Just how good are USPSA competitors?

[Duane Thomas]

We realistically assess a stage, our fellow competitors, equipment and technique. Nay, we ruthlessly and dispassionately analyze, adopt and/or discard, without sentiment, anything that helps us in our search. That, alone among shooting competitions, sets us apart.

Yes, very much so. Even among "serious" shooters, one major thing separating the truly good from the not-so-good is a ruthless willingness to change, to constantly tear down and reinvent yourself. Not-so-good shooters tend to fixate early-on on one particular gun type, one particular set of shooting techniques, and then absolutely refuse to change. Whereas good shooters will instantly scrap techniques they've spent years refining, or even thousands of dollars of equipment, the instant they see a better way.

[VegasOPM]

We realistically assess a stage, our fellow competitors, equipment and technique. Nay, we ruthlessly and dispassionately analyze, adopt and/or discard, without sentiment, anything that helps us in our search. That, alone among shooting competitions, sets us apart.

I Love this line. That is the way that I have pursued pretty much everything in my life (after learning the basics of course), and it has served me well so far. Maybe that is why I love this sport.

[CHA-LEE]

The more I learn about shooting pistols in a USPSA competition style, the more I realize how much I don’t know about shooting fast and accurately. I consider myself a decent marksmen and an “ok” USPSA competitor. But I still feel like I am only scratching the surface on being able to shoot in a way that truly supports USPSA style competitions.

When I go to a non USPSA style shooting activity, such as a local public range or a home grown match, I am always surprised to see very poor shooting and gun handling skills by almost everyone in attendance. Then I think that most of these shooters carry regularly for “Self Defense” and it makes my head spin. And these are the guys that are actually at the range practicing, verses a much larger group of concealed carry owners that rarely ever practice.

That to me is the most mind boggling thing about gun owners. The way I see it, if you are going to carry a pistol for self defense then you better be very competent in all aspects of firing and handling that weapon. Otherwise you are nothing more than an extremely dangerous liability to yourself and everyone around you when the proverbial shit hits the fan and you feel that a firearm is needed to rectify the situation. But sadly, not many concealed carry gun owners feel that way.

In the end we all will be good at what we practice. If you practice shooting pistols in USPSA style conditions, then sure, you are going to be better than others that don’t compete. I think it really comes down to context. In a USPSA match stage you want to burn through the stage as fast as possible. As a LEO or SWAT officer you wouldn’t use a USPSA style of shooting to clear a room or dispatch bad guys. Those are two totally different contexts of shooting conditions and you can’t compare them really. You could make a comparison of hand to hand combat skills between a USPSA shooter and a LEO or SWAT officer. I would venture to say that a LEO or SWAT officer would beat the living tar out of the average USPSA shooter in a hand to hand confrontation simply because they use the hand to hand skills FAR MORE than shooting skills in their every day life. But then again we are comparing apples to oranges.

So really, in the big picture, does it really matter how "Good" we are at shooting when compaired to other contexts of shooting?

[Duane Thomas]

I think we're beginning to segue into "real world self-defense vs. USPSA/IPSC/IDPA" territory here which is a verboten topic. Let's cool in on the real-world self-defense discussion, guys. There are plenty of forums on the Internet to discuss that sort of thing. This is not one of them.

[GForceLizard]

In talent vs. motivation. There are certainly people with talent but little desire. They may have been shooting casually all their life but have no desire to devote the time it takes to push their skills to the top. For some talent can actually be a demotivating factor. Shooting has always been easy for them and that's why they like it. Add lots of dryfire and practice drills and they're no longer interested. You can substitute anything you like here for shooting it applies to just about everything.