Jack T

You got it!! Throw in some stages with a practical Long gun to Handgun transitions and go for it. That first "Multigun in Reno" was a fricking nightmare. I want to shoot not stand arround all day waiting to clear weapons and stage weapons. I just don't get this three guns on one stage or the practicality of it. I have the most fun at a typical one gun per stage format. I spent a career in the profession of bearing arms and see this as a sport not a wannabee a gun guy kinda thing. Multigun appears to be more of a paramilitary sport. If I shoot a "Multigun" match, I want to be physically challenged by long movements, obstacles, terrain, etc. Don't do it half ass!! Most of our venues don't lend itself to the open terrain and such. I watched that RM3G video with Horner and company and I was totally stoked!!! Now where else are you going to be able to do that? Definitely not anywere I have ever shot lately. Answer: USPSA should stick with single gun stage formats or what they refer to as 3-Gun Format. The rules and venues don't lend themselves to the "Multigun" format. Now if Kyle Lamb does another 3-Gun, I will definitly be there for that one. Kept having to cancel out because of taskings. Jack T

I have never shot a RM3G or similar venue, may do so some day, and I can see where the .308 guys want to get rewarded for Major PF when shooting against the .223. These are matches where the terrain will dictate what weapons platform would best accomplish the task and the .308 rules. The majority of the USPSA match stages are designed where the .308 is not competetive against the .223 and is not a viable choice. This is why it has its own division. It's like shooting a .45 in production, no problem, but you are still going to get scored minor. Why complicate the system for 1-2% of the shooters who may choose to shoot a .308 in Open/Limited/Tactical Divsion. I am not a fan of even having Power Factors. I have seen too many shooters beat the system. I should call it what it is; We have quite a few cheaters out there that bring hot loads for the chrono and shoot light loads during the match. We all know it happens. Hell, I have to be very careful when I shoot my 14" AR (16" Barrel OAL) that I am making at least minor. Most factory loads are just below the cut off so I HAVE to reload to make sure I make Minor. I like Comstock for reward of accuracy, I like Time Plus for ease of scoring/administration. I will score all of our local matches with the 6 points or better to neutralize, using the Comstock Major/Minor point structure with Time + scoring. I will do this for both pistol and 3 Gun Matches from now on. I was trying other systems, Straight Time +, etc. Horner system doesn't interest me as you are still dealing with too much information on a single target. Would have to walk arround with a score card to remember; how much down for major or minor corresponding to the hit on the target. I want simplicity that still rewards accuracy. This is why I think the 6 points or better to neutralize does both. The club decided to drop it's USPSA affiliation, so we are an outlaw club. Have more fun doing it like this because now we set stages up for fun and not have to worry about how many shots are taken from any position and all the other rules that get in the way of just having fun!! Regards, Jack T.

Been saying this for years, but I generally get more flack than I can handle in my fragile condition. I have no problem droping my Open Divsion PF down to minor and I love shooting a minor PF limited gun. Hell of a lot more fun and cuts down considerably on the cost of powder and wear on the gun. I still like six (6) points to neutralize Time Plus Scoring, makes you have to shoot accurately and you don't have to do math in the head, elaborate scores sheets etc. Gotta shoot a least 2-Cs, A/D, etc. Failure to neutralize = 3 seconds unless you are from Texas then it is 5 seconds. This takes the Major/Minor scoring problems out of the equation and definitely awards accuracy. Want to make it harder, do seven (7) points to neutralize. Then you generally tripple the targets (Minor) just to make sure you have your points if you can't call the hits.

jj, Excellent post!! You pretty much covered all bases. It all comes down to GOOD MANAGEMENT, KNOWLEDGE, know how to dissiminate tasks and quit making decisions in a vacuum. We have too much knowledge within this organization to be ignored. I don't want to see USPSA fail with National Level Multigun, but is management capable of learning from their past mistakes or do they really care? There doesn't seem to be much passion for the game at that level. We have some Area Directors who appear to have a passion for the sport, so we may see some positive change. We, the members of USPSA must accept much of the blame for putting people in position who do not work toward the positive development of the sport. We need more interaction with the International Community and proper support of BOTH Divisions. I applaude you guys (Area Directors) and will render whatever support is required to help move this sport to the next level. Regards, Jack T.

