{"id":1466,"date":"2011-09-21T16:16:39","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T20:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2011-09-21T16:16:39","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T20:16:39","slug":"reflections-on-a-world-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/reflections-on-a-world-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"REFLECTIONS ON A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woo-hoo! Just finished competing in the World Championship of IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association (www.idpa.com<\/a>), held at Frank Garcia\u2019s splendid Universal Shooting Academy<\/a> in Frostproof, Florida.\u00a0 The tournament continues through the weekend.<\/p>\n

It was a fun couple of day with folks from Costa Rica, Italy, Romania, Venezuela, and more countries whose citizen shooters I probably haven\u2019t met yet. The majority of contestants, naturally, were fellow Yanks.<\/p>\n

Some complained that the courses of fire were too hard: some long shots, often with the target barely exposed from behind cover, and exposed VERY briefly. Well, duh.\u00a0 You don\u2019t go to Carnegie Hall to play Chopsticks, and you don\u2019t go to a world championship to solve easy shooting problems.<\/p>\n

Any fantasies I might have had about winning a world title disappeared in my very first stage. Having shot every target I could see, I lowered my Smith & Wesson and waited for the range officer to come and supervise the mandatory unloading of the gun.<\/p>\n

\u2026And waited\u2026<\/p>\n

When I finally turned around, they were looking at me with something between horror and stark pity.\u00a0 I realized there must be one target I hadn\u2019t shot yet.\u00a0 I brought the gun back up, moved and scanned, and found the target I\u2019d overlooked that was hiding in a corner. By the time I\u2019d put the requisite two bullets in it, I had added some 12 seconds to my time.<\/p>\n

How fast you solve the \u201cshooting problem\u201d determines whether you win or lose. Accuracy counts, of course, with a half-second added to your time for every point down from a perfect hit on the silhouette target. Shooting in Master class, I had tanked myself right there.<\/p>\n

Well, at least it took the pressure off.<\/p>\n

I shot with folks as young as 18, and geezers even older than me, if such a thing is possible. Male and female, black and white and brown and Asian\u2026and had a ball.<\/p>\n

The defensive shooting games are, I have long been convinced, the most egalitarian of the shooting sports. The rich shoot alongside the poor. \u201cCivilians\u201d shoot alongside cops and soldiers. It\u2019s about a core value \u2013 the protection of the innocent from evil \u2013 which is sincerely and universally shared.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IDPA is a dynamic shooting sport. Here, keeping his 9mm Glock 34 in a safe direction, Steve Koski sprints between shooting positions.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Elaborate stage includes targets that charge the shooter, run parallel to the running shooter, and appear very briefly from behind steel cover.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Frostproof, Florida, the match goes on rain or shine. Here Lance Biddle shoots a stage just after torrential thunderstorm, with water nearly to his ankles, using 3″ barrel S&W Model 65 in Stock Service Revolver division.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woo-hoo! Just finished competing in the World Championship of IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association (www.idpa.com), held at Frank Garcia\u2019s splendid Universal Shooting Academy in Frostproof, Florida.\u00a0 The tournament continues through the weekend. It was a fun couple of day with folks from Costa Rica, Italy, Romania, Venezuela, and more countries whose citizen shooters I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-competition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}