Category Archives: IDPA

Long weekend, lots of shooting.

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Unless something mildly interesting pops in my feeble mind, I’ll probably won’t be blogging. IDPA Classifier tomorrow (No shooting, just doing scores) and getting the cobwebs out of the long guns on Sunday in some sort of weird three gun match that is not 3Gun. Don’t ask me what that means, that is what I was told and that I should bring some 250 rounds of assorted ammunition. Sounds like fun will be had.

And of course I will have this celebration of the Second Amendment to those in uniform who paid with their lives to keep that and all the rights. The first volley will be in your honor.

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more:
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toll, nor night of waking.
Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake.

Reloading on the Ground.

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Your hard cover is way low so you must do some dirt hugging in order to avoid catching some rounds from the bad guys and return some of your own. But, curses! You are out of ammo and must reload!

My dear buddy Dale does a great job even though he is missing half his left thumb and has just had a minor procedure to his left elbow. Click on the pic for full size.

PS: Dale reminds me we in the Gun Culture, while appreciative and considerate of people’s misfortunes, tend to joke and give a hard time to anybody we can get away with specially if you partially lost a digit with a table saw because you were thinking about American Idol or some other irreverent crap.  Some of the jokes and nasties directed at Dale after his accident are: “You are the only person I know who actually stuck his thumb up his ass, but you were not supposed to leave it in there.” “There goes your career a boxing referee.” “Borg Designation: 9 1/2 of 10.” “How are you gonna hunt for boogers now?” Dale has aimed some jokes at himself “I get 10% off in manicures now.” “You know that magic trick where you make it look like you are pulling your thumb off? I overdid it.”

So we are a tad sick…. so what? ;)

Shooting on the move when you ain’t moving but you are.

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IDPA is fun if you have a twisted & deranged person designing Courses of Fire. Yesterday we had a match for Safety Officers Only to say thanks for all the hard labor they put in herding our club members safely all year long.

The last stage was interesting to say the least.


Yes that is a shooter and a safety officer on top of our props’ trailer being towed at 5 m.p.h over uneven terrain. There were four paper targets and seven steel targets for the engaging. Ammo count was basically everything as long as you stayed withing IDPA rules… and most of us shot it all.

We are used to shoot on the move at our command. We walk and somehow we integrate our movements we our shooting in a somewhat coherent process which (with a lot of practice) allow us to be accurate enough. Some how we ‘know” when a foot is up, when it makes contact with the ground again, coordinate with our hands, arms & upper body to create a stable platform, acquire sights, press trigger… and if we are good & lucky we make a great shot.

All of the above goes out the window when you are just there for the ride & shoot. You are not in control of anything other than the gun. The terrain here is a bit bumpy and gave the trailer a slight rocking motion back and forth plus side to side. Not a whole lot mind you, but enough to make you work a lot and miss a lot. The first time I ever did a convoy/style stage was years ago at a SFDCC match, with a rifle from a regular trailer, sitting on a secured chair and I missed every single target.

View you get from ground level.. Yours truly trying to shoot the stage. I do apologize for the less than polite word at the end, but there was a steel who refused to die and had to be shot several times and cussed accordingly.

This is the view you get from top of the trailer. Rob from tacticalyellowvisor.net gets in a good run.

I think people should try this or a similar stage. Not only it is fun but it opens your eyes and gives you a new respect for the technicalities of shooting. Basically a portion of humble pie is good for the soul now and then.

Other advantages of Action Shooting Sports.

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I am an advocate of Action Shooting Sports for the enormous benefits a shooter can derive. Static Range will only give you a measurement of Marksmanship & Gun Handling in a quiet, pressure-less environment but it is a myth that goes down the drain the second you are under the slightest influence of adrenalin.  I have seen shooters that felt pretty good about their craft in a static range become a bowl of ticked off pudding when they are under a timer and must move or face moving targets. Action Shooting Sports will give a shooter an initial measurement of what he ir she will do when the cow chips hit the wind power turbines.

The other thing(s) you get when competing against other shooters is an instantly available pool of knowledge yours for the observing and asking. You will see a technique that you did not know almost in every match and will try it. It may work or it might not but you have something you did not have before and that is golden. And if you are having troubles adapting that technique, have no doubt that somebody will me very willing to teach you the finer points till you get it right.

