More on USPSA rule 1.2.1

Last Thursday I included the text of an email that I had sent to John Amidon, Vice President of USPSA, asking for clarification of the rules regarding Medium and Long Courses of fire.

Earlier today, I updated that post with the details of Mr. Amidon's reply.

Later today, I received an email from someone who commented that he wished "... the rule had been written more clearly."

Here is my reply to him:

I'll tell you a secret.

I think Amidon's "interpretation" is just that, and a darned creative one at that. It doesn't really say what the rules say.

There was a discussion about this rule last month on one of the forums (I think it was the BE forum, but may have been the USPSA forum) which included Vince Pinto. Vince is the one who actually authored this clause of 1.2.1.2 and 1.2.1.3. During the discussion, Vince gave the impression that he intended competitors to shoot through every port, and from every shooting box, which was included in the stage design. After some discussion, he suggested that instead of the verbiage being "... nor allow a competitor to eliminate a location ..." to "... nor encourage a competitor to eliminate a location ...". And after that had been discussed for a while, he finally decided that the whole thing had been a bad idea, and suggested removing the "eliminate a location ..." clause completely from those two rules.

(Sorry, I can't direct you to either the forum or the thread. When I went back to look up this discussion last week, I couldn't find it. Apparently, my search was insufficiently dilligent, or I just wasn't looking in the right places. I've since initiated the practice of archiving forum discussions which seem significant to me.)

Be that as it may, we have the rules NOW in place and it's unrealistic to start sending out 'corrections' to remove or replace problems that weren't really noticed until after the rules were published.

Mr. Amidon's 'interpretation' provides the minimal justification for the inclusion of this rule, without either admitting that a blooper was included when the rules were rewritten OR forcing us into an unacceptable situation where free-style competition was outlawed.

If my paranoid, baseless and entirely reactionary suspicions are true, this was a masterful way to sidestep the whole problem. Nobody gets hurt, the game isn't ruined, and no reputations suffer.

I can live with that.