I agree that it is likely a bit of both ignorance and willing acceptance of risk. Furthermore I suspect the purpose built competition guns from established competition-focused companies probably aren't super drop safe either. I have never really heard of anyone buying a custom $5000 2011 with a 1.75lb trigger and no grip safety, and asking if it'll go off when dropped.Originally Posted by backtrail540
I am actually a little hazy on whether or not USPSA really has a rule for proper lifetime bans from participating in the sport. My understanding is that they can terminate someone's membership but non-members can still shoot club matches, just not level 2 and up. When Foley threatened Ben Stoeger with this, it would have been much more impactful in his case as that would have prevented him from shooting all the matches he cares about, but I don't think the board can stop you from shooting a club match unless they somehow convince the individual MD to apply rule 6.4.4 on you.
Edit: I looked at the stuff Ryan Flowers posted and saw mention of him being added to an "ineligible for competition roster" which certain match administrators have access to. I don't think this goes out to every club, just people putting on L2 and up matches?
Last edited by Eyesquared; 11-11-2020 at 01:19 PM.
The body armor isn’t for the suicides. Unfortunately that is a common occurrence on ranges that rent guns. It’s for all the other ridiculous shit people do on public ranges.
There are certain people that cause me to wear body armor on the range at work. This is usually due to their la k of common sense, poor gun handling and inability to follow directions.
To ban someone for life, the board has to vote on it, and it bans that person from any match where USPSA collects a fee - so anything that isn't an outlaw match...or IDPA.
I recall a death maybe 5-8 years ago when the competitor attempted to catch a dropped pistol, resulting in the competitor pressing the trigger and fatally shooting himself.
I’ll search and see if I can find it and if my memory was correct. It often isn’t.
Edit- found it. My dates were off.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/vancouv...952cc3480/amp/
Last edited by Rocky Racoon; 11-11-2020 at 04:42 PM.
At the local I frequent about half of the participants never join USPSA. We don't check names to a list and even if we did, we don't check ID's. Not sure why anyone would go through all the trouble to be where they aren't wanted, but if you want to shoot a match you can.
I suppose with all of the drama loving internet addict USPSA shooters word gets around some, and you'd actually have to move or something...
I suspect that different clubs have different safety cultures. Unfortunately, my club has a barely existent safety culture. In 2018 I participated in an IDPA match that included a shooter's meeting and a walk through of every stage. The meeting and walk through took 30 minutes plus, and safety wasn't mentioned at all. Zero discussion about safety throughout the entire match.
Things changed a little bit when a guy put a round through his leg last year at a rimfire match, but the changes were largely lip service. The bullet wound was through and through his calf, and he was back at the range a few days later, so the incident may not have been severe enough to inspire meaningful change.
As for light triggers, it's been discussed many times hereabouts that short, light triggers make guns easier to shoot well. Those same trigger characteristics also make it easier to discharge the gun unintentionally or negligently. Perhaps more concerning are the guys who will buy a brand new gun, and proudly tell you a couple days later how they took it apart and polished the internals with a dremel tool, despite not having any armorers training or previous experience with that platform. The guys I'm talking about are not gunsmiths or armorers, and don't possess any particular mechanical acumen, and I certainly don't trust their idea of a trigger job.*
(*These are often the same folks who will take a perfectly functioning gun, install a plethora of parts from different aftermarket manufacturers, and then wonder why it pukes on every stage. Nice guys for the most part, but far from squared away, by P-F standards).
This is what I see in my area. As always, other's experiences may differ.
I always hate running guys shooting non-decocking lever CZ’s and Tanfo’s. I keep waiting for the ND while they go to lower the hammer all the way.
Sucks for everyone involved.
Formerly known as xpd54.
The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions or policies of my employer.
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My, my...what a charred arse you have said the kettle to the pot...
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I'd suggest considering some things:
(1) "Drop-safe" isn't an on-off switch. Some designs--like a box-stock Glock in good working order--are pretty damn resistant. And there are some guns that you'd think were drop-safe, that aren't. A 1911 can drop the hammer and fire, even with the thumb safety engaged. At other times, there have been perfectly good firearms that weren't drop safe (like the S&W 59 first-gens), that were really very good guns until newer revisions came along and they became obsolete. And in other areas, it doesn't matter whether a gun is drop-safe, like in bullseye or F-class rifle.
(2) Most people don't know how their guns work in a detailed way. For instance, in a G-Lock, how the trigger bar pushes the firing pin safety out of the way of the safety, but the trigger safety prevents the trigger from pivoting until you deactivate it with your finger, and that unless you do that, the pre-tensioned striker can't move forward because the trigger bar is in the way and there's literally no place for it to go. Once you understand that, then it's easy to realize that people are modifying their guns without the slightest idea of how all the parts go together. They start looking for "short, light" triggers on their G-Locks, not realizing that the distance the cruciform has to move to get out of the way of the striker, and the tension it's under, are the things that keep their gun from going *bang* if you slap it with your hand. And yes, there have been trigger kits sold that would do that.
(3) Going back to Point #1, nobody reasonable is going to actually drop-test their gun. You'd be crazy to. This is because drop-testing your gun would mean dropping it on the sorts of surfaces you're going to carry it on, and nobody is going to bang their new shiny off a concrete floor.
1 + 2 + 3 = there's a lot of Nobody Knows going on. Monkeys with hand grenades.
And yeah, competition has a ton to do with it. Firing pin blocks add weight to the trigger pull. Unavoidable fact of life. And if there's no floor to the trigger pull weight, then there is literally zero competitive advantage to leaving it in. Check out any competitive shooting forum, and you'll find that Hardware posts outnumber Software posts by a huge margin. That's a lot of people trying to buy points.
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Now, as an aside, there's a ton of speculation going on, and the truth of the matter is that nobody knows anything. About the only confirmed fact is that the floor surface was concrete, which is about as conducive to a dropped gun discharging as you can get. For all we know, the competitor tried to grab the gun as he dropped it and it discharged via trigger manipulation. People get huge, glaring details wrong all the time. That is a large portion of my profession. Just yesterday I had a subject vehicle described as a "blue Ford F150". When I received a report later of a "blue Lexus SUV", I had a hunch it was the same vehicle--and I was right! People, on average, spend half their time not looking, and the rest of their time not seeing. Expecting them to notice and remember details surrounding a fatal accident that they most likely weren't even looking at is asking too much. Not to mention, there's a reason why it's common practice to separate witnesses, even when the parties have no reason to lie--two people who are half right will talk and come up with a story that's 75% bullshit.
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