Gentlemen of IPSC: Walt

I use to play golf.

I wasn't very good at it, but I played it anyway (see "I Hate Golf")

One of the reasons I didn't enjoy it was because of the crummy people I ended up playing with. For example, I played for several years in the Portland, Oregon "City League". Businesses within the community would form teams, and we would go golfing, one team against another, at local golf courses around The City. There were about a half-dozen courses we played at, and we would play nine holes every Wednesday after work in a Round Robin arrangement. I mention this only because it explains why we ended up playing with strangers so often. Many of the people I wouldn't have associated with, given a choice.

I can't count the number of tantrums I witnessed. Somebody would get a bad lie (is that the right word), or slice the ball, or hook it, or skull it, or miss a putt. There are as many ways to err in Golf as there are in IPSC competition, but they don't send you home for being a dodo-head in Golf. More's the pity. After a couple of repetitions of these errors, they would start muttering to themselves, and sometimes end up throwing a club, or a ball, or breaking their 5-iron against a convenient tree. I swear, I'm not making this up. It's amazing how easily some people blame their inadequacies on a tool with no moving parts.

About ten years ago I completely gave up on Golf and took up IPSC as my primary weekend activity. I had been competing in IPSC off and on for about 10 years already, and I knew what I was getting into. I'm no better at it than I was at Golf, but I realized that I meet a better class of people on the Pistol Range than I did on the Golf Links.

I would much rather spend my time with gentlemen (and gentle women) than with overgrown adolescents.

After yesterdays column about the ARPC Club match, with pictures, I received an email from my friend Walt. He's the "recovering Revolver shooter" who spent the day coping with a recalcitrant pistol. It just didn't want to work right, and while The Good Lord and John Moses Browning know that a pistol match is not the best time to try out a new gun, sometimes you just can't resist the temptation. (I found myself in much the same situation around 2000, while I was trying to find a usable load for my 10mm Edge. I had loaded the ammo too long, and spent an uncomfortable day at Dundee having to manually rack the slide for every shot during the first stage. Fortunately, I had more than one load, and the gun was working fairly well by the end of the match.)

Walt wrote to thank me for posting the match films. He likes the moving pictures almost as much as I do, and wasn't at all bothered that so many of them displayed his nervousness and frustration while trying to clear one jam after another.

I was glad that he understood the reasons why I posted the videos. Maybe someone watching them would be able to offer a reason why the jams happened, and help him resolve the problem. And there may be some people who see only film of guns that work perfectly, every time, and don't realize that a reliable pistol doesn't always just happen. They may not be aware that a large part of The Game involves technical stuff such as tuning your ammunition to the idiosyncrasies of the gun.

But the primary reason why I featured Walt so prominently was because he was having a terrible day . . . and he was enjoying it.

Early in the match, every time he shot a stage there would be three or four people gathering around Walt to analyze the things they saw, and offering suggestions to cure the things they THOUGHT they saw. Try a lighter lubricant. Can you get a stronger recoil spring? Maybe the gun isn't going completely into battery. Is the problem occurring only with certain magazines?

Walt wasn't dealing with the problem all by himself. Everyone there was on his side, and showed it by being as supportive as possible.

Why?

Because Walt isn't a whiner.

It doesn't matter how his game is going, he's always even-tempered, cordial, and open. No sulking in the corners or snapping at his friends when things go wrong. He has no anger to take out on others. He doesn't swear, even under his breath. If something goes wrong, it's something that can be either fixed or endured. His ego doesn't get in his way. He's not there to impress anybody, but he does because he is Real Person.

Because Walt is a gentleman.

IPSC seems to attract this kind of people. Many of us have been around the block a few times, and have learned how to handle disappointment, and frustration. Sure, we see the occasional over-aged adolescent from time to time, but they don't seem to last very long. Nobody says anything (unless you have an unrelenting potty-mouth), but the camaraderie that typifies IPSC competition just doesn't embrace under-developed personalities.

If a person can't control his temper, we don't want to go shooting with him. Or her.

We like Gentlemen, of any age, of any gender.

Walt is one of The Good Guys.