I’ve mentioned IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association, in these pages several times before. Founded in the mid-1990s, IDPA is the “concealed carry sport.” Newcomers should picture combat handgun shooting in replicated scenarios, sometimes quite elaborate, with police/concealed carry/home defense style pistols and revolvers, normally all drawn from concealment.

Last week, the organization completed its 2009 National Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the fabulous United States Shooting Academy range.  Nearly 400 men and women competed, from kids in their teens to septuagenarians and encompassing military personnel, working street cops, and a huge number of law-abiding armed citizens. Was it a tough match? Well, firing around 250 rounds apiece over 17 CoFs (courses of fire), they collectively dropped over 47,000 points. A fast swinging target emerging sporadically from behind the cover of an actual automobile is not an easy target to hit…nor are three narrow silhouettes in a pitch black “tunnel rat” scenario where all you have is your pistol or revolver, one spare reload, and an unfamiliar flashlight you’ve just been issued. However, unexpected situations have a way of taking place, and preparing the contestant for that sort of thing is really what IDPA is all about.

You don’t need a Perazzi shotgun the price of a summer cabin in the mountains to be competitive. Bob Vogel won the Enhanced Service Pistol division, and Dave Sevigny won the Stock Service Pistol and overall fastest shooter honors with relatively inexpensive 9mm Glocks that had only been slightly modified (sights, etc) to their users’ tastes.

IDPA shooting is not a self-defense technique born in sport; rather, it is a skill-testing sport born in self-defense principles. Its founders, led by Bill Wilson, touched a responsive chord in America with this concept. It is a truly egalitarian undertaking. The shooters are young and old, male and female, in every color of the human rainbow and crossing socio-economic lines.  The super-star champions repair other shooters’ targets after scoring, just like any other competitor.

This was a gathering of truly wonderful people, but my vote for hero of the event goes to Curt Nichols, who continued a four-year winning streak by capturing the national champion title in Stock Service Revolver division, AND spent a solid three months as designated match director taking great pains to make this a superb tournament. Great pains also took him: days before the match, he was in a serious car crash, and despite recent fractures and internal injuries was on the range all day, every day for the tournament. In his off-time, Curt works tirelessly for injured vets with both Wounded Warriors and HAVA, which takes permanently injured returning soldiers on hunts similar to the ones they enjoyed before they were physically shattered fighting for their country.

Meeting people like Curt Nichols is reason enough to join IDPA. Info is available at www.idpa.com,  a website that will lead you to one of the hundreds of gun clubs offering regular local matches and probably within driving distance of you. To hear from Curt Nichols and some other voices of IDPA, catch the Pro-Arms Podcast interviews coming out of the 2009 IDPA Championships at http://proarms.podbean.com, which will be posted and downloadable in Mid-October 2009.

Curt Nichols “played hurt,” winning National SSR championship AND managing the match!

Rob Vogel begins a stage with sound-suppressed Glock 17, and winning ESP Championship with his own Glock.

Young Randi Rogers wins National Woman Champion title, here in the midst of a fast double tap with her Glock 34 9mm.

Mas shoots through car at the target he found toughest, fast-moving swinger behind cover some 20 yards away. Gun is S&W Model 67, a .38 caliber Stock Service Revolver.

A microcosm of the competition field is shown at the EOTAC free shooting clinic the day after the match. It was taught by Team EOTAC shooters (in black shirts on either end) including national champ Robert Vogel.

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The California house and senate have reportedly passed an egregious law that will profoundly hamper honest citizens’ ability to purchase ammunition there.

Cabela’s, one of the nation’s leading retailers of ammunition for hunting, target shooting, and home and personal defense, has stated that it will not sell ammunition in California if the Governor signs it into law. Links HERE and HERE.

If you live there, or even if you just care, you owe it to yourself and “the cause” to write a polite, sincere letter to Governor Schwartzenegger. This would be a truly ominous and ugly precedent.

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My friend Dan Marcou, a retired SWAT cop and police supervisor from Wisconsin, has another police novel out. This one is titled “Nobody’s Heroes,” and it continues the adventures of a group of street cops in a small city in Dan’s state. This time, they’re up against a serial killer.