There is also a sense of camaraderie among individuals that are usually fiercely independent. It is a meeting of liked-minded folks that breathe the sport and will discuss, test, argue and advertise different schools of tactics, themes or trainings received. Backstabbing is almost non-existent you can let your hair down and make mistakes knowing that any catcalling will be done without malice: just friends laughing with you instead of at you. Information about just anything guns will be shared in between sips of Gatorade, mineral water and an occasional cloud of tobacco smoke. After Match meals to relax and comment anything and everything happen quite often if you wish to attend. And even if you do not attend, nobody feels offended because you did not partake on the meal: they understand because they are like you.

I am the least gregarious person you’ll ever meet. If you happen to visit me at home, I have no qualms on telling that I like you (you have my address so a certain level of liking is present, otherwise you don’t even get my zip code) but that it is time for you to leave the premises because I need my alone time. Even so I enjoy thoroughly my IDPA Matches with the shooting, bantering, jokes, arguments, discussion and even the occasional bartering that happens, specially if the wife never finds out.

So, join a Action Shooting Club to learn and have fun. It is the cheapest therapy in town. Although truth be told, we are a bit crazy sometimes.


If we weren’t, why would be come out to shoot in a Saturday morning in Miami with 40 degree weather, winds at 15 m.p.h and a constant drizzle while standing in two inches deep of very cold mud? :)

The dumbing down of IDPA.

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I am a 100%, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred IDPA shooter. I have to check with HQ but I think I almost have a decade participating in the sport and I am know in a couple of forums of coming down hard on anybody who dismisses IDPA with the old “IDPA will get you killed” crap. I believe that IDPA is the best elementary school in Defensive Shooting anybody can get for the price you get to pay and that it has also introduced more people to advanced Defensive Shooting classes than anything else out there.

Wit that being said, I have this feeling we are seeing a trend in the sport that will render it useless as a starting point for more serious stuff.  Some call it IPSCfication (yes, there is still the Hatfields v. McCoys thing going on) but to me is just Dumbing Down what it was supposed to be a challenging discipline.  I have attended and worked several sanctioned matches and I have seen a distinct trend that shows lots of flash but short of bang.  Lots of cute and elaborate stages with amazing moving props, but short in shooting smarts and techniques. We are turning Hollywood as we become addicted to the special effects and set the script as barely secondary. We are losing what made us in the first place.

Nothing drove this point deeper than hearing a Match Director during a State Match I worked as Safety Officer, say that we were in the entrainment business and to make the match fun.  Silly me I thought that the first duty of a Safety Officer wast to look after the shooters and make sure they were safe. There were tons of props and amazingly designed stages that were for the most part, amazingly vanilla to shoot. Needless to say the match turned out to be an enjoyable carnival but lacked lots on challenging shooters. I am for a challenge and I would agree most of IDPA shooters are also in this category. You can make a match fun if you challenge shooters to push their abilities instead of just throwing lead downrange.

How do we turn this silly tide? Mainly by designing Courses of Fire that follow the true spirit of IDPA as it appears in the rule book:

The International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) is the governing body of a shooting sport that simulates self-defense scenarios and real life encounters

So let’s look for true incident out there and design our CoFs around them. Talk to Law Enforcement officers about cases that happened during their shifts, cruise the internet for surveillance video of actual crimes and even incidents that might have happened to fellow shooters or relatives.  If you are home right now, you have a fantastic opportunity to design killer CoFs: Run several What Ifs using your house as stage and imagine what would happen if a Bad Guy entered through a window or busted a door or you hear screams coming from your kids’ bedroom. Or you are at a red light and imagine you are about to be carjacked with no way to escape. Or even your local supermarket while you are with the significant other shopping can provide you with Courses of Fire. And let’s face it, if you are a conscientious armed citizen, you are living in Alert Color Orange and running “What if I am attacked right now?” scenarios every time you are out there.

Write the ideas down so you don’t forget them. You don’t need to sit right there and design a whole scenario right there and then. You can do that later and adapt them to IDPA rules. When you finally commit them to paper,  don’t soften them up just because it is easier to do or give you a nice round count or you don’t have the all the props you want.

About props. Yes, we would like to have a full tactical Blackwater or Thunder Ranch set up in our clubs, but the reality is our clubs may not have that kind of cash around or the space to do it. Think Smart and be minimalistic. Here is an example: We all like to have a car just dedicated to shoot vehicle related scenarios. Our range is public so we can’t just leave a car sitting at the range and our storage space is a small sea container. So, the solution to recreate carjacking scenarios was simple: A chair, a driver side door and a steering wheel.

