I voted for Yee-Min Lin.
https://sites.google.com/vbm.com/yeemin2022/home
I voted for Yee-Min Lin.
https://sites.google.com/vbm.com/yeemin2022/home
Last edited by Clusterfrack; 08-05-2022 at 11:06 PM.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
Stoeger was banned by TLG himself. And I'm just going to put this out here for you to chew on...If P-F today ran with the same level of moderation that TLG enforced you would also be banned.
I say that as someone who reads most of your posts and appreciates them and your work ethic. But your generally willingness to argue with people with a lot more experience than you would find you on the outside looking in.
So, I'm not sure I'd put water in that pot and hope it would hold.
Anyways, continue on folks. I myself haven't been a USPSA member since the last time Stoeger was banned for reasons that seemed suspect.
Oh I fully expect that I would have been banned from here.
I also think that if Stoeger were posting here today he might not be banned.
I am willing to argue with people with a lot more experience. It’s always been that way for me during training and my career. Sometimes I’ve found that I’m wrong. And like BBI says, I usually when shown I’m an idiot or wrong I’ll say “oh, I’m an idiot and wrong.”
Sometimes I’m not wrong and sometimes it’s a difference of context or perspective.
There were a number of advancements in military training that came from decidedly not military sports.
My delivery can be abrasive. I can’t accept “because I said so and look at my training resume” as an explanation.
Think of every curriculum that has had to be revamped from the “that’s the way we have always done it.”
Ken Hackathorn might want me to STFU if I argued with him about why HE needs a red dot, lol.
But despite his experience, on a technical shooting matter I would want to have a discussion not just listen to a lecture.
As an aside, I really respect BBI and Clusterfrack for their ability to articulate their thoughts and experiences in a way that helps me understand WHY and how. We have had good discussions that hopefully we have both benefited from.
I think another part that riles people is I want to know WHY and not just WHAT.
Because without the WHY, you can’t necessarily tell if it couldn’t be better or improved on.
Sure, something can work okay.
But could it be better? What are the things keeping it from being better? Is that a limit for everyone? Is it a limit for me personally in time or money? How does it apply to me and my use?
I was a member here when Stoeger got banned and remember the whole thing well. Things were different then, that’s for sure.
From the perspective of a former USPSA member that eventually found other things to do with his time:
One thing that really keeps me from regaining an interest in USPSA is that there’s a small, but incredibly vocal, group of USPSA shooters that turn the sport into a never ending fountain of drama. It’s always something. This guys overclassified (who really gives a shit), that guy said some of this stuff we love to do isn’t really applicable to self defense and we must call him a shitty shooter to prove that the 10,000 hours of dry fire we did last year are important, or the organization is incompetent, and whatever else.
For a group of people that tend to say you have to check your feelings to shoot the sport, this overly obnoxious group sure seems to wear a lot of feelings on their sleeve.
As for Stoeger. I met the dude briefly and he seemed like a decent enough guy. Took time to chat with a nobody like me at a level 2 match when he really had better stuff to do. I’ve got a lot out of his materials and refer people to them a lot. I can’t help but wonder why he’s surprised that he got punished, except for the fact he got to say whatever he wanted for a decade or so with minimal consequences. He’s definitely enjoyed poking the bear a lot over the years, but the problem with that is eventually the bear bites. I guess in time everyone will figure out who needs who more (Stoeger or USPSA).
I think it's incredibly easy to avoid USPSA drama if you don't listen to podcasts and just shoot matches. Rarely if ever have I heard any such complaining like xxxx is a sandbagger, yyyy is a grandbagger, the board are BOCs, etc. at an actual match. As I've had less and less free time to use social media and listen to podcasts my exposure to that stuff is at a level I can tolerate and I could reduce it lower if I didn't have instagram.
I think it is always interesting since USPSA is a sport with a bunch of somewhat macho (at least in their own minds) guys, there is always a war of narratives where people try to portray everyone else's complaints as teenage girl drama and their own complaints as legitimate manly man issues. At the end of the day if "drama" is not okay then basically any complaint is unacceptable because of this. In my mind there are 2 ways to minimize drama. 1 is just to shut everyone up, no complaining or you get banned (apparently where we are going). 2 is actually to address complaints and give people a reason to think you're actually working to improve the org.
Best local match I ever shot got ruined because of 2 guys that wanted to argue that every stage was illegal in some way or another, so staying off the ‘net ain’t 100% foolproof.
Longer version: there was a 3-gun club that decided to try their hand at offering USPSA on some Saturdays. They put together one hell of a 6 stage club match. Most of their stages were at least level 2 match quality. Keep in mind this was the first one they ever put on.
Well, a couple of dudes had their rule books in their back pockets and spent the day bellyaching that this wasn’t right or that or whatever. Now, I’ll grant that if they wanted to run sanctioned matches then all the stuff needed to be “legal.” Where I looked at the pair as being boorish was I thought they could have addressed the stuff after the match in a more professional way instead of tying up the works for 30-45 minutes per stage while one or two targets got moved to satisfy 2 complainers while the rest of us just wanted to shoot.
That club never ran a USPSA match again. I ran into one of the guys at a later date and asked about it. “Too many Kentucky lawyers” was the answer he gave me. So yeah, the howler monkeys ain’t just on the internet.