If Dan’s action scenes sound realistic, well…it’s because they’re real. He hit upon the ingenious strategy of taking real-life gunfights and simply transposing them shot-for-shot to his fictional characters. In this case, cop’s cop “Dave Compton,” a beloved street-wise patrol sergeant, relives the shooting of a real-life beloved, street-wise patrol sergeant, Dan’s and my mutual friend Marcus Young. In both cases, the good guy survives multiple gunshot wounds and goes on to inspire others, and in both the real case and the fictional version, the classically evil bad guy ends up in the ground. Marcus is of course one of those mentioned in the acknowledgements.

Brother Dan also has a way with words. When officer asks a more experienced one why he calls even the worst bad guys “Sir,” the latter replies that it’s an acronym for “Sincerity Isn’t Required.” That’s a better definition than the one I learned many years ago. At one point, the serial murderer is described as “nervous as a feral cat at an NRA picnic.” Dan’s stuff is just fun to read.

You can order an autographed copy of “Nobody’s Heroes” from Dan Marcou, PO Box 195, Holmen, WI 54636 for $20 including postage. In a time when certain politicians try to spin fiction into reality, it’s good to see a veteran street cop turn reality into entertaining fiction.

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The cover story in this week’s issue of Business Week magazine focuses on the spectacular commercial success of the Glock pistol, and how a relatively small European manufacturer rose from obscurity in the 1980s to, in less than a decade, dominate a very traditional market that had always “bought American.” The piece was researched primarily by staff writer Paul Barrett. Reading some of the commentary on BW’s own website and on some of the gun forums, it appears that some gun people took it as anti-gun.

I know Barrett, and I didn’t take it that way. In fact, he’s one of the few mainstream media people I know who seems to take a totally neutral approach to this highly polarized debate. In reading his article and the related sidebars carefully, I can find no hint of editorial prejudice against gun owners. The online version opens with a video of me explaining why both police and “civilian” markets took to the Glock pistol like ducks to water. Both Barrett and his editors had the opportunity to edit out the comments in which I treated the private citizen sector with the same respect as the law enforcement sector. They did not.

I took Barrett to a couple of pistol matches so he could see why ordinary folks liked these popular handguns. In an exercise in “participatory journalism,” he took some private lessons with us and competed in the second match, using a borrowed Glock 17. He proved safe and competent for a man who has never owned a firearm and had only fired them in the course of research related to his reportage on the weapons industry. New to the gun, he did not come in last in the match.

In talking with Barrett, I got a sense of an honest reporter trying to show every side of the story he had been assigned to write. Some former Glock execs, whom he plainly showed in his article to be  inimical toward the company, had to be quoted; when I talked with him, he was trying desperately to get counterpoint comments from current Glock spokespeople.

More than a month before the article came out, Paul Barrett was interviewed for the ProArms podcast by producer and editor (PrEditor?) Gail Pepin, with a view toward getting an outside analyst’s view of gun issues in general and the gun industry in particular. It can be downloaded from The ProArms Podcast site.  That, too, sounded pretty even-handed to me. The poet Robert Burns said, “Oh, what a gift the giftie gie us, to see oursel’s as others see us.” The ProArms interview of Barrett is a unique opportunity to see how we gun people are viewed by that rare creature, the unbiased and unprejudiced outside observer who has studied us.

I can understand how some reflexively call the reporter “anti-gun” when he quotes sources hostile to someone’s favorite gun manufacturer. Gun owners are a minority long persecuted by mainstream media, and we can be as prone to over-reactions as Harvard professors who focus on racial prejudice and suddenly have a cross-racial misunderstanding with law enforcement.

Read the Barrett article and sidebars in their entirety. If you believe a media source has been unfair to you, your beliefs, and the truth, by all means speak out and hold them accountable. But, if you see the uncommon case where a mainstream story touching on guns has been done without prejudice to the guns themselves and those who own them, it’s just as important to write a comment and let the magazine know you appreciate honest, impartial reportage.

“Reinforcing good behavior,” and all of that…

Mas, background, and Herman Gunter, foreground, coach Paul Barrett on how to shoot a Glock.

