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Abandoning Pistol


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Pretty sure they are not going to change the rules. I normally shoot a 2011 STI but for the SMM3G I shot my G34. It was so pistol "lite" (unless you opted for pistol on stage 2) that it made little difference.

That may have been true for SMM3G 2011, but there are other matches that might have lots more pistol. We'd like a solution that the entire sport can adopt that will increase safety while reducing DQs.

I like the vertical or near-vertical drop box idea, though one guy in our squad was DQed when he struck the muzzle of his shotgun on the edge of the dump barrel, which caused the shotgun to fly from his hands. We'd have to come up with a better way to cut the barrels so that it's easy to insert and retrieve the rifle/shotgun safely, yet the gun is held securely vertical. Perhaps a large funnel inside of the dump barrel or a similar shape...

A good dump-barrel or dump-bucket design combined with careful stage design could make unsafe dumps a thing of the past.

Edited by dchang0
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For some context on the recent DQs at SMM3G, below are several photos of the pistol abandonment bin used on Stage 7. This design has worked pretty well for us over the last 2 years; the challenge for us is to find a design that works with anything from an oversized race gun down to compact carry guns (we have had folks running guns as small as sub-compact Glocks). We want to be able to mount the abandonment bin securely on any prop (table, car trunk, helicopter etc.) and know the muzzle of any gun is going to end up pointing safely down into the ground even if it slips or slides around a bit after being let go. Unlike some other matches, burying the bins is not really feasible for us. The carpet is in there to protect the gun's finish, absorb some of the shock when folks throw their guns in there, and to prevent excessive sliding around. If you guys have any suggestions as to how they can be improved, let us know. However, I can tell you that we have had 1911-type guns deposited in these bins in Condition 1 thousands of times and the incidence of DQ due to safeties being off is pretty small... sometimes folks have to take responsibility for their actions and invest the extra few seconds to do what is necessary to be safe. If the light trigger of a 1911 is indispensible to you, then this extra care may be the price you have to pay. Just my 2 cents worth.

SMM3GPistolAbandonmentBinComponents.jpg

SMM3GPistolAbandonmentBin1.jpg

SMM3GPistolAbandonmentBin2.jpg

SMM3GPistolAbandonmentBin3.jpg

Edited by StealthyBlagga
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It does not matter how good you make a dump box, someone will screw it up. Shooters have to take responsibiliy for their guns and make sure they are safe, period. I dumped a pistol in one of JJ's little garbage can boxes with the wood block a few years ago and when I went to clear it the gun was pointing up at me even though I thought I put it in correctly. It pays to take the extra second to check your gun and to prevent the DQ.

Doug

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It does not matter how good you make a dump box, someone will screw it up. Shooters have to take responsibiliy for their guns and make sure they are safe, period. I dumped a pistol in one of JJ's little garbage can boxes with the wood block a few years ago and when I went to clear it the gun was pointing up at me even though I thought I put it in correctly. It pays to take the extra second to check your gun and to prevent the DQ.

Doug

By my direction, at RO meeting before the earlier matches, you should have beeen called back to the dump box on the clock before proceeding to correct the improperly abandon pistol.

Last year I believe we stated in stage briefs that an improperly abandon gun (nothing to do with the safety, just gun placement and muzzle direction) will earn a match DQ.

something to the effect of "all abandon guns must be in the recepticle provided, muzzle down"...

JJ

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It does not matter how good you make a dump box, someone will screw it up. Shooters have to take responsibiliy for their guns and make sure they are safe, period. I dumped a pistol in one of JJ's little garbage can boxes with the wood block a few years ago and when I went to clear it the gun was pointing up at me even though I thought I put it in correctly. It pays to take the extra second to check your gun and to prevent the DQ.

Doug

By my direction, at RO meeting before the earlier matches, you should have beeen called back to the dump box on the clock before proceeding to correct the improperly abandon pistol.

Last year I believe we stated in stage briefs that an improperly abandon gun (nothing to do with the safety, just gun placement and muzzle direction) will earn a match DQ.

something to the effect of "all abandon guns must be in the recepticle provided, muzzle down"...

JJ

Just so you know JJ, my post wasn't a dig on your pistol dump box, only my experience that even a good design can be subverted by a competitor that does not take the proper care, which I did not. I actually will be using your dump boxes at the NWMGC this year.

Doug

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I know, the point is that nothing is perfect about inanament objects like trash cans, and that you should have been corrected by the RO on the spot. The muzzle being left pointed up was wrong.

send me photos if you come up with somthing "better"! :cheers:

jj

Edited by RiggerJJ
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However, I can tell you that we have had 1911-type guns deposited in these bins in Condition 1 thousands of times and the incidence of DQ due to safeties being off is pretty small... sometimes folks have to take responsibility for their actions and invest the extra few seconds to do what is necessary to be safe. If the light trigger of a 1911 is indispensible to you, then this extra care may be the price you have to pay. Just my 2 cents worth.

