New Division Production Optic

[Chuck D]

It may be another 10-15 years, but I think there is a pretty good chance we'll have a production optics division. You don't see it much at the range but the small Burris type optics on production guns are catching on very slowly. I think that's why the folks at Smith & Wesson have put out an optics ready M&P.

Mark my words, the small optics on production guns will be very common one day. I can see a larger law enforcement agency going to them within the next few years and once that happens I think the civilian market will really take off. When or if there is enough demand by the membership, a new division will be created.

I've been an LE Firearms Instructor for over 10 years. No one in my neck of the woods has even suggested slide mounted optics (or any optics period) on a duty gun. In fact, they're dead set against anything other than standard night sights on a duty pistol because of a real or perceived chance of sight/component failure and the fact that they are more fragile than iron sights.

The S&W Core pistol is a "gimmick" pistol in the eyes of my fellow instructors so please excuse me if I don't mark your words because I know better...from 1st hand experience.

No disrespect intended.

Yeah, I wouldn't guarantee you speak for all Law Enforcement. We've kicked the idea around. Not for anything real soon but looking down the road. They get a bit more durable and with the capability of having backup iron sights I can see some value. Lights, lasers, red dots on rifles and shotguns. All stuff that 20-30 years ago (or this year for some agencies) laughed about with derision. I'm not saying I will be bolting one on to my Glock any time soon. But it's a possibility.

That said I'm not in favor of splitting up the divisions any further.

Yeah...I never said I did speak for all L.E just those in my "neck of the woods" of which I took great pains to clarify in my original post.

[sperman]

I'm curious what discussions took place 15 years ago when they started talking about adding Production. Were there a bunch of guys saying "just shoot your Glock in Limited"?

[atbarr]

Were there a bunch of guys saying "just shoot your Glock in Limited"?

LOL!

[chaosshooter00]

Not to get off subject, but rather than ranting about "kill" this division and replace it with this one, shouldn't we all be concentrating on growing the divisions we have and bringing more people into the sport? There seems to be a lot of mud throwing from all sides, but not much talk of growth. Before we talk about shunning small groups of the faithful only to satisfy even smaller groups of the new, hip widget, shouldn't we try to grow the number of shooters over all and let natural evolution be the deciding factor? My .02

[JakeMartens]

Not to get off subject, but rather than ranting about "kill" this division and replace it with this one, shouldn't we all be concentrating on growing the divisions we have and bringing more people into the sport? There seems to be a lot of mud throwing from all sides, but not much talk of growth. Before we talk about shunning small groups of the faithful only to satisfy even smaller groups of the new, hip widget, shouldn't we try to grow the number of shooters over all and let natural evolution be the deciding factor? My .02

this is a forum, making sense like that is uncalled for and completely irrational....

[chaosshooter00]

Not to get off subject, but rather than ranting about "kill" this division and replace it with this one, shouldn't we all be concentrating on growing the divisions we have and bringing more people into the sport? There seems to be a lot of mud throwing from all sides, but not much talk of growth. Before we talk about shunning small groups of the faithful only to satisfy even smaller groups of the new, hip widget, shouldn't we try to grow the number of shooters over all and let natural evolution be the deciding factor? My .02

this is a forum, making sense like that is uncalled for and completely irrational....

My bad, on the road and slept at Holiday Inn.

[JakeMartens]

Not to get off subject, but rather than ranting about "kill" this division and replace it with this one, shouldn't we all be concentrating on growing the divisions we have and bringing more people into the sport? There seems to be a lot of mud throwing from all sides, but not much talk of growth. Before we talk about shunning small groups of the faithful only to satisfy even smaller groups of the new, hip widget, shouldn't we try to grow the number of shooters over all and let natural evolution be the deciding factor? My .02

this is a forum, making sense like that is uncalled for and completely irrational....

My bad, on the road and slept at Holiday Inn.

holiday inn, that explains it

[Craig N]

You will have a division for it a lot sooner than IDPA, but they make an allowance for club matches for no score if the RM ok's it. I never really understood L-10 division. You have a $3000 gun all tricked out and only load 10 rounds.....that would drive me to drink!

[JakeMartens]

You will have a division for it a lot sooner than IDPA, but they make an allowance for club matches for no score if the RM ok's it. I never really understood L-10 division. You have a $3000 gun all tricked out and only load 10 rounds.....that would drive me to drink!

