Let's Go To The Hop

Moving on with the ARPC Club Match for September, 2009 ...

Stage 1 was "Walk The Plank". An easy stage, there should be no problems, right?

Starting in Box "A", step up on a short stool on your way to a horizontal platform and there shoot all the targets (11 IPSC targets -- four to the right, four to the left, 3 in the center with some vision barriers to make it interesting.)

Easy ... unless you can't keep your pistol in the holster.

I was actually the first shooter on the stage in my squad and I kept my hand on my pistol (securely locked in my Race Holster) on my way up to The Plank.

Unfortunately, a following shooter declined to manually retain his pistol, and it popped out of his holster and hit the ground when he stepped up on the stool.

There was a bit of a hush, and then the Range Officer performed his duties of moving the competitor away from the grounded pistol, then picked the pistol off the ground, cleared it, and carefully handed it back to the competitor.

The shooter said: "What now?"

The RO said: "Now you go home".

Of course, the pistol was safed; but the USPSA rules have always been clear on this point.

If a pistol hits the ground when not under deliberate control of the shooter, that is cause for a Match DQ. The shooter is always responsible for the gun. There are no valid arguments against a Match DQ in this situation.

In this case, the stage acted as a "Holster Retention Test", and we all learned from it.

Still, it was a bit scary. We always tend to over-react when a Safety Rule is violated, however inadvertently.

Fortunately, I was not filming the shooter, so we need not indulge our "slow down to look at the car wreck on the Freeway" tendencies.

but I did film a couple of shooters in the same squad, who heeded the lesson and were very careful to control their pistol when mounting the step-stool to The Plank.

Here's how it SHOULD be done.