Total Ipsc Membership

[Jim Norman]

I would bet USPSA has about 1/5th of the active IPSC shooters in the world. We've only got 10,000 classified shooters, and even a lot of them might not be actively shooting anymore (click through top-10 M-Open list, for example). My best guess for IPSC worldwide is about 50K, + or - 10K.

From the USPSA Website we have 15621 members worldwide. (Population by State)

By area: 15002 members.

I don't know why the difference, but both numbers show 15,000+ members. How active? I don't know, but if world IPSC membership is 45K we are 1/3 of the TOTAL!

Remeber, IPSC doesn't mandate a classification, in fact they only recently set up a clasifer system.

Jim

[AikiDale]

I have not read the IPSC constitution. Anyone know how the GA is constituted? USPSA is one region and I would assume each region has either an equal voice, or a voice proportionate to its member numbers. Perhaps a bicameral setup?

Just as an aside Politics is from the Latin 'poli' for many and 'tics' for blood sucking parasites. I don't want to go there.

[shred]

I would bet USPSA has about 1/5th of the active IPSC shooters in the world. We've only got 10,000 classified shooters, and even a lot of them might not be actively shooting anymore (click through top-10 M-Open list, for example). My best guess for IPSC worldwide is about 50K, + or - 10K.

From the USPSA Website we have 15621 members worldwide. (Population by State)

By area: 15002 members.

I don't know why the difference, but both numbers show 15,000+ members. How active? I don't know, but if world IPSC membership is 45K we are 1/3 of the TOTAL!

Remeber, IPSC doesn't mandate a classification, in fact they only recently set up a clasifer system.

Jim

The web site lists 14000 (main page) 15621 (where?), 15001 (shooters in classifier DB) and 15002 (total of Area numbers) in various places, yet only 10,448 of them have shot four classifiers? That seems like there's a whole lot of U's or inactive shooters. We need to be careful claiming 15K shooters on one hand and dissing regions for possibly paying for more shooters than they have on the other. 20%, 25%, 30%.., it doesn't matter much anyway.

[Vlad]

As a side note, in our area we proabably have a lot active shooters who never join USPSA. Don't ask me why, but for every 2 or 3 registered shooters we also have 1 who isn't. Some only make it out to a few matches a year, some are Steel shooters who come out for trigger time, some are regulars who just don't care about classifications and just show up for the social aspects and plain shooting fun. Some of them do end up joining USPSA, but they end up in that pile of unclassified shooters as they are not as active as the rest of us but may end up shooting in 3 or 4 divisions, and it make take years for them to collect 4 classifiers in a single division.

[Jim Norman]

I would bet USPSA has about 1/5th of the active IPSC shooters in the world. We've only got 10,000 classified shooters, and even a lot of them might not be actively shooting anymore (click through top-10 M-Open list, for example). My best guess for IPSC worldwide is about 50K, + or - 10K.

From the USPSA Website we have 15621 members worldwide. (Population by State)

By area: 15002 members.

I don't know why the difference, but both numbers show 15,000+ members. How active? I don't know, but if world IPSC membership is 45K we are 1/3 of the TOTAL!

Remeber, IPSC doesn't mandate a classification, in fact they only recently set up a clasifer system.

Jim

The web site lists 14000 (main page) 15621 (where?), 15001 (shooters in classifier DB) and 15002 (total of Area numbers) in various places, yet only 10,448 of them have shot four classifiers? That seems like there's a whole lot of U's or inactive shooters. We need to be careful claiming 15K shooters on one hand and dissing regions for possibly paying for more shooters than they have on the other. 20%, 25%, 30%.., it doesn't matter much anyway.

The front page of the USPSA website claims "approxiamately" 14,000 members, the 15621, comes as I pointed out from the population by state from the classifer page. I don't know why there is a difference, but given all of this: We have 5-8 times the shooters we pay for, while other regions may, I state MAY, have fewer than they pay for. China, Japan come to mind, you cn't play our game there, but they are regions with votes that can affect what we do, IF we are not vigilant.

