The "tactical, real world" debate...

[Ron Ankeny]

Thank goodness for Brian's forum, where gamesmanship rules. I am really tired of the "tactical", "practical", "real world", "IPSC will get you killed" attitude. I am especially tired of the IDPA vs. IPSC arguments.  

This morning I was putting the finishing touches on a 22 round field course from Jeff's book (with a couple of modifications) when a fellow shooter started in on the IPSC will get you killed routine. This guy has been to Gunsite a bunch of times and he shoots a lot. He doesn't belong to IDPA or USPSA but his skill level would put him at C in USPSA and probably low SS or high marksman in IDPA. But, he has the "tactical training" and wisdom of the Bird on his cap (by the way he is one hell of a good guy and quite likeable and I respect his opinions).

I tried to explain to him that I shoot for fun. I shoot IPSC just as some folks shoot pool, others throw darts, and some play golf. My goal is to put as many holes in the A Zone as possible in the shortest amount of time. I don't care about the defensive aspect because I am not preparing for defensive shooting.  I am playing a freaking game. I also explained that IPSC improves gun handling and visual skills. Good grief...some folks just don't get it.

Here's a great scenario for our next IDPA shoot:

You had the honor of shooting with the Super Squad at the Nationals. You are on the way home when you run short on cash. You are standing at an ATM machine when two shady looking characters begin walking toward you with the looks and air of scum intent on doing evil. A third bad ass is beginning to exit a car 20 yards distant. You have no gun. Choose from the following solutions:

1. Two off duty cops come to your aid. Both barely qualified with their G22 pistols and both had to go through a remedial shooting program for blinking, flinching and head in ass disease. However, both have been to Gunsite and are well read in tactics and to them Ayoob is a god. They have their G22 pistols in Kydex holsters. One cop is so nervous he looks like he is going to puke and the other cop is intent on picking a fight.

2. Two new found friends from the nationals are driving by when they see your plight. They are determined to see that no harm comes your way. One of your new friends is reverently referred to as TGO and he has retrieved his Limited pistol and he has commenced to load and made ready. The second is a fellow named Todd and he has adjusted his dot just right and his big stick mag loaded with 124 grain JHP pokes out the bottom of the magazine well (my apologies to two of the greatest shooters in the world if this is not appropriate).

Make your choice and I hope I made my point.

[Chriss Grube]

Ron,

It's worse when your an LEO who shoots IPSC! I've been a Firearms Instructor for my dept for 10 years. I shot an IDPA match and one of the SO's went on how IPSC will get you killed. After about an hour of his BS I asked him what he did for a living. Turns out he punches a button in a factory. He just about when I told him I was an LEO, FI, IPSC shooter and asked him the last time he kicked a door! Tactical is whatever gets you home alive at the end of the day! I'll take TJ or TGO as a partner in a gunfight anyday! Hell most B class shooters will put the best LEO's to shame on the range!

[EricW]

[beat that Dead Horse Mode ON]

What I LOVE about the "Tactical Superiority Club," is their inability to beat IPSCers at their own game.  If IPSC is leaving out some key element of shooting, surely it would be *easier* for one of these Armchair Commandos to come to a match and open a fresh can of Whoopass on everybody.  After all, they only have to do maybe half of what they normally do in match.  

Right?

[DRG]

I  believe  ANYONE  would be hard pressed to prove that

TGO,Brian,Todd,Mike,Jerry, etc...   would not make a qualified addition to a tac/defense team

it's simple...  good is good and  great is great

any type of shooting might  "get you killed" if you do not use your ultimate weapon-the one between your ears

IPSC is fun,builds skills,and is not a substitute for training

when was the last time anyone said it was ment

for  training?

IPSC will help one become a more skilled shooter

ALL the games are good.

besides  what do you have to prove to anyone else?

I  would  WELCOME the  chance to have any of the great or even good  IPSC shooters at  my side if something bad went down

the sun rises every morning... and that is the truth

[38supPat]

A good friend of mine is the head instructor for the OPP firearms unit. He is a past Provincial/National IPSC Champion and last year won the World Police Games shooting event. He has kicked in many doors and does not seem to have any issues with IPSC/USPSA being impractical.

[Jon Merricks]

Like Chris I've been there and done that.  Im just a lowly old C shooter and mop up the range with just about any LEO in the county.  I havent shot my duty gun in months but all the things Ive learned in ISPC still apply to work and has made me a better shooter with my duty gun as well.  DVC says it all.  One thing I like to say to all the tactical ones is why is some of the top IPSC shooters teaching the world's best Military and LE teams.

[Flexmoney]

This tactical stuff just isn't an issue here in Ohio...nobody is allowed to carry.  

(feel safe?)

