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.

There is no doubt among those of us that legally carry a gun that one of our fears is the consequences that come with having to  go through a Deadly Force encounter. The first one without a doubt is to be accidentally shot by arriving LEOs because we have a gun in our hands and somebody bleeding on the pavement.

This fear comes mostly from the blabbing verbosity of anti-gun Chiefs of Police in States fighting for their right to carry a weapon, who were quick to warn citizens that their officers would shoot first and ask questions later if they saw anybody with a gun. This was a great disservice to the rank and file officer who is professional enough to assess a situation before going active with a gun. Still, the damage was done and even though I cannot recall a single incident where a police officer shot a law abiding citizen confusing him with a criminal, the story is out there and people are coming up with the perfect solution for a non-problem.

The first “solution” was the now infamous Concealed Carry Badge. This tin was first touted as a way to avoid being shot by rushing cops and give them some sort of pause because a badge is displayed and thus, he must be a good guy. The CC Badges have been excoriated enough across diverse forums as a sure fire way to get yourself in a heap of trouble if somebody decides to press charges on your butt for impersonating a police officer. The badges are still out there for those recently initiated in the fraternity of CCW and can be seen in some internet stores and many gun magazines.

The latest and newest is an article that when I first saw it I thought: OK, somebody has a great sense of humor. Nice joke.” The joke was on me. Welcome to the Don’t Shoot Me Banner already known in certain circles as the Miss or Mr. Universe CCW Tactical Sash.

Touted as “a caveman simple solution to the problem of misidentification of good guys in a fight.” this has to be one of the dumbest non-solutions ever created.  I am sorry if the creator of the Tactical CCW Sash reads this and feels insulted, you started it by calling us cavemen. Cavemen would never be as dumb as to wear this contraption and no civilian should even begin to consider this as part of their bat-belt.

I am not opposed to  being properly identified by the police as one of the good guys, but where this item fails miserably is in the extra movements and gun manipulations required to drape the sash across the body. Using the pictures as example, let’s walk through the scenario: You are just done using your gun in a deadly force encounter. Your body dumped a ton of adrenalin in your circulatory system, you are shaking, tense and time seems to be moving at a snail’s pace, your senses have narrowed down and they are concentrated on the target. Right then might not be the perfect time to fiddle around your belt-attached pouch to pull out a sash which will force you to change hands on the gun and or orient it anywhere else but the target or a safe direction.  Under stress, our fine motor skills disappear and any extra movements we force ourselves to perform will be increased in difficulty due to the adrenalin high we are having. I am sorry but I see this sash as a negligent discharge in the making. If you discharge the weapon, land a bullet on the downed bad guy and kill him, congratulations!: you just graduated to manslaughter in the best of cases and will be receiving, courtesy of the D.A. an internship on forced alternative lifestyles interactions at the local house of detention.  Same if the bullet happens to make deadly contact with the girl behind the register at the nearby eatery with the added bonus of a civil lawsuit.

So, let’s think about something else or better yet, let’s do what experts have told us to do after a situation like this: Once the police arrives, slowly and safely put the gun down, raise your hands and follow the directions given by the officers. They are professionals and will soon figure out who is who and you can sashay your way to a more relaxing environment… yes, bad pun. Sue me.

PMY commented in the last thread the following:

Absolutely NO ONE swore obedience to the president or to any one appointed by him unto death, as God is our witness. ONE person pleadged SERVICE to him. Two others pledged to be a “servent” to him. (ie to help him)

And missed the whole point. We, the Citizens of the United States of America, do not pledge to anybody. Our only pledge is to the One Nation, Under God. We pledge to the basic principle that created this country and is represented in the Constitution. We respect but never bow whether by body or by mind. Not even the President, who was elected to serve the Country and us, does not (should not) pledge to anything but to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.  But I guess if he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, it would be natural that us, lesser mortals should bow to him.

Pledge:: a bailment of a chattel as security for a debt or other obligation without involving transfer of title b : the chattel so delivered c : the contract incidental to such a bailment
2 a : the state of being held as a security or guaranty b : something given as security for the performance of an act

By via of Michelle Malkin, the new Hollywood production of Buttkissers for Obama shown at Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington, Utah. This has gone far beyond Beverly Hills left wing rubbish and now us just plain scary. No, I am not making it up, the title do reflect a pledge in the video.

I know that any comparison to the Nazis is considered a Non-Starter, but this is the first thing the video above reminded me of:

We pledge to you, Adolf Hitler, loyalty and bravery. We swear obedience to you and the superiors appointed by you, even unto death, as God is our witness.
The SS Oath

Sorry, but this is the only pledge I’ll ever say.

And just in case:

I do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; pledging my life, my fortune and my sacred honor, so help me God.

And if you still haven’t figured it out: Only subjects pledge to a head of state. We are Citizens!

On September 1, 2004, School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania, an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus was on its first day of the school year. The Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs took over the school and 1,900 hostages while wiring the place with explosives.

By September 3 it was over and 186 children and over 100 adults were killed.