I started in limited 10, single stack gun and 10 round mags

also shot a HK USP in 45 in L10, a Glock 35, a Para 16-40 (no base pads, no magwells on them at the time)

it is not just for Limited guns downloaded with shooters hiding out in there, there are guns out there that this is the best division for them to fit into, it is a good division for people that have 40 and 45 caliber guns and major ammo. A lot of people have a 10 round (plus) 40 or 45 carry gun and by shooting L10 get the benefit of major scoring and using their personal defense firearm.

I feel that it is not marketed the right way and that most competition shooters do look at it as a waste division for limited shooters to go hide in.

It needs to be treated adn thought of a place for new shooters with firearms that get the benefit of major scoring

[atbarr]

As I've said before, there are several states that only allow 10 rds.

[z40acp]

Most around here shoot two divisions when we go. For someone on a budget we can shoot L-10 with the same gun and gear. More trigger time just have to look at the stages differently. Mag change practice helps too. A Production Optics or such could be that second division for that guy the needs a red dot.

[Agney5]

You will have a division for it a lot sooner than IDPA, but they make an allowance for club matches for no score if the RM ok's it. I never really understood L-10 division. You have a $3000 gun all tricked out and only load 10 rounds.....that would drive me to drink!

I started in limited 10, single stack gun and 10 round mags

also shot a HK USP in 45 in L10, a Glock 35, a Para 16-40 (no base pads, no magwells on them at the time)

it is not just for Limited guns downloaded with shooters hiding out in there, there are guns out there that this is the best division for them to fit into, it is a good division for people that have 40 and 45 caliber guns and major ammo. A lot of people have a 10 round (plus) 40 or 45 carry gun and by shooting L10 get the benefit of major scoring and using their personal defense firearm.

I feel that it is not marketed the right way and that most competition shooters do look at it as a waste division for limited shooters to go hide in.

It needs to be treated adn thought of a place for new shooters with firearms that get the benefit of major scoring

+1

Sent from my DROID RAZR

[Lifeislarge]

[BritinUSA]

I'm curious what discussions took place 15 years ago when they started talking about adding Production. Were there a bunch of guys saying "just shoot your Glock in Limited"?

If I recall the discussions were less about the competitiveness of certain guns but rather a response to the 'arms race'. There was a perception from those outside the sport that it was necessary to spends thousands of dollars to be able to compete. The Production Division was seen as a solution to that problem; essentially out of the box guns cost 3-4 times less than top of the range models and would attract more new competitors, many of whom probably already had such guns that met the criteria.

[Nik Habicht]

I'm curious what discussions took place 15 years ago when they started talking about adding Production. Were there a bunch of guys saying "just shoot your Glock in Limited"?

12-13 years ago we were living under a certain federal crime bill with capacity restrictions....

In retrospect, that may have actually been not without benefit for USPSA's growth, and division expansion.....

L10, Production, and Revolver were specifically added to permit growth of the sport -- at a time when buying competitive equipment legally for open and limited was somewhat difficult....

[sperman]

Thanks for the history of the sport. I know my comment may have come across as a little sarcastic, but I really was curious about how the division came about, and how much resistance to it there was at that time.

[Nik Habicht]

I rolled into the sport just after those divisions were introduced -- as a crossover from IDPA who was recruited by a group of USPSA shooters....

2 years later those bastards had me running a match.... :-)

Of course ten years after that, some of them are still running a match, so I should keep quiet....

[mactiger]

I was on the board when we introduced Production Division as a way to entice the then higher number of people buying DA 9mm pistols to come and play with us.

Sort of an "everyman" division. Seems to have worked pretty well so far, even with the slight amount of equipment drift we've seen. I would be extremely hesitant to introduce Production Optics, but "Open Lite" or Modified, as it was called, makes more sense to me. A broader array of guns would fit there, without the restrictions currently imposed on Production.

Troy

[motosapiens]

You will have a division for it a lot sooner than IDPA, but they make an allowance for club matches for no score if the RM ok's it. I never really understood L-10 division. You have a $3000 gun all tricked out and only load 10 rounds.....that would drive me to drink!

Thread hijack: The only people I see shooting limited10 are doing it with guns they really like that don't hold enough to be competitive in Limited. For example, 1911's with 10-round mags, which are inexpensive and fun. You also see it with some stock service 40's (glock, m&p, cz, XD) that only hold 12-15 rounds, but the owners would rather shoot L10 major than download to minor and shoot production.

