DQ'd myself

[DoubleDelta]

I went to the range this weekend to use up the rest of the ammo for my open gun before I sell it and to show someone new to USPSA some of the stuff we do. I did a few of my regular drills and once the ammo started to dwindle I did strong hand only and then transitions to weak hand. The first one I did I touched off a round with my weak hand middle finger. I cleared the gun and bagged it.

My companion was a bit confused. I explained to him that if I was at a match I would be DQ'd and I was DQ'ing myself. We tried to figure out what I did wrong to cause the AD. What we determined was that I am not as used to the open gun as I am my Glock. When I do my strong to weak hand transitions on the glock I flip my right thumb over the gun and extend my trigger finger as far from the gun as possible so that my weak hand thumb and trigger finger can grip the frame below the slide. From that point I remove the rest of my strong hand fingers and replace them with my weak hand. The beaver-tail on the open gun got in the way of my strong hand thumb getting to the other side of the gun, throwing off my entire process.

Plain and simple I was pushing myself beyond my limits with equipment that I should have spent more time dryfiring with before doing livefire. I learned alot from this, I just wish I would have learned without AD'ing.

On a brighter side I seeing more than I had ever seen before. A year ago I would not have been able to tell you what went wrong, other than that my gun went bang when I didn't want it to.

[Dan Hefta]

Sounds to me like you are a very honorable guy and that safety even while practicing is you highest priority. I hope that you continue with our sport and that if you have not already done so, become a certified RO, we need good people like you in our sport. Honestly if it had happened to me in practice, I probably would have continued shooting.

[DoubleDelta]

Actualy I just got certified a few months ago. It was a real eye-opener for me and it is something I am realy proud of. I realy think that everyone should at least take the RO class. Props to Jay for making it interesting and giving me a TON of insights into RO'ing.

[jkatz44]

Actualy I just got certified a few months ago. It was a real eye-opener for me and it is something I am realy proud of. I realy think that everyone should at least take the RO class. Props to Jay for making it interesting and giving me a TON of insights into RO'ing.

That was probably a good idea.

Just last night at our local night match, there was a similar experience. A guy was doing a reload, his hands slipped a bit, and he set off a round using his middle finger. But, his muzzle was completely downrange. We of course had to DQ him. But, after he got dqed, he helped score the rest of the stages of the match. Pretty good guy.

Edited March 10, 2010 by jkatz44