General Categories > Shooting Sports
What I have experienced at shooting matches
OnTheFly:
--- Quote from: jthhapkido on October 13, 2013, 01:35:08 PM ---Because it should have been a DQ under the rules.
--- End quote ---
See my post (Reply #5) above.
Fly
OnTheFly:
--- Quote from: jonm on October 13, 2013, 12:12:39 PM ---I watched a buddy get dq'd for that exact thing. no matter how silly it is, it's still a rule
--- End quote ---
Ok...maybe I'm just a fanatic, or it is my OCD surfacing, but HOW IN THE WORLD is this "silly"? The first rule of gun safety, "ALWAYS treat a gun as if it is loaded".
Maybe this is the most upsetting thing about what I have experienced. People show up at the match and learn the "silly" rules of the sport, but don't carry those over to their day-to-day gun handling. WHY?! These rules aren't ridiculous idiosyncrasies, they are common sense.
Fly
OnTheFly:
--- Quote from: NENick on October 13, 2013, 11:51:02 AM ---I'm not a RO, but that guy needed to be DQ'ed, so that he could be publicly embarrassed.
--- End quote ---
I would agree that there are a few things in life that "teach" us what to do and what not to do. Embarrassment and pain can make a lasting impression. However, a match DQ is done first and foremost to keep the sport safe, and so that the shooter never gets to the more extreme teachings of pain. The second purpose of the DQ is to teach. Getting DQ'd means no more shooting, no ranking for the match, no scores posted, and no money back. This will make you want to avoid a DQ in the future.
The embarrassment part of the DQ is not (and IMHO should NOT) be any part of the intent. However, if you are at all a conscientious person, the embarrassment will be all internal. THIS is the sign of a person who is truly concerned about safety and who seeks improvement.
If you shrug off your unsafe act as "no big deal", then you need to find another sport AND you need to seriously reconsider your gun handling.
Fly
wallace11bravo:
This is where I very much want someone to yell at me if I muck up.
I *used to* (ahem, still surfaces from time to time) have a "bad habit" of securing and clearing the top of my holster with my support hand before holstering. Obviously, dependent on the exact setup of the holster, this can mean sweeping one's own support hand while holstering.
Now, this was ingrained and motivated from back in the day when I was "forced" to use crappy holsters, with crappy mounting systems, and crappy (snap-backstrap) retention devices, often in brush and weeds. I developed this as muscle memory because, quite frankly, it was the lesser of two evils. The risk of shooting myself in my support hand was negligible compared to the risk of shooting myself in the leg while reholstering if I didn't physically move to clear my holster of the backstrap, weeds, brush, or whatever may get into my trigger guard while reholstering. And if I didn't physically secure my holster, it would flop about, and function as another unstable element in this math equation of danger.
Now you might say "why didn't you just look to check the holster?" Quite frankly, no. Without the ingrained habit of actually moving to clear it, "looking" just wasn't going to cut it. "Looking" is quite different from "observing and making a decision based on what is observed" and if I am going to define a habit, I will define one for the worst case scenario. (And for the record, I saw at least one person shoot themselves in the leg, partially due to one of these crappy holsters... luckily with simunitions, but still enough to get him kicked out of the course we were in)
For the most part, this bad habit is gone, but every once in a while I'll use a different holster (such as a bladetech) for some reason (practicing for an upcoming steel challenge), and this now bad habit resurfaces. I say *now* bad because I do still believe it was a "good" habit, at one time, but those days are gone.
Luckily, someone else spotted it, and corrected me on it. I then told him to continue to correct me on it. I also was very slow and deliberate about my reholstering for the rest of the day, hoping to not ingrain a now bad habit on this setup anymore than it already is. I am glad he spotted it so I could correct it, and had I been unwilling to correct it, he would have been more than justified to be more aggressive about his correction.
The moral of the story is: "See something? Say something." Regardless of the setting, this is not just a match RO's job, but our job as responsible firearms owners.
Also, if I seem to be very slow and deliberate on reholstering at the SC match, now you know why :)
OnTheFly:
--- Quote from: wallace11bravo on October 13, 2013, 03:16:17 PM ---Also, if I seem to be very slow and deliberate on reholstering at the SC match, now you know why
--- End quote ---
Speed re-holstering. Now THAT is a whole other barrel of monkeys. Oy vey!
Fly
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