I hate spectator sports

Bryan Fumble Gumble doesn't think that Americans realize just how frail our Second Amendment Constitutional protections are under the current (and the expected "next") presidential Administration.

What he doesn't realize is, we don't care.  We know our rights.  We are willing and able to protect and defend ourselves, our country and our  Constitution;
,,, even if our elected "representatives" have lost track of their personal oaths of fealty.

Bryant Gumble, Streaming Video, and the Supreme Court:

 I still remember a trip to California early in 1994 , when the Clinton Gun Ban was being debated in congress. Each night on the local ABC station in Los Angeles, the anchor would update the progress of the bill that would limit magazine capacity to ten rounds.
And each night they aired B-Roll of some hapless IPSC shooter blazing away with his 21-round race-gun to illustrate how dangerous those big magazines were. Back then, there was no streaming, so that IPSC shooter had gotten into the file tape, likely during sports coverage of a local match.
But once in their system, ABC could do anything they wanted with the video.

Now, with bloggers posting i-phone video, and with the rush by Firearms manufacturers to post their video on YouTube, you need to know you’re offering the liberal media anything they want to take to make their anti-gun point. Before you prompt your techies to post that new video demo of your AR running smoothly, as it empties a 30 round mag, you need to ask if you’re going to be happy seeing that video in the next Bryant Gumble anti-gun special, or posted on the New York Times website. The Supremes have ruled the media can do anything they want with your copyrighted video. 

(emphasis added)

With all respect to Bryant Gumble and the Drunken Golf Junkie ... that's Bullshit!

IPSC IS NOT A POPULARITY CONTEST:
NOBODY competes in the shooting sports because they think it will make them popular, or that if people approve of what they do in their sport they will "grow the sport".   We're not here to popularize our sport, and we don't ask anyone to 'validate' our glee in enjoying the virtues of our Second Amendment rights.

We're just here to have fun.  Safely, under strict rules of safety and competition,  We're not celebrating the Second Amendment, we're just enjoying a small aspect of the consequences of the Inalienable Constitutional Right, and at the same time spending a lot of time and money to play a little "OneUpsman-ship with our friends and neighbors.   We like our "high-capacity magazines, although few of us use them any more.

And BTW B. some of them can hold up to 30 rounds of .38 super ammunition.  Pushing a 115 grain hollow-point bullet at up to 1400 feet per second, this load allows us to have the highest possible score on every target zone but the load still enables the shooter to get the rounds down-range in the quickest time.

Here's an example, which you may suppress at your leisure if you think it's going to undermind our Second Amendment Rights:

(In the past 30 years that I've been competing in IPSC/USPSA competition, nobody has ever died.  Bryant Gumble and Drunken Golf Junkie can't make the same claim about the VERY DANGEROUS sport of High-School Football!)

EVERYBODY competes in the shooting sports for one or more of the following reasons:

1. They like to shoot, and shooting in competition provides them with an opportunity to shoot.
2. They like people who like to shoot, because they share a common interest AND because they share a common philosophy.   See #1.
3. An armed society is a polite society; you meet the nicest people there.
4. Shooting sports are loud and raucous, and at the same time extremely controlled and controlling.  Many shooters are (and this will come as a surprise to non-shooters) almost excessively disciplined; if they're not, they rapidly tire of the sport and go somewhere else on their Saturdays.   The rest of us get to make a lot of noise and spend a lot of money in the company of people whose common interest is to break out of our controlling shells.
5. We are the kind of people who want to see how we compare to other competitors.  Most of us win rarely.  Fortunately, the people who hold matches give awards (usually dirt-cheep pins or ribbons) to almost everyone, and those who go home with no cheap awards come back next month determined to spend $50 or more in the hopes of winning a fifty-cent ribbon.
6. Mostly, we don't care about what other people think of us.  If we did, we wouldn't be competing in a sport which openly involves "shooting at human shaped targets" and "teaching people to kill people".  (These are actual quotes from critics who know nothing about the sport.)
7. This sport is so not-politically-correct that several years ago the International Practical Shooting Confederation applied to the International Olympic Committee to make IPSC competition a "demonstration sport" for the Olympics.  Not trying to actually compete, you understand .. they just wanted to get into The Big Show.  The IOC turned IPSC/USPSA down flat.  Their justification was that they didn't want to "show people killing people" in the Olympics.  I wonder how they justified the Javelin competition, which was doing the same thing???  (Not that anyone was terribly disappointed .. leadership cadre keep trying to justify themselves in any sport, but the Hoi Polloi in this sport just want to be left alone.  Except for the professionals, of course.)
8. Perhaps the final reason for the wide interest in IPSC/USPSA competition is precisely because this sport is almost universally disapproved-of by the Makers&Shakers.  As Groucho Marx once said: "I wouldn't want to join any club which would have me as a member".  Shooting Ports members (except for various shotgun variations) aren't looking for "acceptance".  We just want to spend a day with our goofy friends and shoot a lot of ammunition at carboard and steel targets.  Is that too much to ask?

GROWING:

Over the past six years, I've taught hundreds of people who want to compete in this "outlaw" sport.

(I use the term "OUTLAW" thanks to the IOC .. bless their little narrow-visioned hearts!)

Of the people who care enough about joining the sport to take the course of instruction, there have been so few of the 'students' who were not able to learn safe gun-handling practices that I can count them on the fingers of both hands and feet.  

And as for the worries that America will frown upon Practical Pistol competitions (with the '30 round magazines' and all) .. what could be more reassuring than for the American public to see that there are legitimate competition venues where a "high capacity magazine" actually has a "Sporting Purpose"??

We don't need approval. We don't need approbation.  All WE want is to spend an enjoyable Saturday with our friends who share common interests.   

And there are many of them.

COMING TO AMERICA:

We have friends from Canada, who can't legally possess "high-round count magazines".  They come to American and acquire the equipment which qualifies them to compete in "OPEN DIVISION", and they leave the equipment (guns and magazines; often even ammunition) with their friends in Free America.  Then they sneak across the border to compete in matches with those physical items which are legal in America, but verboten in Canada.

Their friends could steal their expensive equipment without fear of reprisal from legal authorities, but they don't.  Because "An Armed Society Is A Polite Society", and friends who face the possibility of federal bans ... are the best friends in the world.

Next week our Canadian Friends might be holding our guns and magazines and ammunition for US. 

In our current political situation, where we can't trust our Government (and certainly not our PRESIDENT!) to guard and protect our Constitutional Rights, we form relationships with other people (who are willing to obey 'constitutional laws', but not 'arbitrary laws') so that we may enjoy our natural liberties.

But we still don't care what other people think about us.  We are certainly not Politically Correct, but we are safe, and sane, and Rule Number One is always:  "NOBODY BLEEDS!"

(Rule Number Two is: "Everybody Goes Home And Has Pizza And Beer!")

Now, that's MY idea of The Perfect Sport.

PS:  This is what an IPSC match with those horrid 30 round magazines actually looks like.  Enjoy!

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