Match Soapbox

No matter if they are indoor or outside, most tactically orientated pistol competitions are speed and accuracy driven.  Is there more?

Should the shooter have shot the left paper plate from left barricade and then moved to right barricade or just keep pieing around the right corner? 

Both speed and accuracy are components of self-defense, but not the only ones.  The use of tactics is a big one.  Basic gun skills are one.  Using cover and concealment is another.

When was the last time you saw a competitor engage a target with his last round, come back behind cover to reload and then re-engage from a different point of cover?  I suspect the answer is never.  Doing so slows you down and results in a poor score.  But this is a basic tactic.  I’ve watched shooters clear three rooms in 30 seconds with good hits on targets they were unknown to them.  Does that happen in life?

 

First, let’s dismiss the military model.  I’ve talked to Marine and Army personnel.  They enter the building at zero dark thirty, flowing into the building with many armed men.  Their raid is no warrant, no announcement and they shoot anyone who even looks dangerous.  After all it is war.

This model doesn’t work for the armed civilian who needs to get to the room where spouse and/or children are waiting.  Nor does it work for the police who need a warrant and justifiable use of lethal force.  We see what happens when Grandma gets spooked and makes a sudden motion during a raid.

I had a chance to role play the bad guy at TDI several years ago.  I had previously seen the shoot house and they didn’t care if I skipped to the end before my turn.  The team was a professional police team that did house clearance for a living.  It took time for them to work through the house.  Probable 10 minutes, but to me waiting to ambush them, it was hours.  So I have to discount 30 second clearance runs.

All matches are games.  Game isn’t a bad word.  It’s a necessary and useful teaching tool.  It’s only when the game is seen as reality do we have a problem.

I’m interested in games as a way to practice skill sets.  Can we make matches better?

 

How about setting up the CoF with no walk through?  The first time you see it is your turn.  Maybe even after the walk through, ‘no shoot indicators’ could be moved for each shooter?  The safety officer could short the shooter’s magazine.  You couldn’t know on which target you would run out of ammo.  The safety officer could introduce one dummy round forcing a clearance drill for everyone.

No match can be fair to everyone.  Short people get an advantage behind low concealment barriers as compared to the 6 footers in the crowd.  They take it on the chin with tall windows.  So let’s not focus on “fair matches” but on accuracy, tactics and basic skill sets while having fun.

I’d like to see a CoF in which you choose a route A or B.  Going to A means you’ll never see some of B’s targets.  At some point you would choose D, E or F.  Again you would only see some of the targets and not others.  No shooter would ever see all the targets.

 

I’m not sure how you would score that.  Path AC might have 5 head shots and 4 targets at 30 yards.  Path BE might see only 5 center of mass targets at 10 yards.

Any game will show you a thin, realistic slice of life and distort the rest.  The key seems in knowing which is the thin slice and what’s the fat, distorted slice.