Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Would you pay for it?

Yes, it still forward biased but with the concrete sidewalls one can move/draw safely anywhere in a 180* arc and if the shooter is from say 7-10 yards from the backstop we can put out targets at about 110*.

unless you are LEO, or military, my local range won't let you do much in the way of tactical training.
So in my case, yeah, I'd pay to be able to practice more realistic things than the range now allows.

Laser Tag for grownups! I like it. With competent instruction, people could learn a lot without having to spend the big bucks for a week at Thunder Ranch or Gunsite.

If you set up 4-5 stages with increasing complexity as you moved forward, it may appeal to the average Joe. Repeat each stage 2x perhaps.

Locally it is hard to get LEO's out to shoot in our competitions. I don't think they want to be out shot by civilians.

Next question.

For the people who said yes, is there anything keeping you from just going out to a local idpa/uspsa match and using it as training? Just ignore the timer at a regular match rather than wait for a match with no timer?

Just curious. I think there is a market for this, I'd just like to know why the market exists.

...that is "unfortunately" what I have been doing for the last two years. I just shoot the stages as tactically correct as allowed and screw the score.

I say "unfortunately" mainly because very very few of the scenarios that the clubs I have shot at have anything to do with reality. They generally start you in a very tactically unsound position and it usually doesn't get any better from there.

When I have said something about it the attitude of both those who run the matches and most of those who are shooting is "Bob it's only a game"....and that is what it is...just another shooting game that ingrains bad habits and has little to do with training let alone reality....

The more procedural error points I amass the better I feel...

Bob

It's kinda like MMA to me. People get really into it and end up thinking that ground fighting and Brazilian judo is the end all and be all of open hand fighting - striking techniques going by the wayside.

They train that way and cannot see past that game.

Outside, the guy you are pounding on the ground will simply unzip you at the belly button with a knife or his buddy will come in and from behind and kick you in the head or just push you into incoming traffic...

That's part of the mindset that I think "training matches" could help.

I'm sure that 100 years ago IPSC and IDPA were supposed to be practical, but today neither of them are. IDPA is completely impractical, it's just in denial about it's impracticality.

Today, they're just a sport. And trying to make them something else is frustrating for the tactical guys and the guy running the match according to the organization's rules, only to have the tactical guys constantly complaining and ridiculing him / the sport.

I think it's akin to showing up at a Thursday night softball game and complaining that it's not realistic training for hitting people with sticks. That's not it's purpose. Getting good at swinging a stick might be an incidental benefit, just like becoming a better / more accurate trigger puller is an incidental benefit of USPSA....but tactical training isn't the purpose of either organization.

So rather than trying to force one organization (USPSA / IDPA) to be something it's not, I wonder about the feasibility of something new to fill the void in the market. Thus, this thread.
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Of course, if you set up a regular local "training match" I suppose you'd eventually end up with the guys at the other end of the spectrum....USPSA wash-outs who'd be showing up at the training match and trying to time and score and rank everybody.

That brings up a good point. I suppose the support for a training match would be pretty regional.

Within 35 minutes of my house I have five ranges that will let you rent a bay and do whatever you want. So the guys who would want to do a training match are probably already doing it.

But if you already had access to the props it could be done pretty easily I bet.

From the matches that we've run, ALL of the headache originates from the competitive aspect of a match-not the actual shooting. If you eliminate divisions and scoring and ranking and timers and gear rules....putting on a match would be a cake walk.

I have not found the regular crowd at those events to be open armed with 'newbs'. Here they seem to be a closed clique.

That makes sense (as to why you wouldn't want to go) but it's very unfortunate. I've seen people, several times, show up here just to watch and end up with a borrowed pistol and free ammo to shoot.

But nothing makes some guys more insecure than being around other guys. Then throw guns and scores into the mix and some people see everyone as a threat.

When I was shooting IPSC back in the olden days, we'd let folks run thru the matches as many times, and with as many different guns, as they liked, BUT, they had to "shoot for score" the first run. The other entries were for giggles, or to try out a new gun/different type (revolver).

They had to pay a nominal fee (for targets/pasters, etc.) for each entry, but it DID allow us all to "train" with other stuff besides their "match guns".

Strangely enough, although I was shooting a "racegun" 1911, often enough I could do just as well with my LWT Commander, or BHP, or whatever had my interest at the time.
I got pretty good with a wide variety of different guns, and never felt "unarmed" no matter what I was shooting/carrying. It's a good, good feeling.

I started off in "Combat Shooting" in 1974 before IPSC was even organized. In the "beginning" there were no "Classes" as all guns were treated the same. You had Major and Minor caliber and shooters were groups in classes of "ability". Then the Gamesmen of the 1980s started taking over and should have NEVER been allowed to use comps or optical sighting devices in the first place... Then the sponsored individuals and teams came in and with it the big money...and so Cooper's dream ended.

As to IDPA, I can still remembered when it was announced...I thought FINALLY a return to reality and immediately sent for a "rule" book... Received the book, read half way through it and threw it in the trash. Although hyped as "tactical" it was and is nothing but a shooting game.

That is why about 1992 a friend and I who had been disgusted with IPSC stared Survivor Series. It stared with about a dozen NRA Personal Protection Instructors just trying to keep sharp doing realistic scenarios with everyday carry guns. Over time more and more of our students wanted to get involved and the program just kept growing. We ended up with a lot of shooters who were not really ready for a steady diet of blind scenario shooting and started splitting the sessions into skill building and scenarios.

One major difference I found between the shooters who came to Survivors Series and IPSC/IDPA shooters is over 95%+ of the 90 registered SS shooters carried concealed almost all the time... In doing some informal surveys of IPSC/IDPA shooters less than half I have talked to carry at all.....

Training vs. Game...it's all attitude.

Bob

Personal training. Think quality instead of quantity. I'd pay to take lessons from you. Just not wing shooting.

The real problem is 90+% (just a guess) of the 'real world' civilian shooting scenarios involve no shots or a small number of shots with a small number of assailants. Read the armed citizen column to get some ideas. Very, very few shooters want to shoot a match with a total round count of a dozen spread over ten stages. I believe Rangemaster and Tom Givens runs something like you propose.

To me, it is more in the realm of personal training, which I can do at my range any time I want, as long as I am not too lazy to set it up. You can also shoot regular competition 'tactically' and I have had a few shooters do that. I am not sure what starting in a 'tactically unsound' position means, since most folks don't get to choose when and where they start the fight. If you don't like the high target and round count, view it as a series of interconnected short scenarios. You may piss most of the regular shooters off if you take an excessive amount of time, but that's the cost of being tactical.

Games will always be games and will always be gamed.

People that like playing games will be attracted to games and those that hate games will avoid games.

If the underlying question is "Would people pay for Use of Force Training?" my opinion would be yes. There is a market for people that want to be ran through scenarios involving the use of deadly force and many of them do not want it to be a dick measuring contest.




Travis

I just started shooting IDPA again, and I started to get to this point but had not really gotten 100% there until I saw this. There was no way I was going to remove a live magazine before I have the spare ready to insert or to turn my back on a threat target and run to cover without drawing because it saves time. But, I did have some dilemmas whether to kowtow to etiquette by refraining from engaging a bad guy until my discarded magazine is neatly stowed rather than shooting him while holding the discarded magazine, or whether to run the gun to slide lock to avoid the penalty for dropping a magazine with live rounds on the ground. I think I am over the dilemma stage now. Thanks for the free therapy.

That's exactly wht I do.

Our range, however, decided yo donaway with certain IdPA rules, like cover garments and such because too many people were complaining about them slowing their times and lowering their scores....