I agree. I was one of the ones on stage 3 this year that had my safety disengaged on abandoning it in the box. It was my last stage of the match. When I walked back and the RO told me the safety was off and to show him an empty chamber, I immediately said "it's not". I knew what was coming. I didn't argue with him. I didn't argue the match director. Regardless of whether or not I think the box design caused the safety to disengage, it was my gun and I am responsible for ensuring that it stays on after I ditch it. Would I have preferred some discretion being that it had happened to 4 other people and it was my last stage? Of course! But I won't argue with the decision to DQ me based on the result.

Edited by VegasSean
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Its common knowledge that abandonment boxes that lay the pistol flat on its side will, sooner or later, bite somebody (like VegasSean) with a 1911. There is no reason WHY the people that use 1911s should be singled out... Price you pay for having a 1911 with a light trigger? give me a break! I fail to understand WHY we continue to use something that is PROVEN to CAUSE problems...espcially when the problem can be FIXED so easily...

Flat boxes (or angled dump barrels/cradles/boxes/etc) are UNSAFE because they point the muzzle DOWNRANGE! That should be reason enough NOT to use them, let alone the problem with them bumping the safety off...1 in a thousand times, 1 in 10 thousand times, thats too many times...

ALL abandonments should be muzzle down, on the ground, and VERTICAL!

jj

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If you guys have any suggestions as to how they can be improved, let us know. However, I can tell you that we have had 1911-type guns deposited in these bins in Condition 1 thousands of times and the incidence of DQ due to safeties being off is pretty small... sometimes folks have to take responsibility for their actions and invest the extra few seconds to do what is necessary to be safe. If the light trigger of a 1911 is indispensible to you, then this extra care may be the price you have to pay. Just my 2 cents worth.

I've got an idea. How about cutting out some of the carpet in the middle so that the areas where the safeties are most likely to be will be suspended by the surrounding carpet over the bare wood underneath? Yes, you can't cut it so that ALL guns will land with their safeties in the cutout, but you can probably get 90% of the 1911s laid flat on either side (for those with ambi safeties).

---

I agree with you on personal responsibility and how the 1911 safety issue is a matter of personal choice and corresponding responsibilities, but there's another way to look at this that doesn't have to do with blame in either direction (towards the competitors or towards the match officials).

When I first moved to Orange County about 15 years ago, the 405 North Freeway exit at Brookhurst was pile-up central. EVERY Saturday morning, there would be an accident there. Yes, EVERY Saturday. Traffic on Saturday morning is light, so people would fly down the freeway at 75-80mph, even through the small hills (blind spots) at Harbor and Brookhurst. Like clockwork, some poor soul would come busting down the main lanes and have to stand on their brakes when surprised by the slowly-merging traffic trickling in from the freeway on-ramp on the right.

Yes, we could all say, "Oh, it's those drivers' responsibility to watch their speed, etc., etc., etc." But the fact remained that this was a recurring problem. I could set up a lawn chair at Brookhurst and gleefully yell at the accident victims, "SEE, I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO SO FAST!" and "WATCH YOUR SPEED, IDIOTS!" but that wouldn't stop the accidents from happening. Statistics told the truth: something had to change at that on-ramp.

So the gov't actually did what it is commissioned to do: improve public safety. They redesigned the freeway on-ramp to encourage merging traffic to merge at a higher speed and at a further point down the freeway from the blind spot. Accidents stopped happening there. Is it the government's fault for designing a crappy on-ramp in the first place, or is it the drivers' for driving way above the speed limit? Who cares? The accidents stopped happening.

A friend of mine told me that in 2010, 10% of the SMM3G entrants got DQed. Now, I don't know if that is correct or not, but I'm sure we can do something about reducing that number. Of course, the real number we care about is 0% of all the people at SMM3G got hurt, but it sure would be nice to reduce the DQs to 0% too. I think it's possible to engineer this so that DQs are reduced while the safety of the participants goes up.

Edited by dchang0
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The carpet in those SMM3G dump boxes tends to encourage tossing the pistol in hard rather than laying it down. It is also the carpet that moves the safety is it hits or slides. Let's not worry about, or defend what was done, let's just make it better in the future.

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  • 1 year later...

What about a pvc pipe with a notch cut in it for the trigger guard? It would hold the barrel vertical and wouldn't come close to the safety.

How would a 2011 with a C-More fit?

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I've been doing some stopwatching. Downing without dumping is only faster if you are standing right in front of the abandonment box. If you have to shift your body, or take even one step the time is too close to call. The DQ isn't too close to call though. Unless you are competing at the highest level where .5 sec matters for a big payoff, then it isn't worth the risk. There are plenty of other places to find .5 sec, which won't send you home.