This is a definitely interesting. I think demographics come into play also. All my years of shooting 3-Gun/Multigun (South East), I don't believe I have ever been to a match that a shooter brought a .308, except just to play, none of them were competetive/proficient with the .308 in any way so the scoring didn't matter as they all finished last. It seems to be a whole different ball game east of the Mississippi, long range shooting and of course larger calipers. Our shooting is in your face, so a .308 just ain't gonna make it (All Speed). So, I see your point here, especially with some of the distances you guys shoot at in the Western US Venues. They should NOT score the same. Point taken. So where are we Comstock vs Time Plus? Leave it to the MD's and let them decide what will work best for their venue/match. Jack

USPSA Scoring. I shot my first USPSA match in 1979 at Sanford, NC when I was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC. I shot it with a Colt Gold Cup .45. I was hooked ever since. Just wanted to make it clear I am very aware of where the sport came from. Times have changed. Yeah it was all about power back then but now we have so many divisions it just isn't the same. Back then we basically had two divisions. I can't remember exactly but I think it was stock and modified? Or maybe stock and open. Long time. My point: Iron Man/He Man is shot with a .308. Definitely major. They shoot in their own division. No problem there. Why do we have to make it so difficult for ourselves to have major/minor scoring in Limited, Tactical and Open Divisions. 98% of us are shooting .223 and you get the rare 7.62X39 thrown in there but score it major accross the board and be done with it. Move on to next problem. Sometimes I think it comes down to, mine is bigger than yours so it should score more. Oh well. I was waiting to get hammered by the .308 guys. Later, Jack

I left this out: It should not be so much a game of power but that of shot placement and accuracy. Have a nice day, Jack

Yeah, it does matter. If I am shooting major pistol and minor rifle on the same stage and the majority of the course is pistol, I damn well do not want to get scored minor. To start with I don't know who decided the .223 should be scored minor. Yeah it pales next to the .308, but then the .308 pales next to a Barrett 50. Change rifle to major and be done with it all together. Simple eh. All this crap is the same as the argument/discussion about stopping power/knockdown power and such. The only caliper that has true stopping power is out of a 155 howitzer or getting hit by a train. Get rid of the power factors and move into the 21st century. Let's face it, this is a game. Keep it fun. Get rid of the main problem area and that is between major and minor scoring.

Yeah, the weekend is over and we're all back on our meds.

Chris, Really appreciate your concern with shooter input with regards to USPSA and Multigun Nationals. It's pretty damn refreshing! I shoot both Tac Optics and Open. Get rid of the restrictions on Open Division Shotguns. As long as the gun is safe, who cares if someone has a 20 round drum on their shotgun or one of the new RCI Mag Tubes by Mark Roth on an 1100 or a Benelli. Open is Open let them run!! I know some people might not think it is practical, but I remember back in the 80's a lot of people did not think electronic sights on a weapon system were practical either. All it does is limit the development of the equipment. Open Division needs to be a test bed for equipment, like I stated, as long as it is safe. I look at these 10 round tubes for the shotgun and they are laughable. I quit shooting Open Division because of the ridiculous length of the reload tube you would need to be competetive now. But, Open is Open so let em run. I went back to Open Division because of the Saiga 12 shotgun. I see it as a more viable weapons platform than haveing 10 round tubes hanging off my butt. Practical is like tactics under fire; If you are still alive, then it worked. Thanks, Jack T.