[Phil Dunlop]

I hate to tell you this Ron, but IPSC will get you killed, my wife told me only last week!

"if you spend any more time at that bloody range......."

P.D.

p.s. just thought that for countries such as ours where carrying guns and getting killed doesn't happen too much the debate should be , IPSC will make you tired

(Edited by Phil Dunlop at 2:19 pm on July 19, 2002)

[JFD]

Most of these "tactical" USPSA haters know nothing about it, have never shot a match, and only extract their heads from their asses long enough to check out the latest "tactical" gun rags and read more of Ayoob's crap or that "one shot stop" nonsense.

USPSA gives a person great practice with all aspects of gun handling, fast/accurate shooting, and makes you THINK.  How can this be bad?  

My IDPA experience tends to indicate that if I was to think of it as training, then I'd likely end up in jail or dead in a defensive shooting.   That room clearing garbage is amazing.  I was pretty certain that it's been proved time and time again that room clearing without an infantry squad or possibly a SWAT team backing you up is a good way to die.  Don't get me started on the stupid reloads...

I know IDPA officially is a game, even to the "owners", but those damn tactical idiots make me really dislike it.  I finally quit shooting IDPA due to the high probability I was going to smack the crap out of at least one of these types.  

It doesn't help that the IDPA rule book bashes USPSA as much as possible.

I recently saw an ad for a "tactical" walking stick!!!  I thought I was going to barf.

[gm iprod]

Phil,

It may not get you killed. But it will deplete the bank, both kinds. The one at home and the one in town.

And this from the man whose wife nearly paid for his last box of primers. It was a close run thing though.

(Edited by gm iprod at 5:10 am on July 16, 2002)

[shred]

IPSC will too get you killed.  Happened to me just the other day.

No, wait, it didn't.

[Phil Dunlop]

GM,

that was the public face you saw, why do you think I shake so violently?

:)P.D.

[Mark Perez]

http://glocktalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=59226

asked the same type of question over at the GT site-some interesting replys

fwiw,

mp

[John Thompson]

Wanna shut the Tactical Tackleberries up?

Ask them to shoot some force on force with paintball or some kind of simunitions.  They don't nessessarily do that well.  Which is probably why the Tackleberries are starting say that force on force training isn't realistic.

You'd be suprised how extreme marksmanship skills and stupid gun tactics like the IDPA reload have little to do with survival shooting.

Ignorance, pride, and ego hates  the truth.

[MBneACP]

Am hoping a lot of this tactical/schmactical stuff starts to die down over the next year. From my standpoint as someone who promotes the shooting sports nationally, the whole emphasis on operator wannabes is inherently self-limiting and not, I think, how we really are. Had I wanted to be a cop, in Special Forces or a secret agent, I would have become one (or at least given it a shot).

For a lot of people, though, the return of the wannabe has been a godsend--they buy lots of stuff, are largely undiscriminating (they don't actually use the stuff, so they don't know whether it works or not) and they're countercyclical to most market trends in the industry. They buy when times are hard, as they are now. There's a guy who lives down the street from me who wears cammie everything (even military surplus socks!), has a truck covered with "It's 9PM...Do You Know Where Your 1911 Is!" style bumper stickers and has made a point of telling everybody who will listen how "ready" he is. Yeah, right. He might be ready to face a full-blown attack from my Beagle puppy Alf, but that's about all. Mostly, he's just pathetic.

I told some of the powers-that-be in the IDPA world that if I trained for cave diving the way they suggested people train for a violent encounter, I'd be dead, because nature is a chaos system, and a chaos system can generate stuff you've never thought of before. One size don't fit all. On the other hand, we sometimes forget that competition is hard, scary and unforgiving...someone does always lose. We gotta reach out to people to bring them in...

MB  

[Shipster]

This afternoon I was reading some past issues of Handgunner magazine.  It seamed like in about ever issue Hackathorn was slaming IPSC and it's tactics.  SOooo I sent a letter of to the editor just to let some steam off,  The letter is as follows:

It seems like every time I open the American Handgunner and I find my way back to the tactical advantage section of the magazine all Ken can do is talk down IPSC and how awful the tactics are.  You shouldn't do this, IDPA does it better and IPSC will get you killed, so on and so on....Well Ken I've got news for you, the tactics used in IPSC are the best tactics possible to WIN the GAME!  I don't know a single IPSC shooter who claims that one man rushing into a room full of bad guys with guns is the most tactical approach to staying alive.  Only a complete fool would do something like that.

   All this kind of talk does is cause more problems then it solves.  It reminds me of the division between rifle hunters and bow hunters, we don't need that.  We are all out to do one thing, to have fun and do it safely with a handgun.  So Ken GET OFF IT!  If your talking tactics just leave IPSC out of the discussion.

