A rather challenging conversation came up in the context of a match that raised an interesting point of contention regarding cold range rules. In short, does a cold range have to encompass facility staff not involved as range officers for match or training stages, or is there a separation between the perimeter staff (and staff for other concurrently held events) and staff for a specific match function?
With a bit more detail...
One particular gentleman was rather insistent on the point that (as he believed) sanctioning bodies required all persons at a given facility to be disarmed during a match, whether or not they were involved in the match event or not. (This was specific to USPSA, but discussion also encompassed IDPA and 3Gun).
The countervailing opinion was that ROs running specific bays for a match would be cold, but that a facility with other uncontrolled public access would remain armed in accordance with usual practices for the facility. This is consistent with frequently observed practice. Towards this argument one can cite any number of facilities, particularly those with attached firearms retail spaces or other public range access… to include NRA HQ, virtually any other range in NOVA, etc.
Given the number of attempts against individuals at ranges by bad actors seeking to acquire weapons, I could not imagine that this is controversial – but I am apparently not aware of some opinions across the competitive shooting community in particular. While competitors may be in a state of readiness which would allow them to load and engage in short order, this usually means training ammo rather than duty / carry ammo. There are also questions of response times in which participants sucked into the training environment, and surrendering a measure of general situational awareness, would then have to rapidly switch gears in the event on an incident. Staff in the course of normal duties should at least experience these issues less severely, as such considerations should at least have been in mind.
The second area of dispute that follows from this question of boundaries extends to those arriving at, or departing from the match. The issue of cold ranges demands the question of permissible disarming process, both for staff that may have to rotate between roles during a match as well as the participants themselves. That is another kettle of fish entirely, but basically while there are good reasons for rules to avoid fat fingering ones weapons while in spaces immediately adjacent to the match bays there still have to be ways for those who carry routinely to dress down from EDC to a training posture. Given that some folks travel many hours to matches, and often are showing up at places where they are not entirely sure of the ground and the other participants, demanding folks enter cold is more than a bit unreasonable.
The best such process are those that bring in participants at a specific point in time, usually after check in or before the safety brief, and allow incoming or departing participants to either unload and show clear or load with carry ammo prior to commencement of proceedings. This of course requires that participants respect both the requirement not to unholster, and the need to avoid the safe areas (where ammo is prohibited), prior to unloading or after making ready for departure. This is not an onerous burden for those who carry daily, and the process provides a good transition boundary for mindset as well. See KSTG, for example, where this is done as a group in a single bay; or other locations where a specific bay is set aside, or where a clearing barrel is made available. In the Force on Force context, this is where a specific validation of disarmed state via search procedure also occurs for those entering the staging and scenario areas (as any FoF evolution should require).
The less well thought out, but more common, version of such processes are those that basically require that the participants sort things out on their own, out of view. This is contrary in many ways to appropriate handling measures, and can result in weird in vehicle contortions and other less than ideal situations that actually increase the risk of ND – especially for less experienced shooters. (Now for those most part, the folks that have to take care of themselves also must have been doing so for a while on their own as part of the rest of their EDC lives… but as we add more and more new shooters, and novice CCW holders, this is not as assured.)
The third solution simply assumes that those coming out to shoot do not use their EDC weapon to also compete with, and either wouldn’t be carrying it or would have both carry weapon and competition weapon in a cold state. I think in part that this stems from a rather dated perspective of how competitors come out to matches, and while it may apply to those who like shiny new raceguns there are a lot of folks who come as they would be if such contexts were real.)
I find myself rather amazed that these questions are even an area of discussion at this point in time, but apparently the difference in perspective created more than a bit of heat. I suspect this is a culture thing, as the viewpoints appear to be segmented quite specifically by age (but that may have been a limited sample).
Or maybe I am the crazy one.... as it has been suggested that prior experiences (with hot ranges, modern range procedures, and other training environments where even the movement of cold weapons to prestage at a training facility required armed escort to ensure they didn’t go walkabout) have tainted my views.
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Originally Posted by Urban_Redneck
