Great thing about "dumb" IDPA rules: Participation in the sport is not mandatory.
Great thing about "dumb" IDPA rules: Participation in the sport is not mandatory.
Jeff Cooper thought you ought to be able to count rounds under match or combat stress and reload with the last round in the chamber. But he was thinking in terms of GI 1911s with 7 in the magazine.
One IDPAish outlaw match I know lets you load where, when, and how you like, but... you only get 30 rounds, 3x10 or 2x15 and stages run longer than regulation IDPA's 18. Better not throw away ammo you will need later just to schedule a reload e.g. between shooting positions.
Code Name: JET STREAM
Attitudes like that are how you shrink participation in a sport, especially when there's an alternative available which does not have the "dumb" rules in question.
There are multiple USPSA clubs within a little over an hour drive of me (several of them within a half hour drive) hosting weeknight matches every week from spring through autumn with bigger matches on some weekends, but only one IDPA club in the entire metro area, and the lonely IDPA club hosts matches significantly less frequently. Certainly there are other factors as well, but I can't help but think that the contrast is at least somewhat related to the "dumb" IDPA rules.
I kind of thought that way and didn't start shooting USPSA until 2019. But what I found was that playing the game and figuring out the game helped me improve my pistol shooting tremendously... with every single other gun I owned, including my EDC. Even from draw positions I didn't practice regularly. I improved more with my carry gun (P365) shooting a CZ gamer gun in that 12 months than I had in years prior.
I have a hard time believing that's the reason for the rule. The round counts are so low in the game that you'd have a hard time NOT remembering your shots. Basically you're counting your make up shots from a stage plan, right? I heard it was a "don't waste ammo because you don't know when you might need it" rule.
All that being said, isn't it time for a new IDPA type game to come onto the scene? Surely @Mr_White could come up with something that was a modern version of IDPA. Maybe a modern version of a Postal Match that people could compete remotely and post video?
Would anyone here be interested? I could post a different thread on it. I envision something that could be shot at a square range.....
This is the argument of someone who has a very skewed view of what USPSA is. If you want to be competitive in Open, sure, you need a multi-kilobuck race gun. Not so much in basically any other division. People regularly win Production division with stock (or nearly stock) Glocks or similar, and the same is true of Carry Optics, with the exception that they've usually spent a bit of money on 140mm mag extensions.
Ah, so now we've entered the "move the goalposts" phase of the conversation. I never claimed a bunch of people were winning nationals with stock plastic guns, but even when you start talking about Shadow2s, they may be the "race guns" of Production, but they're still not $3K. MSRP is something like $1400 IIRC. Expensive, sure, but ~1/2 of what you mentioned. On the flip side, how many $5K custom 1911s do you see in IDPA? I'm pretty sure it's not zero. You can compete in either sport with a wide range of guns at a wide range of prices, so claiming that USPSA is some sort of "rich guy only" territory is pure BS.