I will probably go to six (6) points or better to neutralize for 3-Gun. A C/D won't cut it without incuring a 5 second penalty. Easy to call the hits and not confuse the scorekeeper and I can still use my US Steel Scorer Program, love the program!! See ya Saturday. Jack

A little constructive criticism on stage building/design and fault lines. I am going to use stage 4, Go Low as an example. I ran the stage in a pretty good time, great hits and felt good when I finished. Stood up and the RO said he was going to have to penalize me for a foot fault. The penalty was enough to knock me from a 5th overall on the stage to a 7th overall. No big deal, but here is my thought. How is a shooter to know, while laying in the prone position, if his left foot is barely over the imaginary fault line that runs arround the world when he can neither feel it with the foot or see it in the prone. Recomendation: Completely enclose the shooting area in these situations. Fault line is pretty cheap. I know I kinda hammered this USPSA Nationals. I am a lifetime member of USPSA, I have and will continue to do everything I can to promote the sport and USPSA. I am very passionate about 3 Gun shooting and feel a betrayal of trust in the Leadership of USPSA because of the decline in the quality of the Multigun Nationals. Actually I believe the decline started when we went from 3-Gun to Multigun in Reno. Sorry, but unless you (USPSA) take the Multigun as serious as you do the Handgun Nationals, I will no longer participate in a National Multigun Competion nor nor will I recommend it. I have been to six of them since the very first 3-Gun in Barry, IL. I will be more selective on where I spend my money. Regards, Jack T

I am going to recant my prior post after some thought from more of a shooter point of view. At the local level when I am running a match, the temperature is 101 with 98% humidity, I want to score the targets fast and get moving to the next shooter. Can't beat time plus scoring. No confusion on the part of calling the hits, recording the results and the computing the scores at the end of the match is easy. The best representation of a shooters ability is Comstock Scoring in my opinion. I can smoke a run and gun rifle stage shooting time plus scoring and have a top 10 finish with Time Plus. Score that same run with Comstock Scoring and I will drop so many points I will be lucky if I finish in the top 20. Minor power factor and Comstock Scoring will eat me up on the rifle. Comstock requires more administrative work, but it can work. Just needs a little adjusting for Multigun/3-Gun. Jack

Chris, We have to work to improve the system. I see Linda is/was on here and she has a wealth of knowldege on the system I use, but here is where I am at when I do Multigun Matches at the local level. I am kinda like a one man show, I set up the match and tear down the match, so others can come in, shoot, have fun and hit the road. I also do all the scores. I use the World Class Steel Scorer Progam (US Steel Shoot). I set it up as a time plus score like IMGA. It has it's flaws, but it streamlines the scoring process both during the match and when I have to compile the results. I don't have to have a ton of score sheets, and maintain a file cabinet of historical score sheets/documents. Linda told me how to also figure out the shooters percentages, but I haven't done that yet. This is the same program we use for the US Steel Nationals. Dave Olhasso developed this program. I have also started using it for our Handgun Only matches. All the members love it. Some people complain that two hits on paper or one "A" does not reward accuracy, but my reply to them is that it is up to them to have the visual discipline/patience to shoot "A"s. Don't blame it on the scoring system. Plus, I am a firm believer you can achieve a proper degree of difficulty thru good stage design and I do it without no shoot targets!!!!!!!!!!!! Did I mention how much I hate them once before? Personally, I do not see the need of having Major/Minor scoring. Keep everything the same accross the board. If you can knock down the steel, then you are good to go. (9mm calibrated) There is too much controversy concerning the chrono within USPSA anyway. Get rid of it. But of course that is another subject. I am not a computer guy so I want simplicity. Most of the people that are in favor of comstock (MV) don't do the scoring. Let them work at stats and see how much they enjoy comstock vs time plus. Regards, Jack

You bring up a great point. It might be best to put a moratorium on the 3 Gun/Multigun Nationals until such time the USPSA Staff are capable of managing the event properly.

OOPS!! My apology. My fingers type faster than my mind works sometimes. I will print a retraction and give credit where it is due. It is KurtM not the other KirkM who is a great long range shooter (sometimes). I don't impress easy, but when I see you shoot 1" groups at 100 yards with the irons at match cadence, I am impressed. Regards, Jack T

What happened to the MOR match at the Nationals? This filled the bill for those that wanted to test their skills for long range shooting.