Participatory journalism: Paul Barrett shoots an IDPA match with a borrowed Glock 17 9mm.

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When I was a kid, I heard of “postal matches,” where an individual could shoot a prescribed course of fire, send the results in to the NRA, and win a marksmanship medal depending on how high the score was. It struck me as a great idea.

It still does.

IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association, now does it one better.  They run a postal match that you can still get in on for this year: there are IDPA affiliated shooting clubs all around the country taking part in this effort, and four figures worth of participants are expected.   Cruising over to the main website at www.idpa.com will get you a cornucopia of information on this exciting and popular shooting sport, including a downloadable rule book.

If you own a semiautomatic pistol or a revolver suitable for home defense, you probably already have a gun that’s “within the rules” for competition. There are five divisions, to create a level playing field.  The most popular is Stock Service Pistol (SSP), designed for double action semiautomatic pistols like the American military’s Beretta M9, and encompassing the hugely popular Glock, in calibers 9mm Luger and larger.  There is Custom Defense Pistol (CDP) for single action, large caliber semiautomatics such as the classic 1911 .45.  There is Enhanced Service Pistol (ESP) for single actions down to caliber 9mm, such as the Browning High Power or the Springfield XD.  For those who prefer round guns to square ones, we have Stock Service Revolver (SSR) that fire conventional rimmed revolver cartridges caliber .38 Special or larger, and Enhanced Service Revolver (ESR) for the less common .40 caliber, 10mm, or around-since-1917 .45 ACP revolvers, which use “moon clips” for super-fast reloading.  Auto pistols may have barrels no longer than 5”, revolvers no longer than 4”, and holsters must be practical for daily concealed carry. The downloadable rule book will explain what sort of ammunition you need to make the requisite power factor in each division.

Also in the name of the level playing field, those of similar skill and experience levels compete against their peers. Classifications go from Master down through Expert, Sharpshooter, Marksman, and Novice, as determined by a 90-shot course of fire described on the website and in the rule book, and usually offered at least once a year at participating clubs.  If you haven’t shot for classification, you’ll be allowed to compete in the Unclassified category, but you’ll have to be an IDPA member for your scores to go into competition with the others around the nation and the world shooting this match.

IDPA’s Postal Match is a great way to see how you “stack up” against your peers in terms of tactical defensive shooting skills. The four stages are simple and straightforward.  In one, only six shots are fired, but you have to be moving rearward as you shoot and must perform a reload, having started with only two rounds in the gun, as if you were in a second confrontation after having to open fire once before. In two more, you’ll have to take cover and engage multiple targets from either side of a vertical barricade, again reloading. There will be another drill where, without moving from a seated position, you have to access the weapon and engage multiple simulated threats, shooting past a simulated innocent bystander, and do it once two-handed, once strong hand only, and once with only your non-dominant hand.

What I most like about IDPA’s format is that it’s done at the ranges of reputable, affiliated clubs. That does much to eliminate the possibility of some lone egotist faking his scores and mailing them in. All shooting is done under the supervision of certified range safety officers, and THEY tally and send in the scores.  I’d like to see something like this available for the ordinary varmint guns, deer rifles, and shotguns of the typical “backwoods home,” too.

Check out the links, and if you can, “give it a shot” so to speak. I just shot the 2009 Postal at the First Coast IDPA club, a great bunch of folks in Jacksonville, Florida. Results will be posted at www.idpa.com around November or so. Two 50-round boxes of ammo will get you through it.

And that fits neatly with my motto, “If you’re gonna go postal, make sure you have enough appointed rounds.”

Mas shoots Stage 4 with S&W Model 15 .38 (Stock Service Revolver).

Florida State Champion Gail Pepin uses 9mm Glock 34 (Stock Service Pistol) shoots Stage 2 from one side of the barricade…

…and the other, all with the timer running. She finished the match only one point down from perfect score. Arrow shows ejected casing.

New shooter Paul on Stage 3 with borrowed Glock 17. Arrows show spent casing and first shot, which struck inside the down-zero zone, as dust puffs behind the target where the 9mm bullet comes to rest. He is shooting while moving backward to cover, per course requirement.

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