Sigma 40 Blaster
New member
I have been shooting IDPA for about six months or so and have enjoyed it, when the opportunity came up to take this class for free I jumped on it. Not that I really wanted to run stages at matches or anything, just to understand the "game" from a SO's point of view.
The classroom portion and test were a breeze. I am still confused by some of the fine points of scoring but procedures and rules are pretty much committed to memory.
Until I got out on the range. The instructor had the NEW SO's (myself and two other guys) run groups of three through some pretty simple stages. These were all SO's or pretty veteran shooters. This was also with two other SO's looking over my shoulder and about 20 other people watching.
My first one...blanked on everything. Second one was a problem shooter, not sure if it was intentional or not but he got two procedurals for trigger and muzzle discipline. I asked if I could DQ him as he did not follow the commands at the end of the course of fire and gave attitude when I commanded him to stop, show clear and so on after he was halfway holstered. He apologized, I did likewise and we went on. The third one got better, by the time I ran ten people through I was pretty comfortable but was still missing things.
Why did I post this? I never thought the SO's did much other than press the buzzer button. I never thought once about the real danger they put themselves in and the amount of responsibility, attention, and fast reaction time that running a course of fire took.
I will be thanking all the guys that I have shot with and just wanted to put a word of thanks out there to the SO's in cyber space that put themselves at the same risk to allow others to come and enjoy a day at the range and (usually) help make people safer and more proficient shooters.
The classroom portion and test were a breeze. I am still confused by some of the fine points of scoring but procedures and rules are pretty much committed to memory.
Until I got out on the range. The instructor had the NEW SO's (myself and two other guys) run groups of three through some pretty simple stages. These were all SO's or pretty veteran shooters. This was also with two other SO's looking over my shoulder and about 20 other people watching.
My first one...blanked on everything. Second one was a problem shooter, not sure if it was intentional or not but he got two procedurals for trigger and muzzle discipline. I asked if I could DQ him as he did not follow the commands at the end of the course of fire and gave attitude when I commanded him to stop, show clear and so on after he was halfway holstered. He apologized, I did likewise and we went on. The third one got better, by the time I ran ten people through I was pretty comfortable but was still missing things.
Why did I post this? I never thought the SO's did much other than press the buzzer button. I never thought once about the real danger they put themselves in and the amount of responsibility, attention, and fast reaction time that running a course of fire took.
I will be thanking all the guys that I have shot with and just wanted to put a word of thanks out there to the SO's in cyber space that put themselves at the same risk to allow others to come and enjoy a day at the range and (usually) help make people safer and more proficient shooters.
