So I've never understood the methodology behind it but ...
If you had to fight your way through your house, which one would you grab first, second and third?
It is about being proficient with all three.
Copy that and that's my point.
Proficient with all three is what most of us are I assume. Us military guys are proficient with any AR platform .... well, Infantry is, SpecOps are, etc.
And everyone claims to be proficient with their sidearm of choice.
Very few are truly proficient with a shotgun. Especially some of the cowboys thinking they can go-to-town with a jacked-up pump in a MOUT scenario.
Three gun doesn't teach actual real world transitioning from one platform to the next imho. I tried it, I was proficient at it but all the guys who took it seriously and consistently scored Top 5, even at my level, were tuned to a specific routine and if you threw a wrench in their gears they would have major hiccups. None of them could fight in a house because everything was/is concealment to them and moving laterally. There's no heel-toe heel-toe forward fighting and advancing in the sport imho. It does force one to run stations and transition to some degree although without your weapon from station to station. It does teach one to value target selection to some degree but it's all left-to-right and right-to-left flow with very little depth for any single weapon.
IPSC and IDPA are better courses the way they're set-up because most people are going to grab their pistol in the house, first ... some of us might use it to fight our way to our shotguns, in the house (I would because I've practiced that way) and even fewer would know wtf to-do in an actual carbine fight in a MOUT environment indoors OR in the yard or on the street. And three-gun doesn't strengthen that proficiency in any way. None.
I've always thought, imho, a new division and class structure should-be built around actual real world scenarios. People have tried it on local levels and it works ... but no sponsor wants to pick it up and sponsor it because it teaches aggressive, alpha, attack attack attack $#!+ ... and that's too mean for sponsors.
It's pathetic what they've turned the circuit into and that's why I got out of it. Does that mean I'm demeaning the skills of some pf the pros? Hell no. Their muscle memory alone means they'd win in a house or street fight 9 out of 10 times, regardless of the flash bang issues, because they can shoot and move laterally AND vertically and their heel-toe and hand-and-eye skills are like they're skating on glass. But the local and regional circuits, especially three-gun with their race guns and extended mag tubs and tube fed reloads .... it's not real world. And the number of rounds spent playing that game is obscene imho.
Long rant off/