The Glock Sport Shooting Foundation holds a number of matches throughout the US – by my count, 47 in 2013. If you won your category in any of those matches, you get invited to a special match, held at the Glock Annual Shoot at the South River Gun Club in Conyers, Georgia, called the Gunny Challenge. This event is hosted by Glock spokesmarine R. Lee Ermey, and is a shoot-off for the coveted Gunny Challenge Cup.
This year, the Gunny Challenge will be co-hosted by actor Adam Baldwin, who appeared in Full Metal Jacket, Independence Day, and several other movies and television shows. He may be best known as Jayne Cobb from Firefly.
Here is Glock’s official promotional banner. Personally I like mine better.
I have reported on the GSSF and Gunny Challenge before, and I will be there Saturday. If you plan to be there, please drop me a note,send me an email,Twitter, or Facebook. We’ll meet up.
Here is a chart from Ron, showing the five year cost of competing in IDPA, 6 matches a year.
Courtesy of When The Balloon Goes Up
To me, this chart bursts a few bubbles. The average shooter (that is, me) frets and worries about choosing the right gun, basing a lot of the decision on the cost of the gun, especially as a newcomer. Yet, as one can obviously see, the relative cost of the gun versus all the other costs – ammo, accessories, entry fees, practice sessions – argues that we should pick our guns based on the best gun for us as shooters, regardless of the price.
That is, of course, a very difficult thing to do. After all, we lay out the money for the gun in one lump, and most of the other money gets spent on an ongoing basis, certainly in sums less than what we laid out for the gun. For me, buying ammo a case of 1000 at a time, I spend $250 or so at a time, and it feels like a lot, even though it’s about half of what I spent on the gun.
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Having read this from Ron, I decided to calculate what I spend on my competition over 5 years.
Here it is, for the hardware.
Glock 17
$400
Parts
150
Magazines
60
Belt
50
Holster
60
Mag pouches
40
Hearing pro
30
Eye pro
0
Knee pads
10
Range bag
0
Total hardware
$800.00
Some explanation – I bought my Gen2 G17 in 1992. For competition I added a set of Warren/Sevigny sights, a (-) connector, and an extended magazine release. My eye protection was given to me, and I made my range bag out of a bag I got at a trade show.
As for the cost of competing, let’s look at a 5 year cost of shooting GSSF:
GSSF
$125
GSSF Match Fees
375
GSSF Ammo
540
Total GSSF
$1,040
For 5 years of USPSA:I join on an annual basis, but you could get a 5 year membership for $95. The match fees assume I shoot 3 matches a year. I also assume to shoot 3 boxes of ammo at a match.
USPSA
$200
USPSA Match fees
1,200
USPSA Ammo
2,880
Total USPSA
$4,280
Again it would be cheaper to join as a five-year member. I assumed an average of one club match a month, although I have access to 3 matches easily. This does not assume any major matches, or overnight travel. I also assumed 4 boxes of ammo per match.
Then, of course, is the cost of practice. Assuming I shoot 4 boxes of ammo per month in practice, at $12 per box, I would spend $2,880 over 5 years. Add to that the cost of range time. (For me, I shoot at a Georgia Wildlife Management Area range, which costs me $20 per year.)
So, in total, over 5 years, I would spend:
Hardware
$800
GSSF
1,040
USPSA
4,280
Practice
2,980
Total
$9,100.00
That is a chunk of change, no matter how you do look at it, an average of $1820 per year, or about $150 per month.
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But another way to look at it is fixed cost and variable costs.
Fixed
$875
Variable
8,235
At the beginning, one would lay out $800 for hardware, plus $35 for GSSF and $40 for USPSA. Then, you could look at it as the balance of $8,235, spread out monthly over 5 years, or $137 per month, or $32 per week.
Now, it doesn’t seem like so much, which is why I suppose I still do it.
I found these questions posted by Ben Stoeger in the USPSA section of The Doodie Project:
What do you guys want to get out of this sport and what are you willing to put in to get it?
Wow. This hits to the heart of this blog, and to me this will take a little more thought and answer room than one post on a forum. Look for my thoughts in future posts.
Meanwhile, here is what Ben’s answers were:
I want to have fun, learn, and compete against the best.
I am willing to make shooting the number one thing in my life outside of eating and breathing.
When someone asked about what his wife thought of this, he clarified:
She knows where she stands. I leave my family behind to go and shoot just like pretty much everyone else on this board, the difference is I don’t pretend to put family first.
This is the second in my series of posts about practicing for competition. It is intended to lay out what a competitive shooter (me) can do to build muscle memory and improve pistol shooting. I should say by way of disclaimer that this isn’t a primer on practice for self defense – that will come in a later series. But a lot of the skills we will practice here will be useful for self defense, so this is where I start.
