Come here to gush about tactical setups, swap your favorite picatinny rail stories, praise hickok45, brag about your hand loads, and fantasize about your next lower receiver.
This is a good spot to fork off-topic gun digressions, as suggested by @Mindysan33 and @milliefink.
Holy shit man, the way you talk about responsible sport shooting, I always thought you were talking about plinking.
That USPSA stuff looks like terrorist training camp.
What? No skis?
Yep, itâs tactical training competition.
We donât have that much snow in the midwest 
At least not in Kansas where I grew up. Not for long. And no mountains.
I have skied a couple times, and would love to try biathlon. But not with my leg now. I canât imagine the shape you would have to be in to be good at it. Shooting well calm is hard. Shooting well after skiing how ever far they have to go - yeesh. Rule #1 - cardio.
Naw, you are thinking the tactical training or maybe 3 gun. This is action pistol shooting. It is an off shoot of IPSC which is also in Europe. Anyone can shoot it. Iâve seen guys in their 70s who shoot the courses, slow, but clean. But it takes a lot of practice to hone your skills to get good at it. It emphasizes speed with marksmanship. Anyone can hit the large targets, but to do so quickly and in the A zone is hard.
Basically you have a course of fire set up, generally you want 2 shots on each target, 1 on steel targets (or however to take to knock them down.) The cardboard targets have 4 different scoring areas. Scoring is voodoo, but it is a mix of your time and the points per round. So someone super faster than you who gets a lower score will still get a higher score overall.
It started from one of the âpracticalâ shooting sports like PPC, but has evolved into more of a game, as the scenarios arenât practical. The courses can be complicated to fairly simple. Indoor courses are always simpler because you can only shoot straight at the back stop, not to the sides in a horse shoe shaped outdoor course. So it includes things like this evil thing called the Texas Star. Depending on how you hit the plates, it can swing the targets wildly.
There are also many safety rules. If you âbreak 180â, that is point your gun past the plane of the starting position, you are sent home. Notice if they have to move backwards everything is pointed down range still. The guy with the timer is the range officer and in charge of stopping things if there is a violation. This is usually a problem with newer players, but anyone can screw up.
I know this guy, and he is one of the better shooters who are at the practice matches. He is using a Sig 1911 single stack.
There are many different divisions from revolver, to single stack, to production (what you would buy stock from a store), to limited (some upgrades allowed), to unlimited (race guns, anything goes). With all the divisions you can bring just about any pistol you have and shoot it. And even states with restrictions will have divisions you can compete it.
I have never been to an official competition, or even an official member, but when I join in the practice matches I am happy if I am on the top half of the scores.
If you want something less âtacticalâ you can try SASS, but it isnât any slower.
Of course everyone dreams they could be this guy some day:
Here is one more example. I have never shot a course so âphysicalâ, so it might be a different action sport. Her technique at the end would be impossible for me to replicate.
Holy hell. That guy is an automatic.
He holds several worlds records. I donât think I have enough time left on earth to equal the hours of practice he has.
BTW, I suspect youâd probably enjoy the Forgotten Weapons Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ForgottenWeapons
They mostly focus on the mechanical aspects of rare and antique guns, but thereâs a bit of shooty stuff as well:
Tom Knapp is one of the best shotgunners in the world.
Of course it goes with out saying that Knapp and Miculek are experienced trick shooters and not to try that at home.
I donât watch all his videos, but I have seen some of them. Yes, they are really neat from both a historical perspective, and someone into engineering, as some of the old designs that sorta worked had some novel ideas. Some of them worked quite well even.
On the two other sports I was into back when I just as a .22lr Ruger Mark II was Bullseye and pin shooting.
Bullseye is a a marksman sport. You have three matches with 3 different guns (some use just two). A .22, a center fire .32cal or greater, and a .45 acp. Some people use the .45 for both, some use something else like .38 super. You can use a semi automatic or a revolver, but you will have to reload with the revolver.
You shoot one handed, which makes it exceptionally harder, but you an use over sized iron sights or red dot sights.
The number matches varies. I never entered a formal match, but did some postal matches, where you would do 3 sets of slow fire, rapid fire, and timed fire. Official matches had targets at 25yrds or 50 yards, with appropriate sized targets. You can also do something like 50 feet, but the target shrinks. And I only shot with one gun, my .22.
The sport is difficult to master, and the 22lr can be flaky and give you a bad shot. No one has gotten a perfect score yet in a sanctioned match.
Slow fire you get 10 shots in 10 minutes. This is usually at the longest distance, 50 yards.
Timed fire you get 2 strings of 5 for 10 shots, with 20 seconds for each 5 round string. This is at 25 yards and the target rings are bigger.
Rapid fire you get 2 strings of 5 for 10 shots, but you get only 10 seconds per 5rnd string. This too is at 25 yards and uses the same target above.
Depending on the match, you might do 3 of each for one gun. Or 3 of each for all three guns.
Pin shooting is super simple and fun and anyone can do it. They usually separate rim fire vs center fire, but the object is just to set up 5 bowling pins and then knock them off the table in the fastest time. Many times taking home a pool of money. Depending on the match it might be fairly close for a rapid fire, or farther away where your marksmanship is going to win the day.
And just to further illustrate the whole âderailâ thing.
