I regularly go up to Sights Practical for their IDPA match and they have a shoothouse that I love to engage. It is not a legal IDPA COF, let me say that up front. The way it works is they use standard IDPA targets but they put pictures of guns, knives, cell phones, hammers, and sometimes guns and badges together. There are usually about 9-10 threat targets and 6-10 non-threats which can include the badge-gun combination. You are usually given a 100 second par time. So a perfect score is 100, down zero.
When I first shot this COF, I ended up shooting the LE's and sometimes other non-threats almost every time. Now that I have shot it more than 8 times, I never shoot the LE's or non-threats because I learned to "Be sure of my target..." which is one of the four primary safety rules. That COF makes me THINK BEFORE I pull the trigger....is it a real threat? The 100s par time gives me the ability to make those decisions without the speed pushing me too fast to make fast decisions and thus making mistakes.
I don't want to get into a discussion on whether this should be IDPA legal or not.
I am more interested in hearing whether this type of COF should somehow be included in competitive sports because it trains us to THINK BEFORE we pull the trigger and fully upholds one of the primary safety rules to "Be sure of your target, and what is beyond it." (I have hit a few non-threats because they were behind my threat target.
My own view is that the idea of speed competes with the idea of making sound judgements on targets, but they also do belong together...we need to make speedy and sound judgments.
The IDPA guys are so caught-up in the current rules changes that they can't really hear anything new. So, I thought I would toss it out here.
Cody