I personally really like L10 precisely because I will get no competitive advantage from spending $3000 on a gun. Most any 1911 will work. I realize you *can* trick out your L10 gun to be super high-dollar, but most of the folks who like to waste money also seem to be drawn to wasting hundreds of dollars on tuned magazines, so they would prefer to compete in some other division, lol.

I don't really care about carry optics, but if I did, I'd tell all my friends who have them to start shooting them in local matches in open division, and put on an outlaw match or two, and then you'll be able to point to how popular they are. Seems silly to create a division based on hearsay and wishful thinking.

At any rate, in our local matches, we all pretty much just shoot 'heads up' anyway. I'm comparing my scores against the guy in limited and production and open as well.

[bikerburgess]

I'm not in favor of creating a new or revised division to accommodate them, but I see it coming down the road.

.

I agree with Mark, but I get really tired of hearing the argument "there's a division for that. It's called open."

There is a huge difference in a gun that meets all of the other production rules, but has a slide mounted optic, and a fully functioning open gun. The gun alone is 3x - 4x more expensive. Brass is probably in that same range. Mags are at least twice as expensive. (Modified might have been even more expensive.)

I've seen Production guns every bit as expensive as the entry level Open gun market. By the time you add aftermarket barrels, triggers, stippling, etc. I can rack the price up on a Production gun very quickly. Not to mention if I just start expensive. Is there that much difference between a Sphinx with a dot melted into the slide and a Glock 17 based Open gun that several local guys shoot? Sure the best open gun is better than the best Production Optics gun could be. Sure it's significantly more expensive. But that doesn't represent Open entirely. I see lots of people, normally at the local level, shooting with guns in Open that I wouldn't consider competitive. We've got a local guy that shoots a .357 Sig Glock in Open (why I don't know) and another that has been running a Glock 35 with a slide ride dot. He made master in Open with it. Other than the Dot it would be just fine in Production now.

Just a thought, but rather than add Production Optics, why not add Open Lite.( or whatever name). Limited round count, minor only. If you want to use a CORE, fine. If you want to use a Steel Challenge gun, either single stack or just lightened to the point it's not really good with Major load, go for it. Factory ammo could be used easily instead of having to load. Magazines would be cheaper because you wouldn't need to buy the 35 round uber mag (crap, I wasn't supposed to talk about that in public). You could get in a lot cheaper than buying a full open gun, have your optics for bad eyes and the recoil and noise would be less than a full open gun as well. Works for seniors, juniors and heck the more I write the more I like it. Still not enough to carve up the divisions any more though.

Hey I resemble one of those remarks.

The more I shoot and the more divisions I shoot, I have come to believe that on most courses of fire the differences between guns and divisions is not as big a deal as everyone likes to make it out to be. I think many people believe the equipment makes a larger contribution to match placement that it actually does. Probably the one place where equipment makes the biggest difference is do your mags hold more or less than 16 rounds if you can hold more you can shoot any stage with one reload less maybe not.

I would be willing to bet that of a shooter spent a season shooting a g17 with a slide ride dot and 2 mags with extensions he would be shooting within a few percent of where he would be shooting a full 2011 open build. Would the better gun make a difference? Yes but not that much.

Mike

[Griz]

It may be another 10-15 years, but I think there is a pretty good chance we'll have a production optics division. You don't see it much at the range but the small Burris type optics on production guns are catching on very slowly. I think that's why the folks at Smith & Wesson have put out an optics ready M&P.

Mark my words, the small optics on production guns will be very common one day. I can see a larger law enforcement agency going to them within the next few years and once that happens I think the civilian market will really take off. When or if there is enough demand by the membership, a new division will be created.

I've been an LE Firearms Instructor for over 10 years. No one in my neck of the woods has even suggested slide mounted optics (or any optics period) on a duty gun. In fact, they're dead set against anything other than standard night sights on a duty pistol because of a real or perceived chance of sight/component failure and the fact that they are more fragile than iron sights.

The S&W Core pistol is a "gimmick" pistol in the eyes of my fellow instructors so please excuse me if I don't mark your words because I know better...from 1st hand experience.

No disrespect intended.

In every police shooting I have seen on youtube (very scientific research) the officers did not use their sights at all. They were focused on the threat and reverted to spray and pray. A failed reddot would be just as good as irons and a functionng reddot would probably save lives (both the officers and bystanders).

