed from above) is pulling on the rim. After a certain amount of travel to the rear, the left side of the brass's base contacts the ejector. These two inputs are working against each other, and "pop" the case to the right and up - springing it free from the extractor's grip and throwing it clear from the action. In order to get enough ejection force on the smaller and less-energetic (from a recoil-driven-system perspective) 9mm cartridge, the Tanfoglio ejector is quite long... much longer than is necessary for, say, 10mm cartridges. Result: Brass go far. 10mm Tanfoglios, in my experience, eject and feed very reliably, but they do toss the brass a long way. If you want to tame this, removing some material from the ejector is the way to do it. I can't speak to the difficulty-of-racking issue, except to say that I don't have any difficulty with it. I have moderately strong hands, but not the orangutan levels of grip strength that a lot of elite competitive shooters posses. I do think the slide-in-frame design of these guns makes the old-fashioned "slingshot" grip far more effective than the now-fashionable "overhand" grip. I pinch the rear serrations between my thumb and the proximal interphalangeal joint (google it, this is the most precise term) of my index finger of my left hand. I think this is the best option for these guns when sprung at 16 or more pounds. (With 8lb gamer recoil springs, all kinds of other options work.) * I "roll my own" ammo, and, yes, a chunk of what I shoot is "real 10mm."

When I got mine (~4-5 years ago), there was only the "competition frame"/square guard insert. I don't know why Stock II's versus Stock III's would require a different insert.

I've just started using a kneelingatlas comp on a 9mm LTD converted into an open gun. It seems very effective. It is long, but since it's aluminum, it really doesn't feel heavy when shooting or holstered. I just use a DAA racer holster, so I have no idea whether a muzzle support holster would accommodate.