Popper Safety

[Vince Pinto]

Hi guys,

I'd value your input on the issue of safe shooting distances from poppers.

As you know, IPSC recommends a minimum 10m safe distance.

IPSC also recommends a charge line be placed at 11m to allow a competitor to safely fault the line and only incur a procedural (if he shoots while faulting).

My question is: "Assuming there are two charge lines (11m & 10m), should we DQ a competitor who shoots a popper from over the 10m charge line?".

If not, why not (and please suggest an alternative).

[Skywalker]

Definitely yes!

I have personally seen what ricochets can cause and I think that faulting the minimum distance (we could possibly discuss which should be the minimum) shall always deal with safety matters.

[noname]

I have always considered the rule change in the 14th Edition regarding steel to be unwise. 2.1.8.2 uses the term "safety limit" when referring to the 10 meter line. If safety is an issue, then the consequences of violating the safety rules should be a match DQ. US2.1.8.2 doesn't use the term "safety limit", thus avoiding the issue (at least on paper), and allowing for a procedural penalty instead.

The new rule also puts an extra burden on the course designers with them having to erect physical barriers to limit the approach to steel targets, when a simple charge line used to suffice.

A problem can occur with steel being present throughout the stage, and at various distances. To be fair, each piece of steel, or each array of steel should have its own 10 and 11 meter lines. In the past we just set a single charge line for all of the steel, no matter the distance. This did not really comply with the "no closer than 10 meter rule" though. Competitors were receiving DQs for crossing a line rather than a DQ for engaging steel closer than 10 meters, as the rule then required.

As the rule now stands, a competitor can engage a piece of steel well within 10 meters and only receive a procedural penalty, while at the same time endangering both himself and the RO. If a competitor blows by a piece of steel, and is faced with a decision to engage that piece of steel at a very close distance, or receive a FTE penalty, he may very well fire at it to pick up some points in the match.

[Phil Dunlop]

Vince,

assuming clubs are using steel targets in good condition, not bowed, pitted, chipped etc, (and that should be a given!) I think the safety issue is a non event.

Steel Challenge has managed 'Double Trouble' and 'Tripple Treat' for ever, shooting well within IPSCs minimum distances, (5 and 7yds I believe).

I accept that IPSC has drawn its line in the sand, but if a competitor was to 'inadvertantly' transgress, I think a DQ is far too severe a penalty.

I would be happy to simply give a procedural for faulting a charge line.

P.D.

[EricW]

[Can of Worms Mode OPEN]

Can I ask two questions?   (very respectfully, of course)

1.  How was it determined that 10m and beyond equals "safe?"

2.  What constitutes IPSC's definition of safe?

Why I ask is because the folks I have seen to date get smacked by ricochets were not the competitor or the RO, but folks way back in the peanut gallery 20 yards or more away.  I've been nailed by stuff from 40 yards away as well as from the next bay over.  I fully realize that distance increases safety from ricochets by energy dissipation and dispersion, but I'm not sure about the meaning or necessity for a magic number that DQ's a competitor.

Please enlighten me.

[Vince Pinto]

Eric,

For the same reason:

1) a shot into the ground at 2.95m is an AD and a shot into the ground at 3.15m is not;

2) pointing your loaded gun at 88 degrees is acceptable but 91 degrees it is not.

3) handling ammo in a safety area is a DQ offence, but handling it 1 feet away is not.

We need to define our criteria of what is, and what is not, acceptable.

As you know, this is how society works. We need to have something measurable or identifiable to separate right from wrong, good from bad and safe from unsafe.

Without such definitions or standards, then everything would become subjective and they would vary from RO to RO.

But you knew that already .............

[DogmaDog]

This is one of those rules that should be made close to impossible to violate through stage design.  

That said, I shoot at an indoor range where, during a course walk-through, we were instructed to engage steel targets through a port ONLY, followed by moving up to engage other targets.  We were told specifically that if we engaged steel outside the port, but behind this line, we would receive procedural penalties, but if we were in front of the line and shot steel, we would be DQ'd.

The instructions were clear and explicit, and made before the match began, so I have no problem with that.

In situations where instructions aren't clear, or no 10m boundary is in place, and a competitor faults, the safety violation is on the RO and/or the stage designer, and the procedural is on the competitor!  

DD

[EricW]

Dearest Uncle Vinny,

I'm not challenging the need for a standard, but how did 10m get selected instead of 11, 15.3, or 6m?