In a thread about a woman owning a motorcycle:
So obviously replying to that or any of the other of dozens of comments in other threads would be a âderailâ or âoff topicâ on my end. Though no one seems to care about the original off topic post.
So hopefully you can see my frustration when defending a right is seen as derailing or âproblematicâ, but attacking it is not.
For me, itâs not one reply thatâs a derail. Itâs when the thread gets basically taken over by many and lengthy comments from both sides of the gun debate. And what also makes that not only an offensive derail/hijacking but tiresome as well is the tedious repetition of the same old talking points.
If I believe Iâm defending peopleâs lives and you believe Iâm attacking guns owners rights arenât we heading for a derail?
Its always the same thing, two different concerns get conflated in a single conversation and now we canât help but discuss something neither one of us wants to talk about.
A right is not naturally occurring, it is something a society decides is in its best interest to provide. You must understand that there are some people who do not agree that gun ownership as established today is not the best arrangement for society possible. In this sense, your ârightsâ are not under attack.
People getting together and talking about how they donât agree with the current social contract puts your current rights as risk, but it is not an attack. If people do agree one day to limit gun ownership, it will hopefully be because most people agree that that is best. Youâll lose that right, but that is civilization at work, society should be able to agree whatâs best for it. Should that right be lost?
Discussing what is the best way to live in society is never an attack on its members. Yes, that does put you in a position where you will need to defend your right, but the problem is, that most people who derail gun threads donât do that. They mostly rely on the tautology that they have a right and it must not be taken away because they have a right to it.
You donât usually follow this pattern, which is why I actually look forward to hearing your input in some of these threads, but you could avoid derailing some of these topics if you realize what the actual concern is.
Gun rights activists derail threads because they only want to defend their right to guns, and in the sense that they do nothing else they hinder any actual progress. If the NRA lobbied for more money for mental health care, theyâd be on solid ground defending gun ownership by actually following up on a solution. Otherwise, they and gun owners have an obvious conflict of interest when they defend gun ownership at the cost of actual discussions about how to organize society.
The NRA cannot do anything BUT lobby FOR guns otherwise they lobby to end their existence. So who cares what they and theirâs think? How is that not a derail?
The thread about Gabby Giffords being a badass biker is not about the 2nd Amendment. US Representative Giffords was tragically shot in the head with a gun, and this sad fact is an unalienable part of her life story. Thank God we still have this mutant around on the planet to inspire us to be cooler people.
The thread that inspired @milliefink @Mindysan33 and me to create this thread was about Ieshia Evans. She was employing civil disobedience to protest the preponderance of injust slayings of African-Americans and Black Americans on the wrong end of Police-operated firearms. That thread is also not about the 2nd Amendment. Your derail in that thread about the bullet protection offered (or not offered) by riot gear is also not about the 2nd Amendment.
This thread, that I created, is also not about the 2nd Amendment. This thread is a safe-space to talk about the nerdery of firearms, their history, the present state-of-the-art, and the future developments of this uniquely American field of innovation and invention, pioneered by Samuel Colt, Richard Gatling, and John Browning.
I implore you to take as much care to practice discourse discipline as I know you practice trigger discipline. Because right now youâre waving that 2nd amendment all around and you need to keep that sort of speech pointed downrange and on-target.
Not trying to rain on your paradeâI like that someone else feels this wayâbut thereâs quite a bit of such nerdery underway in this thread:
That is quite good. Iâd not seen it. You are the first to link me to it.
But it still evolves or devolves into discussing the 2nd amendment.
This thread is not about the 2nd amendment.
Technology is apolitical. Regulation is political.
Thereâs something very important I forgot to tell you. Donât cross the streams.It would be bad.
Thatâs how that the other thread started out, too. All it takes is one person to seed discussion and then the whole thread is suddenly abuzz about it. Youâd have to have level-4 powers to moderate a thread in the way youâre describing.
Still, I hope this thread doesnât derail into 2nd amendment arguments. Iâm quite ignorant about firearms (hence my own selfish reason for creating the thread), so I want to be more informed about them, regardless of my own feelings or position on the 2nd amendment itself.
Iâll make my best effort to help conversation on this thread stay on-topic, and hope others will do the same.
Snowlark, I donât know what you are going on about.
If your point is that your thread about the tool uses of guns is longer than my thread about gun derailing, thenâŚcongrats? Although I donât fucking know why you contributed to this thread earlier and now are trying to derail my points. This feels like a comparison of penis length argument.
Your thread is great and interesting about people who think deeply about firearms tech. I love that. @Mister44 is a gun nerd that I like that is the epitome of talking about firearms tech. Heâs replied in both your thread and now mine. He is who I was responding to before you showed up and want to start a tug-of-war of who has the better thread.
Guess what? I donât care. Iâm not about power plays. Iâm for civil disobedience and collective action, and sometimes anonymous action.
@falcor dear donât push your luck dragon of luck dragons, please close this thread. I donât want it anymore. dear @jlw please close this thread. I will not continue to throw written thoughts into the wind for people who care not.
I am fucking unruly, but there is something about me you do not know. This is not my final form. I may not flounce now, but thereâs a great day a-coming. For I am drunk.
Should we have a designated âhereâs where you argue about the second amendmentâ thread?
Itâd be a heated repetitive shitshow, but quarantine is better than nothing.
