This animation making righteous fun of IDPA is doing the rounds around assorted gun blogs and forums.
I had a good laugh and most anybody that shoots IDPA also had a good old chuckle. Unfortunately, reading the comments in some of the blogs, you realize that the ButtHurt Boyz wasted no time in denouncing IDPA as the Evil of all Evils in the Shooting World. Sort of the old “IDPA will kill you in real life” meme you found in the forums some years back. That people in our culture would actually snipe at a shooting sport is something I still cannot wrap my brain around.
This “Fuddish” attitude is baffling. What reasons would anybody have to perversely attack anything that bring people to shoot and sponsors camaraderie and interest in improving skills? Mostly can be explained by the two main class of attackers to the sport: Dumb Instructors and Cowards.
The Dumb Instructor is the guy who opens a Ultra Ninja Tactical School after he served a tour distributing MREs in some third rate National Guard unit or were members to the Meter Maid Tactical Team Towing Team in a somewhat major urban community. They wear lots of Under Armor, 5.11 and Oakley stuff, sport a butch cut and look tough for the students. Their classes consist in rehashing what the they saw on a Clint Smith video and read in a couple of Gabe Suarez books. These people resent IDPA for two reasons: 1) IDPA is an affordable way to practice some basic handgun skills compared to the high three digit and even four digit amounts of money they demand for their fake classes thus hitting them in the pockets. 2) They probably attended a couple of matches where they got absolutely burned by some 60 year old with a exceedingly protruding belly and a bad knee in both speed and accuracy and they resent the shit out of the fact.
The Cowards tend to be those who are simply too scared to risk being embarrassed by a bad performance in front of other people or having proclaimed to the world their “badness”, do not wish anybody to know most of their “badness” is based in static range practice or XBox scores. Or in a moment of weakness they actually participated in a match and the total time for the match was scored in weeks rather than seconds with points down equaling the Stock Market crash of the 1920’s. So rather than admit they need to improve, It becomes much safer for their ego to criticize from afar and echo the complaints of the Dumb Instructors than actually have the balls to step into Position One, wait for the timer’s beep and actually shoot under pressure match after match.
The only ones I will not criticize are those who actually do not find the sport appealing and choose some other form of shooting to have fun. If you have attended an IDPA match and simply not found it to your liking, God Bless and I hope you are shooting in a activity you truly love. I am not a fan of Cowboy Action Shooting or IPSC but I cannot bring myself to say anything bad about them because they are fellow shooters doing their part and I admire them for it. Besides, have you seen CAS shooters reloading & shooting their shotguns? Suckers are damn good, you need a Class III gun and lots of ammo to face them somewhat evenly.
I was going to finish with a long list of notable and knowledgeable people who actually compete and promote IDPA, but I had enough for today. I leave you instead with a quote by some unimportant instructor that nobody knows:
” If you worry about shooting a match and “Oh My God! I’ll never get over it if I come in dead last,” consider you are pretty close to the one in a million people who is willing to test their skills at this. If you ever do come dead last, you still came out ahead of a few hundred thousands of people who thought they were cool but didn’t have the guts to get out there and test themselves like you just did.”
Massad Ayoob on IDPA
FWIW I am an FBI and NRA trained firearms instructor. I can teach handgun, shotgun, patrol carbine and less lethal (including chemical weapons) and I chose IDPA willfully and with forethought. As a retired officer unless I’m at a range I’ll be carrying concealed. No drop rigs, no speed holsters, no tactical gear. Concealed. If you’re like me (and aren’t most of us not assigned to an active Tac team?) you’re 99.99 percent more likely to need to present and shoot from concealed carry than anything else you can imagine. I choose to pratice, in real world scenarios, the skills that will tend to keep me alive and out of PMITA prison rather than those that I probably won’t need outside of an IPSC or USPA match. Now if the Zombies actually do attack I’ll need the tactical gear and skills I still have. I do throw on my stuff and practice CQB and SWAT techniques as time and interest allow but I’m not concentrating on those skill sets. Just seems like common sense to me.
I’m quite sure I will be dead last in my first IDPA match (maybe even the first few) but I have my ego firmly in hand with the idea that the skills I’m going to learn and hone are far more real world than my SWAT training.
Maybe I’m wrong?
I will speak from what i learned in 10 years with my club shooting IDPA. We have and had a lot of LEOs that came with their training and shot poorly. Some were so embarrassed (specially in my mind was a Federal tactical team that got greased by an old fart and a newbie) that popooed the sport and never came back. We have also many that realized “Oh shit! I just got beat by some guy with a hip replacement.” and not only continued coming to the matches but sought further instruction by good instructors. Some LEOs had already good shooting skills and use IDPA to keep up with their basic skills. We even had shooters both LEO, Military and Civilian that have been forced to use their handguns in self defense and are with us, alive and unhurt. Was IDPA a part of their success? You betcha! If not directly, at least indirectly when they either went for advanced classes or as simple as checking that their gear and guns works when the timer goes off.
If SHTF, I will take anybody who competes regularly in any shooting sport. I rather have one CAS guy with his replica Peacemaker at my side than a Keyboard Warrior with the $5,000 Daniel Defense accessorized with every piece of LaRue tactical, Aimpoint and Surefire dooda available coming out of the safe to have its picture taken for the “warrior’s” Christmas card.
“If SHTF, I will take anybody who competes regularly in any shooting sport. I rather have one CAS guy with his replica Peacemaker at my side than a Keyboard Warrior…”
THAT IS AN AWESOME PARAGRAPH!
Thanks for the laugh.
I don’t resent IDPA but I consider it a joke. IDPA attempts to make a sport out of something that is inherently not a sport. Shooting isn’t a game and I see very little benefit. You only have to take a handgun or defensive pistol class once and then its up to you to stay on the basics and continue to practice the fundamentals, do drills, and make to the range on your own time to practie firing from different positions. I’d rather spend $300 on a good class once than spend $25 dollars every weekend and another $40 for a membership annually to an organization that does essentially nothing other than to keep tally of egomaniacs with no real world experience. I have been in the Army 10+ years and have seem men with no competition experience perform well under pressure and do some amazing thiings in combat. In contrast all the “hard core” shooters with 40 guns to their names spent all their time trying to get out of regular units and get onto a shooting team. These self-serving ego maniacs made me sick and when it came down to it they performed the same if not worse when real stress (not a timed buzzer) came bearing down on them. If your learning to shoot in order to defend yourself then IDPA is a waste of time and money. If you just want a hobby, and you like guns and want to spend your weekends with a bunch of self-absored middle aged men with outside the waist band holsters practicing shooting only 4 rounds then reloading in a 2 dimensional environment then by all means jump on board the IDPA train.
BlackUnicorn, I will pass your thoughts to the LEOs & Military who have been there, done that, have the T-Shirt and the Scars and partake of our bi-monthly matches in South Florida.
In the meantime you may want to lay your hands on the bio of Jim Cirillo and see his thought on competition shooting.