So I'm of the opinion that optics will eventually end up on leo duty weapons just as they have on infantry rifles and for the same reason (they vastly improve effectiveness when training goes out the window under stress)

[motosapiens]

It may be another 10-15 years, but I think there is a pretty good chance we'll have a production optics division. You don't see it much at the range but the small Burris type optics on production guns are catching on very slowly. I think that's why the folks at Smith & Wesson have put out an optics ready M&P.

Mark my words, the small optics on production guns will be very common one day. I can see a larger law enforcement agency going to them within the next few years and once that happens I think the civilian market will really take off. When or if there is enough demand by the membership, a new division will be created.

I've been an LE Firearms Instructor for over 10 years. No one in my neck of the woods has even suggested slide mounted optics (or any optics period) on a duty gun. In fact, they're dead set against anything other than standard night sights on a duty pistol because of a real or perceived chance of sight/component failure and the fact that they are more fragile than iron sights.

The S&W Core pistol is a "gimmick" pistol in the eyes of my fellow instructors so please excuse me if I don't mark your words because I know better...from 1st hand experience.

No disrespect intended.

Just pistols? My agency (300 officers) is in the midst of mounting optics on rifles after extensive testing showed they were much faster and more accurate under stress. Pistols might be different, but that would be pretty counterintuitive.

My experience with firearms instructors is that many of them are crotchety old guys that are VERY resistant to change.

Edited July 9, 2013 by motosapiens

[kevin c]

I started in Limited, spending significant bucks in the building of guns and magazines that did not handicap me in terms of capacity. I moved to and have stayed in Production, not only because the guns are much less expensive, but also that the ten round limit put everybody on more equal footing, where the order of finish depends more on differences in the shooters' skill/execution and less on variations in their equipment. If and when my eyes require a dot sight, I'll probably turn one of my Glocks into an Open gun (a not too expensive proposition). Capacity differences won't mean much to me then because I'll be shooting for fun at that point,

Unless dots become very cheap and are found on almost all the straight from the factory guns that Joe Average Citizen buys at his local gun shop, I am not for having them in Production Division, either as a stand alone Division or an all inclusive one. Production is still the introductory Division for action pistol, meant for guns that the general public already owns, with little extra investment in upgrades required. Modified makes some sense, but why would it work here when it already failed for IPSC?

[Chuck Anderson]

I started in Limited, spending significant bucks in the building of guns and magazines that did not handicap me in terms of capacity. I moved to and have stayed in Production, not only because the guns are much less expensive, but also that the ten round limit put everybody on more equal footing, where the order of finish depends more on differences in the shooters' skill/execution and less on variations in their equipment. If and when my eyes require a dot sight, I'll probably turn one of my Glocks into an Open gun (a not too expensive proposition). Capacity differences won't mean much to me then because I'll be shooting for fun at that point,

Unless dots become very cheap and are found on almost all the straight from the factory guns that Joe Average Citizen buys at his local gun shop, I am not for having them in Production Division, either as a stand alone Division or an all inclusive one. Production is still the introductory Division for action pistol, meant for guns that the general public already owns, with little extra investment in upgrades required. Modified makes some sense, but why would it work here when it already failed for IPSC?

I would not be a fan of Modified. It was probably the most expensive of all divisions. It required purpose built guns that were constrained only by what you could fit in the same box as a Standard gun. It also had Major/minor available. You ended up with a lot of people loading .40 major loads with a short ported barrel to the 170 PF minimum. It resulted in really violent guns that didn't have a lot of purpose outside Modified. It was an interesting technical excercise, but not one I'd want to try.

[sperman]

Modified makes some sense, but why would it work here when it already failed for IPSC?

Modified is the exact opposite of what is being discussed here.

Take an open gun, that is already complicated and expensive. Now make it more of both by making it fit in a box.

Take a production gun that is relatively simple and inexpensive, and add an optic.

The only thing these two guns have in common is an optic.

Yes, we production shooters can and do spend a bunch of money on our guns (he says while looking at his $1300 shadow from CZ Custom) but it isn't necessary to be competitive in the division. My guess is the Production National Champion has won with a fairly stock gun since the division was created. When is the last time Open was won with a Glock and a slide ride optic? (Or any gun that cost less than $3k.)