If you want to work outside the car scenarion, well darn it, you didn’t get to the range walking or by using public transportation, right?

We did learn something, place some sort of protective cover like carpeting or even a towel on the corner. It will save the time and aggravation later of removing the burnt propellant. We use the props trailer with now instead of a vehicle and does the same job. Even a cut out of half a car propped on target stands will do the job.

Use your imagination, make it challenging, make your shooters think and not just shoot and that will be fun enough.

Painless “Oh Crap!” moment.

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I know you read it in a gun forum somewhere, IDPA will get you killed. There are some illustrated fools who make their life in forums by bad mouthing IDPA for whatever silly and/or nefarious reasons. Some are just repeating what they read somewhere, some have a vested interest in you attending their Ninja Gunfighter School of Magic Tricks and some probably sucked so bad at the sport that their egos still have not healed.

I am not going to launch into another tirade in defense of IDPA and other shooting sports but rather describe a teaching moment courtesy of an IDPA match. Yours truly is called to the line to face a 9 target Course of Fire to be shot on the move. The rationale behind the stage was that you were caught in the open when a gang of miscreants decide to come after you. You were to draw and engage all of the Bad Guys with at least 2 good shots on each target as I made my way to the safety of my vehicle.  Bad news: All but 2 of the bad guys are behind some sort of hard cover and I wasn’t and that meant shooting on the move and fast. As per Safety Officer’ instruction I load my gun and get ready…BEEP!

I had decided to play it safe, shoot fast and shoot every target at least three times and by golly I did. By the fourth target I perform a reload from slide lock that was a smooth as if I was Head SWAT Master of the Ninja  Tactical Academy. I keep going fast making all sort of neatly placed 9 mm holes in the targets and reaching the last target that receives one shot before the gun goes again in slide lock. I reach for the remaining spare mag in my waist and….. it was not there. Oh Crap!

I knew I reloaded all the mags and had them in place before the stage started. Stupidly I look down and I see the freshly empty & ejected magazine at my feet and then I look to my side and see 2 magazines laying on the ground some 15 feet away. I run back and identify the loaded mag, retrieve it, load the gun and proceed back to the last target that gets 3 more rounds on account of me being royally pissed at myself.

After unloading, showing clear and holstering, I found out what happened. My mag carrier is a leather Bianchi double stack, double mag pouch with tension screws. The right pouch is a bit looser than the left and somehow while retrieving the mag for the first reload, I somehow managed to unseat and drop the second one. My fellow squad members were torn between pity for a run that was going great and laughter at the Keystone Cops performance at the end by yours truly.

It was not a total loss. My equipment was not in combat condition, my fault alone. Did I forget to mention I shoot what I carry everyday? So I learned the cheap way that my lack of maintenance might have cost me dearly if the situation was real. Although I dislike eating humble pie, be subject to public ridicule and administering myself several hard ones to my rear end, I rather have that than be full of holes and being attached to a feeding tune at the local hospital.

So now my pouch is fixed, my holster was given a thorough check and even the belt got a nice cleaning. Contrary to the expectation of the nay-sayers, IDPA did not get me killed but it might have seved my life and taught me a lesson.

Mindset has to be the hardest part.

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I am one of those freaks that believe in IDPA as a valuable training tool. I shoot any stage as if the cardboard targets had the ability to shoot back and produce involuntary ballistic piercing in my body. Today was an absolute manure maelstrom of a match for yours truly. Between doing scores in the computer, BSing with other shooters and just not paying attention, I got my carcass raked over the coals of procedurals. I had my mind so disengaged that I did not scan for targets and in two stages I was about to get Failures to Neutralize but for the good graces of the Safety Officer who was kind enough to point out the pristine targets requiring my attention. I got the procedurals because I opened myself to the “unseen” targets so much they had a good chance to pop my arse without a sweat. First I felt stupid but later I was absolutely pissed at myself. My mind was not in the fight and I got self-screwed by it. I failed to do such a simple thing like PAYING ATTENTION and I mildly suffered in my scores but in real life, my wife would be collecting the life insurance and paying all debts incurred.

I got cocky, my mindset was off, I paid a cheap price but I learned my lessons. In Real Life you don’t get second chances.

PS:We do our IDPA scoring courtesy of Beach Bunny Software. If you dont use it, you are working way too much on those scoresheets.