A big problem with rifle stages is that they are often pistol stages shot with a rifle. That is ok to test speed. However, a Nationals match must test accuracy, and 100/200 yards is just the beginning to test accuracy. Lee I totally disagree with you and let me clarify my stance here. You can test accuracy from 5 yards to 100 yards depending on the difficulty of the target. Going out past 200 yards we are now dealing with balastics. Some matches are pushing past the maxium effective range of the AR. Plus, we are talking practical (as much as practical means). Those of us that do not have access to ranges past 200 yards have no way of verifying our zero/point of impact out to these distances and there is generally no zero range at the match to verify. The only people that want these distances are the people that have access to long distance ranges, which the majority of the members do not have. This is about fair and equal competiton for all the members. Sometimes you just have to compromise to make it fair and competetive for everybody. There were plenty of stages at this Nationals that tested the accuracy from 100 yards in by using no shoots and limiting the visible "shoot" portion of the target. I got burnt on a few by touching the perfs of the no shoots. (hate em!!) You do not need 200 plus distances to make a good stage. Proper use of hardcover and good stage design will add plenty of difficulty factor/test of skill/accuracy. My point of the original statement is that there are many venues capable of hosting a Multigun Nationals and doing an excellent job of it. They just don't have the ranges over 200 yards. Like KirkM said; I would rather shoot an Area 6 match than a USPSA Nationals. There is a reason he made that statement and he is one of the best long range shooters out there.

Scores are up!!

As a member of USPSA leadership and a shooter in this match I can assure you I know you are upset and you can be certain I will be making sure the entire rest of the leadership knows it. Making multigun work when all you are doing is running a match in the same place every year and can change your rules to your needs, is easy compared to trying to make it work within an organization with thousands of members, clubs and a huge officiating pool. I know we can do better. Please don't write us off yet. Dave Thomas' comment about lack of office support was about the fact we had Steel Challenge, the pistol nationals and multigun all in a short period of time. The lack of support is not because they don't want to support multigun, it was there was not enough time to physically do everything that needed doing and the multigun being the last event of the series suffered the worst. The comment was not about uspsa's commitment to multigun. Chris, This has been going on for years. It is horrible management and a pure lack of professionalism. It is not difficult to schedule events, avoid conflicts and determine what personnel and assets are required to make it happen. Apparently the leadership and perhaps some of the staff are not capable of performing their job to standard and need to be replaced. It's pretty damn plain to me they can not do the job. It is not that hard to do. We all know the scoring system does not work, quit putting bandaids on it and start over. The rules are horrible. Seems like lawyers have been brought in to make it more complex, rather than simplify and streamline them. I know this match started quite a few thousand dollars in the hole and there are other problems that we, as members are not aware of, but USPSA owes it to the membership to put on the best event possible. I said this in the post prior to the match ever starting. It was apparent at that time this match was going to be no better than a section/state match with limited assets. We all knew the limitations put on the Shootout Range and yet the match was still held there. Holding the match in the same place every year is great for continueity, but believing the fact that it can not be moved every year and still be a great match is not true. We have great ranges and personnel that could have filled this match to capacity on the East Coast. Only problem, there are a few top level shooters and the Prez don't like ranges where their long range rifle abilities/strengths are limited, so our venues do not meet his (MV) approval. Very few people have access to ranges where we have the ability to practice long range shooting (Past 100/200 yards), so it is not a factor for the other 98% of the shooters. Quit catering to that small select group of shooters and be concerned with the general membership. We could do it at Frank's Range (Frostproof), Titusville, Jacksonville, and many other facilities on the East Coast are capable of hosting a National Level Event, but there again for political reasons and such, it has not happened. I am a firm believer we should have both an East Coast Regional and a West Coast Regional Multigun Championship. We need to make the travel to the match more convenient/cost effective for the shooters and forget about trying keep it centralized. Travel is much more difficult for Multigun Shooters than Pistol only (Air Travel) shooters. USPSA has destroyed the Multigun Nationals by their own ineptness and by a select few people satisfying their personal interests with total disregard for the memberhip. Regards, Jack T.

