RO Fatally Shot at NY USPSA Match

[Jim Watson]

I agree.
About a year ago one of those extended pins got stuck solidly, protruding out of breech face hole. I replaced it with an OEM. That gun has not missed a bit since, no light strikes, and sub 3 lbs SA pull.
I wanted to remove the rest of those long pins awhile ago but forgot until now.

Doesn't have to be extended. An occasional fault of early Series 80 Colts was for the firing pin block to lock the firing pin forward. That done by dry firing, it left the firing pin protruding so far as to cause a jam rather than fire if you attempted to load the gun, therefore not a huge safety hazard.

[Bucky]

Back to pistols dropped on the hammer. If sear engagement and half cock notches are broken, then this can and most likely will cause the weapon to fire. In this example I'm thinking about 1911 type designs. I own, shoot, and tinker with CZ 75 pistols. I do not think that the robust hammer sear arrangement would break if one of these pistols were dropped.
Note I said do not think. It is an educated guess.

The hammer was fully lowered, so there is no sear engagement involved.

[YVK]

Doesn't have to be extended. An occasional fault of early Series 80 Colts was for the firing pin block to lock the firing pin forward. That done by dry firing, it left the firing pin protruding so far as to cause a jam rather than fire if you attempted to load the gun, therefore not a huge safety hazard.

Mine was a light fire. No fp block here. I think the main issue was a light fp spring that provided very little resistance or return power, and probably more tapered pin design.

[Totem Polar]

Attachment 63117

I don’t have a real dog in this hunt, because I haven’t shot an organized competitive match since the late 90s. But I’m pretty sure of this: if that first barrier didn’t have a big Glock sign on it, and if those 2 cardboards had old T-shirts and “gun” stencils on them, and someone posted the same pic and said it was from “instructor XYZ’s weekend defensive class” there’d be a P-F dogpile on instructor XYZ that makes the Rittenhouse event look like bingo night at the rest home. Tell me I’m wrong on that.

[olstyn]

@Totem Polar, I agree, which is why I was one of several people discussing the position of the camera guy unfavorably. To be honest, I'd rather the RO in that pic was in a safer position as well, but at least the shooter would have to blow it by a considerably wider margin to shoot her.

[TheRoland]

I'm sure GJM with his vastly superior competition experience will be along to tell me all about the stacks of bodies he's seen at matches, but when I was researching this story I found exactly one incident of a fatal shooting in the last 10 years, and that was at an IPSC match in Canada.

The fact is that an accidental/negligent death at a shooting match is always going to be news, because dead bodies where you don't expect there to be dead bodies is automatically news. But doing a deep dive into search terms around stuff like this hasn't really turned up squat.

I'm not GJM, and ten pages later, so discussion has moved on... but I'm aware of other fatalities in the US over the last 10 years and a couple of life-changing injuries that haven't come up in this thread. I think some of them were discussed on this forum, but can't find the posts here or on Google.

I do not think it's a particular dangerous sport, but it's not yoga. There are injuries and deaths.

[Zincwarrior]

I don’t have a real dog in this hunt, because I haven’t shot an organized competitive match since the late 90s. But I’m pretty sure of this: if that first barrier didn’t have a big Glock sign on it, and if those 2 cardboards had old T-shirts and “gun” stencils on them, and someone posted the same pic and said it was from “instructor XYZ’s weekend defensive class” there’d be a P-F dogpile on instructor XYZ that makes the Rittenhouse event look like bingo night at the rest home. Tell me I’m wrong on that.

Also, there's literally no reason the cameraman couldn't set up a remote camera in that position, or indeed anywhere, for even better pictures.
I have been to matches with cameras all over the place, and drones overhead.

The thought that cameraman is going to risk his life, and the RO his savings and future earnings (from the inevitable lawsuit) for a picture is not logical.

[NoTacTravis]

I don’t have a real dog in this hunt, because I haven’t shot an organized competitive match since the late 90s. But I’m pretty sure of this: if that first barrier didn’t have a big Glock sign on it, and if those 2 cardboards had old T-shirts and “gun” stencils on them, and someone posted the same pic and said it was from “instructor XYZ’s weekend defensive class” there’d be a P-F dogpile on instructor XYZ that makes the Rittenhouse event look like bingo night at the rest home. Tell me I’m wrong on that.

Not going to tell you you're wrong but I will point out that there's a logical fallacy in your premise...

If you fill in the gaps in your statement it would be:

If this incident had occurred at a singular event, put on by an unknown instructor, without a long history of identically structured events with a governing body in place keeping an eye on safety, and without a multi-year, multi-thousand event track record of incident free events making this a 0.1% occurrence in a sea of safe events, P-F would "dog pile" on it.



Do you see the difference between the two hypotheticals you mention beyond mere Glock signage and T-shirt draped targets?

[JMS]

the RO can eat my whole ass if he tries to interfere by imposing his own interpretation of the rules. This is why we have a fucking rule book in the first place - so we can be clear on what is an isn’t allowed.

Yep, "show me the reference" is a thing, and a lot of folks either forget that, or like to feign having forgotten that because it suits their ability to Karen things. Chant about the spirit of a given rule all one wants, the LETTER of it is specified in a published item that's been through a vetting process. It may not have come down off of Mt Sinai on stone tablets, but there's also not a lot of wiggle room for "...but if Jethro don't like it, he can do whatever the fuck he wants and expect folks to jump."

Some hucklebuck RO doesn't like the 180 rule, and wants to add an extra 10-15* to it...that's not being safe, that's indulging in a desire to control other people, cleverly disguised as risk-mitigation. Those folks can EATADIK, it's no different than when the codgers didn't want AIWB folks to compete, despite divisions with clearly-written "no restrictions" specifications in terms of equipment placement. Feel about it however one wants to feel, the reference clearly defines where the line is drawn.

180* is 180*. If they wanted the limit to be 185*, that's what would be written in the rulebook; it's not. Folks need to find a way to deal with that, and it's not by power-tripping by citing "Safety..." as uttered in some melodramatic, hushed, reverent tone.

[Totem Polar]

Do you see the difference between the two hypotheticals you mention beyond mere Glock signage and T-shirt draped targets?

No.

I’m discussing the picture, not the OP incident.

Normalization of deviance is a thing.

Thanks for reinforcing my point though.