In competitive pistol shooting, seconds count. I’ve watched a lot of shooters at all levels, and one thing that separates the top shooters from the others is the time it takes to get the first shot off.
There are two parts to this – drawing the gun, and making the first shot. For some sports that start at a ready position not in the holster, like GSSF or Ruger Rimfire, this is distilled to the latter part.
I’m not going to go through the parts of the draw stroke, because a lot of people better than me have covered this in a lot better detail than I could. I suggest going to Youtube or Google and searching for “draw from holster” or similar.
BEGIN PRACTICE
Remember the mnemonic SPAR – Safety, Purpose, Action, Reflection. In this case, the purpose of the session will be to hone getting the pistol from rest to a first shot in the fastest time possible.
DRAWING FROM THE HOLSTER
To practice this, don your normal holster rig, and, if you’re practicing for IDPA, your normal cover garment. As with before, make sure your gun is unloaded, and all ammunition is removed from the room. This is especially vital if you will be practicing with magazines.
Starting with your hands in the desired initial position (relaxed or surrender) start out by drawing very slowly and intentionally, pressing out, and getting a good sight alignment. Press the trigger, and make sure the sights stay aligned. Concentrate on getting all the parts of the draw perfect. Speed is not the issue at this point.
Slowly increase speed until you are perfectly drawing as fast as you can. Then slow that back to 3/4 speed for most of the session.
Perform this with as many different hand positions as you can think of. Work on these with both hands, and with your strong hand and weak hand alone. Remember, you will see this in a stage, as well as a classifier or qualifier.
STARTING WITH THE GUN SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN THE HOLSTER
Many USPSA stages start with the gun unloaded on a table or somewhere other than in the holster. So it make sense to practice this. I usually practice it several ways:
Standing, gun unloaded on a table. Grab the gun, insert a magazine, rack, press out to aim, and fire. Repeat.
Seated, as above.
Standing, gun unloaded on a table some distance away, magazine on a different table, some distance away. There are two ways to do this, grab the magazine first or grab the gun first. In a perfect world I grab the magazine first, but I practice it both ways, since I never know what sill come up in a stage.
Standing or seated, with the gun in a drawer. This one is used a lot in IDPA stages.
STARTING WITH THE GUN AT READY
I devote the most practice to this, because this move is the most versatile. Think about it – starting with the gun at ready, I press out to the target, aim, and fire. This is what happens at the start of a GSSF stage and a Ruger Rimfire stage, but it’s also what happens every time I move from one shooting position to another in USPSA or IDPA.
This is where I have cut out the most wasted time, and I’ll share with you how. Watch a lot of shooters and you will see this: from ready, they press the gun out, bring it up to eye level, overshoot, bring it back down, overshoot, bring it back up, get the sights in alignment, and shoot.
What you see if the gun going out, then up, then bobbing up and down a few times until it stops. Then, they take aim, and fire.
What I learned to do is to bring the gun up to eye level as I press it forward. When it gets to eye level, I am still pressing out, and I am aligning the sights. Once the arms are extended, the sights are aligned, and I fire. Using a shot timer, I can go from ready to a first shot on target in less than a second. The key is to start aiming as the gun goes forward, and when the sights are on the target, fire.
As before, work on these with both hands, strong hand and weak hand.
PUT IT TOGETHER
Once you are comfortable with all these parts, put together a practice session, based on your upcoming competition. Here’s an example:
From ready, press out, fire. Start slow and work up to full speed. 20 reps.
From ready, strong hand, press out, fire. 10 reps.
From ready, weak hand, press out, fire. 10 reps.
From holster, draw, press out, fire. Start slow and work to full speed over 10 reps.
From holster, draw, press out, fire, strong hand. 10 reps.
From holster, draw, transfer to weak hand, press out, fire. 10 reps.
Again, there are countless permutations, and you can customize them to the matches you are shooting, and to the areas of your game you know need improvement.
REFLECTION
Now, as you put away your gun and holster, make note of what went well in your practice session. I like to keep a journal, and keep track of the drills I’ve worked on. When I find I have trouble with one, I can track my improvement, and make sure it gets fixed.
The Glock Sport Shooting Foundation holds a number of matches throughout the US – by my count, 47 in 2013. If you won your category in any of those matches, you get invited to a special match, held at the Glock Annual Shoot at the South River Gun Club in Conyers, Georgia, called the Gunny Challenge. This event is hosted by Glock spokesmarine R. Lee Ermey, and is a shoot-off for the coveted Gunny Challenge Cup.
I have reported on the GSSF and Gunny Challenge before, and I will be there Saturday. If you plan to be there, please drop me a note,send me an email, Twitter, or Facebook. We’ll meet up.
Fill Yer Hands 