Last Friday, it was announced that effective immediately, membership dues in USPSA would be increasing between 50% and 120% depending on the type of membership. This has caused a lot of discussion within the membership. Below is my letter to the board, submitted today via email. Members of the Board, Like many members of USPSA, I was unpleasantly surprised last Friday to read the announcement in the board minutes that annual dues were increasing by more than half, effective immediately. Rumors have been swirling for months that an increase might be coming, but to have it become reality effective immediately … Read More
Random Sampling of Competitor Ammo: An Email Exchange with DNROI
What follows is an email exchange I had with Troy McManus, DNROI, ahead of the 2022 Carolina Classic. I don’t want to be accused of taking quotes out of context, so I’m publishing the entire exchange here for anyone interested to read and decide. The first email was sent in my best hail-mary attempt to find a loophole around the rule requiring that “every” competitor’s ammo be checked via chrono. In practice, this mandatory requirement results in no time to for random re-sampling, thus making–in my opinion–chrono easy to game, if someone were so inclined. Our original intent of this … Read More
How Good Could A Nationals Livestream Be?
USPSA as it is now is not really set up to be a spectator sport, and would need some significant changes to be close to as TV-friendly as something like basketball or football. That said, if we are doing the work to run a livestream of shooters from Nationals, and people are willing to watch it, what can we do to make it as good as possible? Last fall, during the Carry Optics Nationals, I was watching the YouTube livestream. It was boring, with brief moments of interesting content. I got to thinking what might make it better. With no … Read More
True North USPSA – May 2022
This was my first time back to True North in Oxford since last August, and the match was true to their usual style: almost every target partialed, tight shooting positions, and a seated start in the shoot house. I honestly wonder what the goal of such difficult target presentations is, since it definitely does not make the match a crowd pleaser, and attendance is usually pretty sparse. (A lot of folks were scared off by the threat of rain during the match and there were only 18 shooters split between two squads.) I ran “Production Optics” style, shooting my Stock … Read More
Does Staff Reset Need Better Branding?
I’ve been trying to convince people that staff reset is the way to run major USPSA matches for a while now. The match benefits from being able to get more shooters through the stage in the same amount of time. The ROs benefit from having a consistent reset process that reduces reshoots and questionable rules calls (“Was that hole pasted?”). The shooters benefit by being able to just focus on their shooting and have confidence that the score they got is the score they shot. And around here, the momentum is growing. The North Carolina Section match has been staff … Read More
SC Section 2022 Wrapup
Going into this match, my expectations were pretty low. Despite the weather turning nice recently, I had been sidelined from practicing or dry firing by a hand injury until about two weeks before the match. That said, in retrospect, I had the advantage of not having really changed my gear setup in years, so everything was very familiar. Boring does occasionally have its upsides. Going into the match, I was particularly worried about fumbling mags on reloads from further back on the belt, but that ended up being a non-issue. The one new piece of gear for this match was … Read More
Sir Walter November 2021 Wrapup – “Production Optics”
This month, I decided to take out the Stock 2 with the red dot on an EGW plate and shoot a match with it. It’d been running well in practice, and I thought it would be interesting to take it to a pretty tough local match. As I discuss at the end of the match video, I decided to shoot it with 15 round magazines, following on from last month’s match in “Production 15” (aka IPSC Production). In part because I was curious: there’s a lot of discussion about what the future of the US Carry Optics division should be, … Read More
Sir Walter October 2021 Wrapup
Now that the NC Section is done, I got to picking up my Tanfoglio Stock 2s that had been gathering dust while I spent some time with the Glock 17 in Carry Optics. (Don’t worry, I have a post coming with my thoughts on the experience and how it changed my game even coming back to the iron sight guns.) You might think I was itching to go back to the heavy steel guns after the punishing 9mm recoil in a twenty-something ounce Glock. But the reality is, the main thing I noticed coming back was just how much more … Read More
See What You Need To See
Yesterday, I made a mistake. As I was going through my CRO exam, a question came up about a rule in the rulebook I’d not seen before: 7.1.8 Director NROI(“DNROI”) – While serving at a match as a member of the staff carries the same overall authority as the Match Director and Range Master. The DNROI while on staff will be there to assist the Match Director and Range Master in all endeavors to keep things running smoothly and help to make the match a success. I thought this was a particularly strange and non-sensical rule. In what scenario would … Read More
Carolina Classic 2021 Wrapup
The North Carolina Section match is over, and once again it went as well as it could. All the usual stuff like walking the prize table, staff reset, and five minute walkthroughs made this one of the best matches of the year for competitors. This is the third year that Steph has been the Section Coordinator and the process of planning and executing the match gets smoother every year. Setup Thursday was the build day, and it was mostly uneventful. When I was helping with setting up Stage 4, which was my design, the setup we’d used at a club … Read More
