Shane45

Ronny, I think your missing some of the salient points. There is no debate about competition vs training. There is little debate about 1 game vs another. The debate in its MOST BASIC form is if you do something that is a bad habit for real life survival MANY times in (insert whatever venue you like here) is there the risk of doing it in a real life survival situation. Thats it. Pretty simple question.

Nice! Hopefuly I can press together some funds!!!!

To move items off the table at least in my eyes there is no dispute for the following: A shooter that competes in just about any action oriented pistol or rifle gun game is far better off than someone that neither competes or trains or attends quality training classes. Gun games improve gun handling, accuracy, speed. Gun games ARE NOT TRAINING. Did I miss any?

hd I think your missing a bit of the point. To use Vlad's example. People come to a USPSA match for the first time and since they are used to always starting with an empty pistol because they are used to a static square range, they always eject a live round on accident when making ready at a part of a stage. They eject said round because they are under some stress and revert to doing what they do most. Our assertion is that some things that you do in gun games MAY have that same effect if you found yourself in a real life situation.

Ronny, Im not sure what that would prove. What question are we trying to answer by coming to a USPSA match? And for clarity, what exactly is our game. In my eyes we will have to make something up! Im sure Joel and Nick have some ideas AND THATS good because I for one am not exactly sure how to set up test that will actually test what we are trying to determine.

Vlad I agree, in the context of the thread, I meant he's not an ideal candidate for that catagory and the comment I made that may of offended him. But I DO think he is a good candidate for the non competition shooter catagory which is why I included him if you look back for the same reasons you state.

Joel, I absolutely agree. Like I said somewhere else in these threads, I absolutely could not become competitive in IDPA until I stopped trying to USPSA the stages and changed the mindset to "consider the targets armed and shooting back". I STILL wrestle with the tendancy to run into the open and hose down the targets! So take it one step further to real life... well its easy to connect the dots.

Ray, for clarity, I made no assertion you werent good enough. My assertion is that since you have not competed in something like uspsa for a long time doing the repetition of a bad thing enough times to ingrain said bad "habit" into your muslce memory. This makes you a bad candidate for that catagory or test, not a bad shooter. Cant try a quit smoking patch on a non smoker.....

Vladtepes, your tracking 100%. Slav, I think your just too ignorant to talk too. Everyone in this thread seems to head in a somewhat productive direction until you open your mouth. You made the assertion that perhaps we are unfamilier with games. I gave full disclosure of how and why to illustrate familiarity yet you still choose to be a dick. How can my very first match in my life be impressive. Im sure the rest of the world understood my point that getting squaded with them and treated so well AT MY FIRST MATCH EVER is what got me into the sport and coming back. But as usual you have nothing productive to offer. Slav its abundantly clear that your just butt hurt about being a gamer. I cant count the pm's that have said so. So go play your games and let the adults talk. Vlad, it appears to me you may have a genuine interest in evaluating what is being said but your buddy there keeps polerizing the discussion and derailing it.

The AI was never comfortable for me. The McMillan A5 was. But I could always get a good consistant lock up on the AI if that makes any sense.

"Vlad has infinitely more patience than I when it comes to entertaining stupidity. In my experience people who tend to pontificate the most about non-tacticoolness of gun games are the same ones who get their rear end handed to them at a match and then feel the need to re-establish the lost macho self-image. Thus it is not enough to say that gun games do not provide combat training - something that nobody in the sport will ever argue. So it is not "I am not skilled enough to play this game" , its "the game sucks and is bad for you". As usual your off the mark. No one ever said that gun games are a substitute for training. No one made that claim. Skill HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. How can this basic precept keep alluding you? If your remarks are directed at me as I already stated in these discussions I have competed in just about everything except cowboy action! I shot NRA action pistol as my Start. My very frst match I got squadded with Bruce Piatt and Doug Keonig(Im sure you know the names). They were extremely helpfull and coached me through my first match. This hooked me into the competition shooting sports. In the late 90's I was shooting deep into B class territory and did fairly well at the AWARE invitational. I stopped competitive shooting and started building 1911's and designing and manufacturing optics mounts etc etc 2010 decided to compete again. Chose IDPA for the afformentioned reasons. Got Marksman classification on my second match. AS I ALREADY STATED, I owe my speed/gun handling to IPSC/USPSA. I took a couple first places in my class after I got past my penalty issues. I usually shoot towards the top in my class. I took 3rd place at my first plate match this past summer. 1st and 2nd were two guys running red dot open class guns. I ran a GM with fixed sights, plain jane 45. I took a couple 1st places at some small 3 gun matches. This winter health issues pulled me back out of competition shooting. I found that I can not compete in the winter. I dont consider myself a great shooter by any stretch. This is not bragging in any way. This is simply to illustrate I am no stranger to gun games. Like I said countless times, there is a value...and a caution. Hopefully you track this time.....