(Edited by Shipster at 6:02 pm on July 31, 2002)

[gm iprod]

Makes too much sense to get listened to, it might get published but don't hold your breath.

[Shipster]

gm iprod, No holding my breath here.  it's just that my dad always taught me that you should never complain about something unless you make an effort to make a change.  The letter was my effort.

[Patrick Sweeney]

It reminds me of the arguments other martial arts chools used to have back in the old days, between points tournaments and full contact.  What they failed to notice was that both had shortcomings, and both had rules.

My master instructor learned the hard way in Korea, and he and his buddies as teenagers would pick fights with GIs to validate the techniques they'd been taught.

He didn't want us in tournaments because we'd learn bad habits.  After I was DQ'd from a full contact tournament (for excessive contact, can you imagine?) I gave up on trying to get trophies.  Besides, I was always placed in a division with competitors less skilled than I was. (My instructor didn't give rank for time in grade.  You earned it.  As a result, going to a tournament, I'd be fighting people with less time in but higher ranked than I was.)

[Shipster]

Patrick your absolutely right.  The same kind of bickering goes on at gun clubs around the nation...(well at least mine).  If we can just take a step back and realize how stupid it is, things would be a lot better.  Like I said in my letter  to the editor "We are all out to do one thing, to have fun and do it safely with a handgun."  except at the club level it may be a shotgun, a rifle, or a bow or all of the above.

<Steve>

[MBneACP]

Patrick;

Glad to know I'm not the only fool to be tossed out of a full-contact tournament for "unnecessary roughness." I mean, this guy jumps up in the air, screaming like Bruce Lee on bad acid, and there's his crotch, right about backfist height. What else could I do? Next time we get together, we'll have to swap Stupid Dojo Stories. Meanwhile, stay *tactical* out there!

Michael B

[tightloop]

Why is it that people get in a huff when you point out that both IDPA and IPSC are games and not "serious" pistol training.  You have always had two factions in these sports, the tactical shooters and  the gamers.  You always will have them.  If you don't carry a pistol to make your living, just relax and play the game, life is too short to take sides and complain.

[Patrick Sweeney]

Mike,

Like the differences in terminology, even between schools ostensibly of the same style?  My brother and I were on vacation, and dropped in to train at a Tae Kwon Do school in Boston.  (This in 1975, we trained in TKD in Detroit)

Our classes were an a hour and a half of drilling in the basics, followed by patterns, forms and advanced techniques.  Only then did we spar.  We regularly did 2-hour classes, with warmups before and extra work afterwards.

The school we visited had one hour classes (with a five minute break in the middle "don't drink too much water!").

The first half hour was simply following the instructor while he demonstrated sequences of techniques.  The second half was sparring.

Mike and I are barely breathing hard when it comes time to spar, while the rest of the class is dripping in sweat.  The sparring instructions were "light contact."  After bouncing my opponent off the wall a couple of times, I duck away from him in the crowd and find Mike.  "Mike, by light contact, they mean "no contact."  He takes a moment from setting his guy up for a footsweep and says "I know."

My opponent is still where I left him, waiting for me.  Back home, anyone who didn't track down their opponent through the crowd would have been admonished.  At the Main Branch in Detroit he'd have been dismembered and eaten.

Hard teacher, hard school, good lessons and good memories.

[John Thompson]

When you think about it we could start a whole debate on so-called "sport" and "real" martial arts and the merits of point sparring, full contact, the Ultimate Fighting Championship style fighting with the exact same arguments being used about the gun sports.

When I was in Tae Kwon Do I was constantly being challeneged to fights by guys who thought I was impared by a "sport" mentality.  I got sick of it and finally agreed to a fight out in the parkinglot of my gym.  My opponent said he wanted a real fight and as he was walking through the doorway outside, with his back to me, I asked him if he was ready; he looked back at me and replied yes at which time I immediately began to beat the hell out of him.  You'd think a REAL martial artist would be smart enough to know he ain't ready when he standing in the fatal funnel with his back to the enemy. He wanted a no rules fight and he's lucky I even gave him advanced warning.  Dumbass.

I don't have much respect for people who spend their days trying to convince everyone(themselves) they're the warriors of the the true warrior way and all that crap.  There's more to life.  

I try to respect people who shoot for sport(me) and self defense along with people who gain confidence and joy from whatever martial art they train in.  

(Edited by John Thompson at 7:58 pm on Aug. 31, 2002)

[Nik Habicht]

And here's my 2 cents:  Everyone on this forum probably stands a better chance of getting killed in a motor vehicle accident than in a gunfight or a fist fight.  So let's all go to tactical collision avoidance school.......