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What about a pvc pipe with a notch cut in it for the trigger guard? It would hold the barrel vertical and wouldn't come close to the safety.

How would a 2011 with a C-More fit?

You could have a large and a small diameter pipe to accommodate the larger guns with optics and the smaller sub compacts.

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I prefer to shoot to slide lock and throw it at the target, because I have a glock and I don't care. But that wasn't a poll option.

I shoot my Glock until it explodes then it is in a thousand pieces so the I don't care checkbox works for me.

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My preference is to shoot a 2011 in 3-gun, and I voted for the "drop mag and completely empty pistol". I think my thumb instinctively flips the safety on anyway (or at least it always tries to engage the non-existent thumb safety whenever I shoot my Glocks) and to my knowledge I've never had the safety swept off from carpet. However, at my skill level in 3-gun I'm not going to set any records, so the extra time it takes to unload beats heck out of being DQ'd in my opinion. Quite often it seems that I have to take a few steps to get to the dump box, so I'm clearing the gun enroute (but depends on the stage).

I worried over what design to use for pistol dump boxes when we were prepping for A1MG last year, and ended up making dump boxes out of 10 qt plastic wastebins with a couple of 2x4 blocks screwed into the front half of the bin's bottom to form a ledge for the grip to sit on. The barrel went all the way to the bottom of the bin. Seemed to work, and to my knowledge we didn't have any issues. I deliberately avoided carpet in the dump boxes, but could concede that maybe some cardboard as a liner in the dump box may have been a nice touch.

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I slow down just a bit and deliberately put the piston on safe and set it down and then get back to buisness. I have never had it get knocked off but then again I don't slam in down and push it along the carpet.

Pat

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I used to clear the pistol but with a open gun thats hard to do quickly without a slide racker. At the Texas Multigun match I remember being nervious at first about it but then I thought I always do it this way in local matches why should I change. So I continued to use the safety. Trying to unload especially without a few steps before the bucket takes a lot of time added to your run at least 2 seconds. I need all the help I can get to finish a bit faster. If I am running the match I like the idea of a stage DQ for the offense vs a match DQ unless you have to run in front of the muzzle which is a bad stage design. I mean really if its ok for glocks to be thrown down hot with no real safety there is little difference with a 1911 if we are being honest with ourselves.

Pat

Edited by Alaskapopo
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I couldn't vote.

I put the safety on and then set it down. None of the answers match this!

I'm not really taking a chance of it getting knocked off because even in those silly flat boxes, I put the gun down safety up so it can't get knocked off.

I do prefer the pistol buckets that the muzzle is down and it doesn't bump the safety on either side!

Buckets! Buckets! If it's muzzle down, even with the safety off, the gun is in a safe direction and safe.

I agree that it is not good to have RO's or anyone else handling your gun. (I know that sometimes it's unavoidable.) I have seen RO's clear a pistol and then carry it at their side (or not quite) away. That seems unsafe to me. A loaded pistol muzzle down in a bucket with no one touching it, doesn't.

My 3 cents!!!

Denise

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Since I shoot a DA/SA SIG P226 with no manual safety, I guess I don't really have a poll option, either...

Generally, I unload completely. If I am more or less standing over the dump bucket when I am done shooting the pistol (that is, I don't have to move to get to the dump), I may just decock and let it go. The benefit of a decocker is that no dump bucket (that I have ever seen, at least!) is going to recock the pistol. And since there are so many stages where the pistol starts unchambered and you have to rack the slide anyway, I almost never fire a DA shot in a 3-Gun match. It's kind of like having a single action P226 without a safety to worry about!

Edited by CJW
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personally, i am very much attached to my pistol. it would hurt its feelings if i abandoned it!

:cheers:

i might leave it alone for a short while, but i would always come back. honest!

:cheers:

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Hi everybody. First time posting so be gentle with me. I shoot a Glock and I agree with the people who said it is no safer than a single-action with the safety off, round in the chamber. I feel the safest thing is to have the muzzle pointed more or less straight down, so how about a large plastic cone or funnel (with no carpet) pointed down, mounted to something solid? The friction-free plastic would avoid snagging the safety and really isn't going to damage the gun's finish to any appreciable degree. The large opening of the top of the cone wouldn't hinder the speed demons or the size and type of gun and gizmos. The small opening of the bottom of the cone or funnel will prevent dirt and rain water from getting in the muzzle. If a few match directors start doing that maybe more will follow.

I also agree that ROs shouldn't be handling/clearing guns while folks are downrange, no matter how safely they are doing it against a side berm. If I'm the one responsible for my guns 24/7 why are you handling my gun without me present? I don't think it saves that much time either.

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