My other point was meant to be the same as Phil's...is engaging steel inside of 10m such a hazardous affair as to warrant a DQ rather than a procedural?  

E

[shred]

Well, it's likely that engaging steel at 1" (2.54cm, or one Brazillian "Pinto", Vince ) is inherently dangerous.  Somewhere beyond that we decide on an 'acceptable' level of safety and draw a line.  

I'm not terribly keen on 'DQ for shooting steel over this line', but I dislike "course design must prevent shooters from getting within 10m of steel" much, much more.  

Again, for big matches it isn't such a big deal, but locally we used to have charge lines and actually move downrange past previously-downed steel without trouble.

[38supPat]

Course design should be such that it is not nessessary to use charge lines, there should be a barier to physically prevent a shooter from getting too close. If is unsafe, why allow the shooter to get that close in the first place?

The problem I have seen in the application of this rule (mostly from misunderstanding it) Is that ANY charge line in front of steel, regardless of distance, becomes a dq trap. Yes I know thats not the rule and I would argue it, but many new shooters get dq'd on a bad application of a rule, get sent home and never come back, and being new, nobody stands up for them or tries to straighten it out.

Its reall not that hard to create a barrier, a couple of barrels and the same sticks you use as fault lines gives you a waist high barrier that will prevent a shooter from getting to near the steel.

I have seen, for example, a fault line placed at 10m on a static stage and the shooter warned not to cross it (why would they on a static stage) or an array of poppers behind a fault line with the closest being 10m and the farthest 15m, and the shooter warned that any shots fired across the line will result in a penalty regardless of whether or not the 10m poper was being engaged for that shot.

I think the rule shoud be that if steel is to be used and approaching within 10m is deemed unsafe, it should be mandatory that the shooter not be able to physically approach it.

To me its kind of like putting targets right at 90 degrees. Its too easy to say " well if the shooter breaks 90, he'll be dq'd. Why put the target that close to 90 if breaking it is unsafe. There should be a course design rule that tells designers not to put targets so that they are visible past  75 degrees. That kind of rule should be unnessessary, but we see bad target placement all the time.

[noname]

DogmaDog: The solution to the problem used to be as easy as how you stated it in your post. Then came the freestyle edict.

Now, the problem is not the new rule, but the stage designer, who has conveniently become the proverbial whipping boy for this issue, as he has with others.

[Vince Pinto]

Guys,

I accept the comments about bad course design which allow competitors to shoot steel targets from closer than 10m, the distance we declare is our limit.

My question asks about the penalty.

I'm not looking for ways to give competitors grief but it's been my experience, if we don't specify a penalty, different RO's apply different rules, and inconsistent rulings are a bad thing.

Consider speeding laws. If the limit is 60, there's no limiter on your car (or speed bumps on the highway) to stop you exceeding the limit but you have an indicator (your speedo) to tell you when you are speeding.

When you get caught, there's a fixed penalty, which often increases depending on how much you exceeded the speed limit. Everybody knows the rules, so you speed knowing the possible consequences.

We provide guidance about the limiter (the charge lines), so I just want to state the fixed penalty.

We issue one procedural for exceeding the limit by up to 1 metre, so should the penalty increase for exceeding the higher limit? I guess we have 4 choices:

1) No additional penalty;

2) One procedural for each line crossed while shooting;

3) "Stage" DQ (i.e. stop him and score the stage as shot);

4) Match DQ.

Waddya think?

(Edited by Vince Pinto at 9:23 pm on Jan. 9, 2003)

[Phil Dunlop]

Vince,

option 1 is the only one that is both reasonable and enforceable IMHO

P.D.

Vince, an afterthought, if you are seriously concidering option 2 I have 3 daughters, so I'm very good at 'oh yes you did, oh no I didn't" I can go on for hours!

(Edited by Phil Dunlop at 8:08 pm on Jan. 10, 2003)

[Jake Di Vita]

I agree with Phil. After all (using your example) a driver doesn't get his license revolked for going 20 over, which would be akin to a DQ.

[Skywalker]

Jake,

I regret to inform you that, here in Italy, if you go up to 39 Kmph over the speed limit, you get a proportional penalty (BIG BUCKS in any case), but going 40 or more Kmph over the limit will result in your driving licence suspended for at least 3 months.

If we consider the speed limit analogy applicable, faulting a charge line at 11 meters from a popper should result in a procedural, but shooting the popper below 10 m shoul result in match DQ.

And this is exactly what the rules say.

If a safety limit (questionable, ok) is set, over that limit you should get only a procedural for faulting a charge line, below that limit it becomes a safety infraction, hence the bigger penalty.

