I didn't really get 'into it' until July of 2005, when I complained about how easily the rules were misinterpreted because, well, they weren't clearly written or easily understood.
Part of that has been caused by the USPSA rules being essentially the International IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation)
Again in August of 2005, I complained about a "stupid rule" which prohibited a competitor from using a "tool" to clear a jam ... in this case, a pistol had the slide locked back when a magazine was inserted in a bit too forcefully, making it impossible to drop the slide into battery. The resourceful competitor (The Hobo Brasser) used another magazine to pry the jammed magazine loose, allowing the slide to come into battery. He re-inserted the magazine and moved on. The discussion with the Range Officer was interesting, as was the discussion with the Area Director (t was a USPSA Sanction Level II Section Tournament) and the Vice President of USPSA by email days later.
The discussion revolved around whether the magazine was a "tool".
In my mind, the discussion which should have taken place was whether we need such a draconic yet cryptic rule at all.
On May Day of 2006, USPSA announced that they had come to a 'new relationship' with the governing organization, IPSC, allowing the American Region to establish a rule book subtly (actually, substantially) different from that used by the rest of the world.
Why was that necessary?
The United States not only has a much more 'open' (and less 'politically correct') attitude about firearms ownership and usage than do many other nations whose citizens compete in Practical Shooting. And, we have the Second Amendment to put teeth into what some may consider merely a cultural anomaly.
You may think we can "all just get along", but it happens that many people in other countries believe that "the amies" (as they refer to Americans) are not only arrogant, overbearing and childish but also WRONG in failing to appreciate the priorities of the sophisticated and civilized European Union. Americans get so upset over little things, such as the imposition of a new target design because some countries will not allow their citizens to shoot at targets which "represent the human body".
As a consequence, a week after the anouncement of international amity I entered into an embarrasing little kerfluffle with my Hungarian friend, Ivan, over whether IPSC really needed the trouble-making Amies as much as USPSA needed IPSC.
I say it was embarassing, and that's an understatement. I only mention it to show that a new, improved, and distinctly AMERICAN version of the competion rule book is needed. It is needed not only to satisfy the USPSA membership, but also to show what the USPSA thinks are necessary, clearly written rules applicable to our (American) culture and sensibilities.
Finally coming to something like 'a point', about a month before USPSA announced an unprecedented grown in membership they also announced, in a much quieter 'family' mode, that the Board of Directors and National Range Officer Institute had been working on a new rule book.
And they're going about it in the right way, too. After carefully going through the existing (2004) rule book to remove unneccesary rules, rewrite existing rules, and add a few necessary new rules, they then put together a Draft version in PDF and invited the USPSA membership to take a look at it and offer suggestions, comments, criticisms, rants and any other form in which our arrogant, overbearing and childish little minds may offer an opinion.
Of course, they put it much more politely, and sincerely. They truly want to make sure that there are enough people looking at it that errors, ambiguities and unwanted rules are identified before they actually publish it.
We have until March 31 to get our comments in. I've just spent 6 hours working on mine, and I'm only half done.
Here's the good news: USPSA not only uploaded the draft, but also a SUMMARY OF THE CHANGES for our convenience.
The bad news is that they're in PDF form, which are impossible to cut and paste for embedding in any kind of letter or email.
I find it very difficult to work with so much view-only data (the draft is 79 pages long, and I don't want to retype all the new rules), so I used a PDF converter to translate both files into *.DOC files, which can be cut-and-pasted using MS Word.
The PDF converter is imperfect. It didn't handle the tables as well as they might have, with the consequence that when I tried to paste them into the detailed summary of ALL changes I'm working on, I found that I had to create a table and then paste the contents into each individual cell.
But I'll eventually have my detailed summary (already at 40 pages!) ready for uploading to the Internet and submittal to my Area Director.
Don't worry, Bruce, I'll make the version I send to you as small and easy to read as possible.
However, I'll provide some other documents for people who want to go through their own painstaking detail evaluation.
For a start, you can get the 3mb MS-WORD version of the draft here, and also the 92kb MS-WORD version of the change summary here.
When I get all of the documents completed, I'll post them on this site ... that is, I'll post LINKS to them because you know they'll all be Geek Length.
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