Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
This month’s issue of Front Sight, the official journal of USPSA, hit my doorstep a few days ago, and I’ve found it to be particularly full of interesting tidbits.
In his column, USPSA Pres Phil Strader reminds us that IPSC, the international body that includes USPSA as a national member for the US, is having their World Shoot in Florida this October. What I didn’t realize is that the last time the US hosted the World Shoot was 1986, ten years after the sport was founded and almost three decades ago.
The World Shoot will also, in accordance with IPSC rules, only be using the octagonal “turtle” classic targets, since the torso-shaped “metric” target is only allowed in USPSA. To give Americans every incentive to get used to them and have a good showing at the World Shoot, Phil wryly notes to “expect more classic targets than usual” at the USPSA Nationals two weeks before the World Shoot. Indeed.
John Amidon’s rules clarification column is, to a rules wonk like me, always interesting, but has a particularly interesting ruling about someone in Single Stack clearing a death jam by putting a magazine in his front pants pocket and then using it to load the gun after remedial action was complete. Amidon confirms this would move the shooter to Open because he just loaded a magazine from a carrier that wasn’t behind the point of his hip as required by the Single Stack division rules. This is useful to remember because a move to Open is a bummer second only to a DQ, and it can be caused by an honest mistake. And since clearing a malfunction is also the only reason IDPA allows you to leave a loaded mag on the ground, just remember that regardless of your game, when the clock is running, just drop the mag and move on. That’s why you have spares.
You do have spares, right?
Third, in Executive Director Kim Williams’ column, she notes that USPSA has more than 400 affiliated clubs for the first time since 1998. That is significant because 1998 was, of course, shortly after the splintering of the American practical shooting community by the founding of IDPA two years earlier. We know that gun sales have been through the roof thanks to two-time Gun Salesman of the Year Barack Obama, but it’s good to know that people are finding their way in to the practical shooting sports, too.