This was somewhat dependent on how many RO's were at a stage. If there was an RO dedicated to watch a table of loaded guns, they would load more than just the on-deck shooter. I do not remember EVER loading a chamber until the RO said "Make ready" at the line. We had one stage that had us load the chamber on the pre-loading table. We did as they asked, but we were surprised by it. This match had dedicated rifle targets and pistol targets. So splitting them while scoring is not a big deal. The stats folks had to deal with it back end. Does EZWS do it automatically? Lee EZWS does not handle major/minor with multigun. I talked to the stats girl about it because I was confused when looking at the scores. She said the whole match had to be scored as major, then they have to enter additional penalty points for anything that has a minor hit. A BIG pain in the rear for her. Kudos to her because she did the best she could with what she had to work with, but it was certainly not easy to do (thus the delays in posting the final scores). Yeah, that was Stage 3, where we also loaded the shotgun hot on the table. That hit me as pretty strange, especially with all the new gun handleing rules and other BS that was in play. I actually had an RO who would not allow me to transfer my flagged long guns from my cart to the gun rack because he did not want me handling the guns behind his back. (He was standing at the pre-load table, Stage 6) My temper almost got the best of me on that one, the guy actually raised his voice like I was about to comit an un-safe act. Didn't I just read somewhere that an individual was stating how great the Comstock Scoring System worked for Multigun and couldn't understand why we use alternate scoring systems for 3-Gun Competition that actually work more efficiently at both scoring the targets and processing the final scores.

Roy, You guys could set up a kick ass match there, but again, we can't go out to distance. I can live without the long range shooting, most of us stink at it anyway down in Florida. The monthly matches are second to none and the support personnel are the best. You guys need to go for it. One of the biggest mistakes I seem to see, is making decisions in a vacumm. Get outside ideas for stages from GM's down to newbies. We all have different ideas on what makes a great stage design. But you can't beat balance and the key word is FUN. I'll head over and help build stages if you do it. Jack

Thanks to all the guys that busted their butts to get this match off the ground. I understand there were only seven (7) personnel to set up the stages. I hate no shoots!! Just like the Florida Open; Who needs them. It's like adding insult to injury. I think there was an extra case of targets, didn't know what to do with them and decided to distribute them on all the stages (Except Rifle Standards). The difficulty factor can be added in by good stage design and utilizition of hard cover. Planning for next years Multigun Nationals shold begin TODAY!! The planning should begin the following day just like the Outlaw matches do. But, it ain't gonna happen now is it? I recommend there be an East Coast Regional (Titusville, FL I-95) and a West Coast Regional (Where ever) for the Multigun Nationals. There is no doubt in my mind if we hosted a National event we could fill it (Area 6). The only problem is the West Coast guys don't like it because we don't have ranges that generally go over 200 yards. Plus, we have warmer weather. I am from Florida and Friday Morning destroyed me. I can not function below 60 degrees!! Again, thanks to all the guys behind the scenes that volunteer their time to make these matches happen. Jack

I received an e-mail that there were 13 cancellations for the 3-Gun Nationals. Cheryl from Tallahassee That's a fact. Where did your other half go, I was tracking who all was coming up from Florida, and I don't see him squaded now. Jack

The real problem with your post is two fold. First of all you are putting words in the mouths of others to further your agenda. I have yet to see a single post that said luck, presence or probability should be rewarded. Secondly, your conclusion that in excess of 80% of competitiors want it your way lacks methodology when the fact is that 80% of the shooters do not even read this forum and the majority of those who do do not post. This forum is a good vehicle for the exchange of ideas. It does not however represent a good cross section of those who participate in our sport. I'll play nice so I dont shut down the thread again. With regards to Big Match Prize Distrubution, this forum appears to have a pretty damn good representation of shooters. I see National Champions thru first time shooters and everyone in between. The demographics seem to be fairly well covered. It would appear to be an excellent cross section of those who participate in our sport.