Current board drama aside.
This is something that should have happened back in 2005, my choice would have been 17 rounds, but finally this overdue attempt fix to the division based on the original intent for having it will now come to pass before next shooting season kicks up.
I do not think this is going to draw lots of current shooters back to the division. The sport is an optics and 9mm minor sport at this point at the club level, with the other divisions dying in terms of what most competitors choose.
While I am not part of the target demographic for production, I suspect it will be my choice for 50% of my matches next year because of this change, so maybe it is just a super senior over the hill boomer thing with me. I like my production guns. It is still what I carry most often. The mag changes have annoyed but never completely deterred me and I know it annoys the piss out of most people.
When Production came into being back in the late 90's it was 100% about giving completely new shooters a non-gear centric entry point into the game. I hope it can still be that.
It was of course 10 rounds because it came to existence during the Klinton ban, when 10 rounders were all that came with a new gun and all that could be purchased for a new shooter unless you wanted to shell out $75-100 per mag for prebans if you even knew where to find them. Sadly it will still have to be shot that way in the communist states on the west coast and the northeast.
I think however the high number of magazine changes it entailed had really become discouraging to new shooters in this era. Perhaps this mitigates that some.
We ran a 2 hour intro to USPSA class this year for our club members who had never been to a match. We have done this for two decades and it has taught us that at the club level, removing the intimidation factor of not knowing what to do, or fear of looking stupid for the first match kept many people from even trying the sport. This inoculation absolutely works and removes the mystery and fear factor for many. Getting those new shooters from the ranks of our club is essential to keeping a supply of help for setting up and running matches.
It drew about a dozen people, at least half of whom I know starting shooting this year. 2/3 of those shooters showed up with iron sighted guns suitable for production division. I shot the demo on our 28 round stage set up for the class as production and my partner in putting together that class shot his carry optics rig. All those folks noted that I had done 3 mag changes (to make best use of the "movement only" space there was, and not have a mag change in the middle of a shooting position) and my compadre had only one and how it cost me time and shifted my focus a bit during movement.
But all of them had 17 and in many cases 20 round mags. Our discussion at the end of the session was either about them wanting to get an optic for their current gun and learning the dot or them asking if they were ok if they shot limited minor. None of them, all just discovering the game, wanted to really try production. That was only about the number of mag changes they perceived they did not want to deal with.
I think for a new shooter, learning to plan the stage, and then trying to remember everything as they work their way through it, the extra mag changes production currently imposes are an unnecessary distraction. This 15 round thing may or may not change the perception of the division for that originally intended audience for production. As always we shall see.
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So nothing is really changed...
Originally Posted by Artemas2