Jim

[caps]

That doesn't work either...look how many WS slots Vietnam received, and remember that they only have twelve members (total)

How high did the Vietnamese place at world shoot? I'm going to Saigon next year and I'd love to try shooting a match while I'm there if I can borrow a gun. Who can I get contact?

The other thing is why worry about world membership numbers? Isn't it more important to find out why USPSA can't seem to get past 15k members for 20 years? IIRC I've seen some USPSA shooters with "A" membership numbers around the 60 thousand number mark, so what happened to the rest?

This is the biggest gun owning country in the world and I think 15,000 is a pretty bad showing.

[Vlad]

That would be because USPSA is far from the only game .. we have SASS, bullseye, high power, who knows how many shotgun disciplines, small bore, steel challenge type stuff, bianchi, PPC, F class, and 50 others I'm forgeting. Not only do we shoot every gun game known to mankind in this country, but we also can hunt more types of game and for longer seasons then most of the world. Combine all those numbers and you end up with a large number of dedicated shooters.

Also keep in mind that competition shooters are a small part of the gun owning public in the US. You are basically asking "With so many cars on the road why do we only have a handfull of race drivers?". Not everyone is interested in shooting matches.

[GeorgeInNePa]

That doesn't work either...look how many WS slots Vietnam received, and remember that they only have twelve members (total)

How high did the Vietnamese place at world shoot? I'm going to Saigon next year and I'd love to try shooting a match while I'm there if I can borrow a gun. Who can I get contact?

The other thing is why worry about world membership numbers? Isn't it more important to find out why USPSA can't seem to get past 15k members for 20 years? IIRC I've seen some USPSA shooters with "A" membership numbers around the 60 thousand number mark, so what happened to the rest?

This is the biggest gun owning country in the world and I think 15,000 is a pretty bad showing.

To answer the above bold type I give you this quote from Gary Stevens:

"Let's face it, our sport is not for everyone. It is sometimes easier to make excuses than it is to load and make ready."

It's in his sig and it's very true.

The sport we have chosen for a hobby is difficult to master. It requires time and patience to learn to do what we do with firearms.

[Jim Norman]

To add to what Vlad said...

In the USA you do not need to belong to a club to own a gun. Many gunowners in rural areas go out back, hunt or plink and never think of spending a nickel on joing a club, let alone a national or international organization.

(Had to edit myself, almost drifted into a political thread)

One other reason might be the distance to clubs that shoot USPSA. Look at PA as an example.

There are clubs along the NJ PA line and alnog the PA OH or PA WV line and one along hte PA/MD line. If you lived along rout 80 in the center of the state, there just isn't much in the way of competitive shooting, but there isn't anything like USPSA there. I am sure other areas have the same situation, we are spread thin. It takes a certain number of people to set up and run a match and it takes people showing up to shoot it to keep it going.

Jim

Edited September 1, 2006 by Jim Norman

[38superman]

Shred,

Not so...remember, there is a CAP on dues, and World Shoot slots are given to each Region by dues paid...

2,000 members per region is the cap. In other words, a Region of 15,000 members (for example) is only required under IPSC rules to pay dues on 2,000 members.

World Shoot slots are handed out to the Regions based on dues, NOT actual membership.

Since USPSA has 15,000-odd (very odd, in some cases) members, and according to our own Da Prez (as posted in his column a few Front Sights ago) there are about 30,000 ISPC shooters worldwide, that would give the US Region half of the World Shoot slots. With the "cap" system firmly in place, that fair and equitable apportionment system will never happen.

IPSC refuses, period, end of discussion, to release numbers by Region for just that reason. I proposed just dropping the "dues" cap, as it was artificially depriving IPSC of much needed captital, but the high-ranked IPSC muck-a-muck that I was discussing this with fixated on the "half of the WS slots going to the US" (thus, inadvertently proving my point) part, and that was that.

Alex

I would just like to point out that I was not advocating breaking away from IPSC in my earlier post.

There needs to be a sanctioning body in any organized sport.

The reasons for that are obvious.

I simply annoys me that we have to tolerate this "We don't want half the world shoot slots to go to the US" attitude.

If we are half the membership why shouldn't we get half the slots?

Tls