[DogmaDog]

I don't know if I even like this idea, but I'll throw it out:  How about a "First Blood" rule?  If a competitor engages inside 10m, but no harm is otherwise done, then he gets a procedural.  If there's some back-splatter, and somebody gets hit by a piece of shrapnel, and blood is drawn, then it's a DQ.  I would say stage DQ for first offense, match DQ for repeat offenders.

There's a local plate match where plates are engaged at 25' (8 yd, 1 ft), but they don't allow FMJ to be shot.  I've seen some blood there (all superficial), so it's not an entirely implausible criterion for a rule.

How's that?

DD

[sfinney]

Bad course design issues aside, there has to be a set distance that is an automatic DQ. You can argue until you're blue in the face, but there has to be a tangible safe/not safe line in the sand (or mud/dirt/whatever)  for consistnecy in rules enforcement, and safety, however that is defined for that particualr shooting sport.

For IPSC it  should be:

Cross the 11m charge line: Procedural

Cross the 10m safety line: DQ

Course design should inherently prevent the need for a 10m line, but as we all know, there needs to be a set standard for those situations where it does not.

Just my 2 cents.

[noname]

If you feel that engaging steel at close range is unsafe, you need to handle it as you do every other safety infraction, with a DQ. The safety distance can be debated. Right now it has been determined to be 10 meters. If you don't feel that it is unsafe, then remove the lines altogether and let the stage be truely freestyle.

I guess I don't understand what the objection is to having a DQable fault line. I think a safety fault line is easier for the shooter to navigate around than an invisible 180 line that will get him a DQ for a safety violation.

[Detlef]

I think safety is relative. Absolute safety in IPSC can be enforced only by not shooting at all any more. The thread started with *Assume....* and I'd like to look deeper and find out what prompts this assumption. Has there been a rash of injuries from poppers engaged from closer than 10 m? Have we acted and shot unsafely at poppers all those years that we did not have the 10m rule (it's relatively new)? What other motivation for contemplating this rule modification might I have overlooked?

Everyone knows I'm a *if it ain't broke don't fix it* kind of guy. What's broke?

--Detlef

[lynn jones]

hey vince,

after thinking about this for a while, since the previous posts.  i think my views are leaning towards "noname's"

response.

if it is safety issue, it should be a DQ, a match DQ not a Stage DQ.  

[2alpha]

If we can draw an abritrary line on the range and say shoot steel past here and you're DQ'd why do we need all these big berms?  Couldn't we just have a line and say shoot the target from past here and you're DQ'd?  Makes about as much sense.  We got too many DQ happy people in this sport.  If a competitor does something truly unsafe then they should be sent home and if they do it enough maybe for good.  But, the range and the stage should be set up so that it is very difficult for anyone to do anything unsafe. This means that if closer than 10 mtrs is unsafe then there should be a physical barrier to prevent a competitor from getting that close.  Don't even get me started on the stages that have to post an RO on the 180 just to determine if a competitor breaks it for a milli second while still pointing at the berm thats safe to shoot at any other time.

[benos]

I'm with Phil in that - I've shot zillions of rounds at steel set closer than 10 meters over the years, and have only been "hit" when the targets where either poorly designed, or excessively pot-marked or abused, or all of the above. Since, because of that experience, I feel steel target safety issues are the responsibility of the match designer, as opposed to an imaginary safety line, I don't feel a shooter should be DQ'd if he violates someone's opinion of what is not safe. A penalty would be sufficient, unless of course the shooter was obviously violating the spirit of the course.

be

[lynn jones]

brian and phil,

the problem with just a penalty and not  a DQ for the violation is that the Shooter, RO and fans are  exposed to the hazard of bullet splatter, etc.  granted, there is little chance anyone would be injured, but normally when someone breaks the 180 (90) no one is injured either.  the potenital for injury lies with splatter off a pepper popper than breaking the 180.  btw. i'm talking 91'ish degrees,  not 95'ish.

lynn jones

[noname]

Maybe it is time for someone to design steel targets that don't splatter.

[Jon Merricks]

Lynn are you saying that there is a diffrence in the splatter at 9.90 yards than at 10 yards?  If my big toes goes over the line at ten yards thats worth a match DQ?  

Quote From BE

"A penalty would be sufficient, unless of course the shooter was obviously violating the spirit of the course."

Now if I like ran up with in five yards and shot that would be a diffrent story.

I believe a penalty would do for a slip of the foot.