Vlad, the people that may read this thread is entirely my motivation for hashing this out. I would say I met you half way LOOONG ago. I agreed on weapons handling, speed, accuracy... I even went so far to say that I would prefer a USPSA competitor at my side over someone that just shoots static targets on a square range, in a bad situation. Hell even shooting cowboy action is better than not competing at all. And to be clear, Im not picking only on USPSA as I said somehwere in these threads IDPA aint perfect either, I just find less muscle memory issues there. Probably one of the BIGGEST problems with gun games is there is really no way to induce stress without a clock. But always operating under the clock may cause you to make a mistake in real life too by leaving safe cover to quickly before you have assesed all the threats around you. I have 100% maintained in all my statements that it is a concern and a caution. And I believe it to be true just from my own simple experiences of getting "COVER" penalties out the ying yang until I got enough IDPA time under my belt to quell a lot of my IPSC gross motor skill habbits. Or the time I decided to switch to my XCR at a 3 gun match and lost time because I kept slapping the side of the rifle to release the bolt, forgetting the bolt release is under the trigger, because I did it so many times on my AR. So to me, I absolutely believe its true. The TEST would be effective if you actually felt under stress and it was unplanned. I think the test is problematic because you have plenty of time to mentally prepare and you will be acutely aware of what not to do. BUT it may still be revealing. What I actually had in mind was some experiments and since we have people together and the equipment it would seem a real shame to not have a training oppurtunity while we were at it.

HA! I dont. For example. 7.62 ammo snipers where using have a very small hollow point. This is not for expansion. It is for accuracy and smooth flight. Well some high brass nitwit belted out the claim it was a hollow point and cant be used. AND IT ACTUALLY GOT PULLED FROM THE FIELD!!!! Eventually it was overturned by some clearer thinking higher brass. But the point is they DO pay attention.

Now KRD I know you know that would be a Gen Con violation....

Avi, did you run any of it yet?

I wish I didn type so slow. This far into it Vlad I cant understand why you are still wrestling with whats being said. Habits is probably a bad word to use. Ingrained gross muscle memory of what you do most!!! Thats what we are talking about. If you stand in an open door of 5000 stages of USPSA, under stress you are LIKELY to stand in an open door in a real situation!!!!!!!!!!!! If you send a mag with rounds in it 10,000 times into the weeds in uspsa, you will LIKELY do it in a real situation. The evidence, already sighted twice in this thread, is the rash of officers that DIED picking up empty brass or mags during a gunfight because thats what they always did in training!!! Another example. Army Rangers in Somalia after fast roping out of a Helo drew fire when they ran out into the open in a hot combat zone to retrieve the freeking ropes because, you guessed it, they always did it in training......

Vlad, for someone that raises the "assumption" flag as often as you do... you seem to do it a lot. Please show me in a pm from me or post where I said YOU HAVE BAD HABITS DUE TO GUN GAMES. I never speak in absolutes especially about subjective topics. And I have only seen the vids you pm'ed me of you shooting 3 gun. So how would I evaluate what you actually do ouside of there. Read it carefully. I said its a concern. And finally, you said, "Oh I ABSOLUTELY believe it is a concern which I why I tell people "This is a game, don't be an idiot and charge 12 baddies with a handgun through a door" So what exactly is it your still arguing about?

Slav, the only idiocy seems to be when you join the conversation. At least I get an honest sense from Vlad that he is giving consideration to the discussions presented. So what Rank is Athena Lee who was 2002 and 2007 USPSA National Open Women's Champion? And REMEMBER SLAV the comments about the stress of the show vs competition stress was from the competitors themselves, not something I pulled out of thin air! Im talking , as were thay, about their shooting performance on the show.

The point was a different kind of stress. That was from the mouths of the competitors themselves. It seems relevant. At any rate, I dont feel like getting divorced so I need to go pay some attention to the wife on moms day!!!! L8R

Vlad, that is more accuratly what I mean. Performance stress is simply part of their job and clearly of little effect. HOWEVER it seems that Top Shot Stress sends a GM shooter home with all misses!!!!!!

I dont see how Ray, with no training, no competition of any kind etc etc is representative of our discussion. No offence to Ray. It would be interesting to gauge Ray, KrdShark, You and Joel. That would be an interesting cross section of what I think is each catagory of shooter.

Slav I disagree with your assertion but more importantly do you think that a competitor at that level is really stressed anymore by competition? I dont.

OK Vlad, I understand that point(I think its a bad one) BUT as I said earlier, shooters at that level can switch gears because they do ALL OF IT all the time. BUT I have read from some competitors whos day job is LE say that they HAVE to make sure that their training exceeds their competition training to try and insure that is what they will default too. Who here is a master class shooter in multiple disciplines??? Not I so the relevance is lost.

How can you have read it and say "Here is one thing every "gun games will get you killed" guy seems to miss. In the situation of real stress you will never perform better, only worse." This is precisly what has been said by just abouit everyone in this thread that holds a concern about competition. This is what we mean when we say you will be reduced to gross motor skills and autopilot.

"Why do USPSA GMs win all the big IDPA matches? " UM Becaue they are IDPA Master shooters too. They also tend to win Bianchi cup, steel challange, Steel matches etc etc and they will likely win whatever comp gets invented tommorow.... Whats your point?