For the local club competitions equipment racers can influence participation of newbies or established participants.
I've seen this where there were say 20 shooters would show up for a monthly match. A few equipment racers would begin their spending on better equipment. Hi score was shot among those few month over month.
Some who remained chose to shoot anyhow just for fun.
Participation dwindled over time to where a few remained damaging the fun shoots and killing the match.
Just an observation.
This wasn't much of a problem for disciplines like Bullseye pistol where shooters were ranked by the first several weeks scores, A, B, C, D ranked groups of shooters. But sandbagging the first weeks could be a problem.
