When Givati Rifle and Pistol Club announced that they were going to sponsor another class delivered by Paul Casale of Arlington Rifle and Pistol Club, I was quick to get in on it. A hundred bucks for five hours of advanced rifle/pistol training? That’s a steal. I had a great time at the last class, and I was expecting even better things out of this one.
Read on for my impressions after the break.
Continue reading ARPC Advanced Action Shooting Class AARAs the DC-MD-VA area slowly opens back up from COVID-19, the number of training classes available has slowly increased. While I try to be cautious and only take outdoor classes, wear my mask, etc., it has been nice to get back into shooting more heavily again.
One class that was supposed to happen in April, but got delayed to June, was the Intermediate Action Shooting Class that Arlington RPC was putting on at AGC for the newer Givati RPC. Having not done a class with the instructor or at AGC, I thought this was a great opportunity to get out of the house and do some shooting.
Continue reading ARPC Intermediate Action Shooting Class AAR
I am a huge fan of the AGC 3 gun matches, and was really very disappointed when the January one was rained out. I made sure I would hit the one on Sunday, and I had a great time. Stage by stage walkthrough follows, but I was 30/48 and 10/16 in my division (Tac Scope).
Had the pleasure of participating in the first public 3 gun match at AGC Baltimore’s new action bays! This was my first 3 gun match ever, and let’ say… it showed. I didn’t come in last place, but 22/27 isn’t exactly a stunning finish.
This was a fairly easy match as they go; no long shots (50yds max), pistol shots weren’t overly difficult (lots of dueling racks, though), and the shotgun portion wasn’t overly focused on loading. I gave up a lot of points in penalties; a fair bit of that was from not really having the right gear to shoot 3 gun and then skipping targets. Also had some equipment failures, including a really catastrophic holster failure – it was basically a miracle that I wasn’t DQ’d.
Here’s me running on the first stage:
This wasn’t a bad run for a first time, but as you see midway through the video, I’m like “where are all my shells?” I had a side saddle, but it felt off, which left me totally zero on extras. Oops! If I had a proper shell holder for my belt or chest, I think I would have done somewhat better. Well, that and “practice”!
I love competition. I have been slacking with doing it due to family commitments and taking up BJJ, but I’m hoping to do a bit more USPSA in July-September. Competition really drives the standard for speed, accuracy, and efficient movement, so I want to lead off the post by saying this isn’t some sort of variation on “competition gets you killed in the streets” or other nonsense. However, I just want to talk about how competition has had something of a negative effect on firearms development in a couple areas, because I think that has been inadequately explored.
First and foremost, I think factory compensated pistols have not been nearly as developed as they could be due to the fact that they dump you straight into USPSA Open division. Contrary to nonsense opinions on the Internet, good compensators make a noticeable difference with 9mm ammo, and I really think their downsides (cycling problems) could be greatly reduced if manufacturers spent some R&D time on resolving them.
Second, detachable-mag shotguns. As I think I’ve noted previously, Swearengen’s well-written 1970s-era book “The World’s Fighting Shotguns” extols the virtues of detachable-mag shotguns. He felt that if you were going into trouble, they were a superb weapon in almost any close-in environment (note that the book was written before the proliferation of effective body armor, though). While I readily acknowledge that they have logistical issues in a home defense situation, they put far more firepower on target in a sustained fire engagement (like 15+ rounds), can be changed from breaching to buckshot ammunition much more quickly, and provide certain benefits in gun handling and administration.
Unfortunately, that detachable magazine dumps your shotgun into 3 Gun Open (and maybe USPSA Open), which is a huge disincentive to their use in more casual competition settings (and makes pump guns with them completely unusable). Courses of fire and training classes are designed around the limitations (and sometime strengths!) of tube-fed guns. This leads people to downplay the advantages they bring, because they are never put into a situation where they need to use them. (I would suggest that shoot-load drills with more than three rounds are where detachable mag shotguns start looking substantially better.)
Honorable mention: IDPA is doing no one any favors by banning weapon lights. I don’t think this has significantly harmed the development of weapon lights, but it’s contrary to the IDPA “run what you brung” mindset.
Those are the two that come to mind. I’d love to hear if my readers can think of others.
The Hebrew Hammer 