I Was Wrong
This is post 6 of 6 in the series “Mike Foley” Petition For The Removal of Mike Foley I Have No Faith the USPSA Board of Directors Will Do Anything About Mike Foley Mike Foley Has (At Least) 155,000 Reasons Per Year To Fight Any Attempts To Remove Him What To Do If The Board Does Not Remove Mike Foley Letter to the Board Regarding the Motion to Remove Mike Foley I Was Wrong In May, I wrote an article with the deliberately-inflammatory title I Have No Faith the USPSA Board of Directors Will Do Anything About Mike Foley. At … Read More
My Recommendations To The Incoming USPSA President
I’m publishing this post the night before the Board meets to vote whether to remove Mike Foley as USPSA President. I’m assuming (and hoping) they get the votes required to do that. By my reading of the bylaws, the Vice President will be acting President until an election can be held to fill the position for the remainder of the current term through the end of 2023. The number of people talking about running is truly wild, but we will see who actually puts their name in and how the election shakes out. This article is my best effort to … Read More
What USPSA Nationals Could Be
I think the way that Nationals has been run for a while is broken. Instead of being the premier event of the year that the rest of the season builds up to, it’s a series of multiple events throughout the year, each one of which is on par with a state level championship, with many Area matches being higher quality. The match that people should be eager to shoot because there’s nothing else like it instead has anyone with a credit card signing up to maximize participation. Although there are facets of USPSA at the local level that make it … Read More
Letter to the Board Regarding the Motion to Remove Mike Foley
This is post 5 of 6 in the series “Mike Foley” Petition For The Removal of Mike Foley I Have No Faith the USPSA Board of Directors Will Do Anything About Mike Foley Mike Foley Has (At Least) 155,000 Reasons Per Year To Fight Any Attempts To Remove Him What To Do If The Board Does Not Remove Mike Foley Letter to the Board Regarding the Motion to Remove Mike Foley I Was Wrong I was asked to email my Area Director to register my opinion for or against the upcoming motion to remove Mike Foley as President of USPSA … Read More
True North August 2021 USPSA Wrapup
This was my second USPSA match in CO. I didn’t have any live fire since the last match, just dry fire with specific cues on getting a good grip on the Glock in the holster, getting a good wrap with my left hand on the front of the gun, staying low when moving, and pulling the trigger without moving the dot. In other words, basic field course skills. No work on high speed gun handling, which showed on the classifier at this match. Stage 5 This was an 18-round stage, so I made sure at Make Ready to get a … Read More
Sir Walter August 2021 Wrapup
Back in May, at Production Nationals, I picked up a Romeo 3 XL dot off the prize table, at first thinking I would just flip it for cash. But the idea started to grow, and here we are a few months later and this was my first USPSA match in CO. I had 3 practice sessions to get used to the Glock and the dot, which honestly hasn’t been as much of an adjustment as I was expecting. The best comparison I can make right now is that the dot is like going from a DA/SA or striker trigger to … Read More
The Case for 15 Round Production
When Production Division was created in the year 2000, it was explicitly a division for mostly stock guns. Following the rise of concealed carry in the 1980s, IDPA had splintered off in 1996, driven both by a wish for a sport with fewer race guns, and more focused on concealment and tactics. Meanwhile, the discussion in the US and internationally had finally come to a head and the need for a “stock gun” division was undeniable. Of course, that was also 6 years into the 10 year term of the US’s national Assault Weapons Ban, which among other things prohibited … Read More
Sir Walter June 2021 Wrapup
This was a very tough match for me. It’s tempting to blame having a kid in January for lack of dry fire, or the ongoing primer shortages for lack of live fire. But if I’m honest with myself, neither of those things really are at play. I have the best setup I’ve ever had in terms of dry fire: a two car garage, with concrete floors and plenty of space to move around. No more slippery hardwood floors or carpet. 20 feet of space to put up targets, more if I go diagonal. But I haven’t done it. I also … Read More
What To Do If The Board Does Not Remove Mike Foley
This is post 4 of 6 in the series “Mike Foley” Petition For The Removal of Mike Foley I Have No Faith the USPSA Board of Directors Will Do Anything About Mike Foley Mike Foley Has (At Least) 155,000 Reasons Per Year To Fight Any Attempts To Remove Him What To Do If The Board Does Not Remove Mike Foley Letter to the Board Regarding the Motion to Remove Mike Foley I Was Wrong I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations over the past few days since I started publishing this series of articles. Some thank me for bringing everything … Read More
Mike Foley Has (At Least) 155,000 Reasons Per Year To Fight Any Attempts To Remove Him
This is post 3 of 6 in the series “Mike Foley” Petition For The Removal of Mike Foley I Have No Faith the USPSA Board of Directors Will Do Anything About Mike Foley Mike Foley Has (At Least) 155,000 Reasons Per Year To Fight Any Attempts To Remove Him What To Do If The Board Does Not Remove Mike Foley Letter to the Board Regarding the Motion to Remove Mike Foley I Was Wrong Let’s wind the clock back to 2015. The previous year, the US had just hosted the World Shoot for the first time in 28 years. The … Read More