Just got back from six days in Tallahassee, five of them at the Pat Thomas law enforcement training center both studying and teaching at the High Liability Instructors Conference, and one day prior shooting the pistol match that was ancillary to the event.  Practice was a constant thread that ran through the entire experience.

The two events that kill more cops than anything else are shootouts and car crashes.  There was heavy emphasis on preparing for both.  When your vehicle is slewing out of control is a lousy time to START getting experience in steering out of a skid.  That’s why the $45,000 Skid Car device we mentioned in the last post is absolutely worth its price for training purposes.  Training costs are cheaper than death benefits and lifelong Workman’s Comp, and those two things are exactly the stakes on the table.  As cops have long said, it’s better to sweat in the training environment than to bleed in the street.

The pistol match kinda brought that home for me, and for the significant other. She’s the current state and regional women’s champion in International Defensive Pistol Association shooting, and being five feet tall, was chosen to teach the bloc for instructors on how to adapt small-handed female officers to full-size issue service pistols.  Primarily an auto pistol shooter, she grudgingly practiced with her “old fashioned” Smith & Wesson Model 67 revolver. The practice paid off at the match: she won High Woman in the service revolver category.

I had practiced with her, something I don’t usually have time to do before a match anymore. The practice paid off for me, too.  Another truism in law enforcement is that “in a fight, you won’t rise to your greatest possible ability, but will probably default to your training.”  This course involved the police B27 silhouette target fired in competition mode, which means that the target is a 2” X 3” oval tie-breaker X-ring, fired at under time constraints from as far as 25 yards.  The practice scores were consistently 100% in “qualification mode,” but in the much tougher “competition mode” scoring they ranged from 97.5% to 99.2%.  Did I skyrocket with a flash of brilliance and shoot 100% on match day? Hell, no…but I did default to the 97.5% bottom line of performance “on demand,” and that was enough to win the revolver match (S&W Model 64 .38 Special, 4” barrel) and the pistol match (Beretta Model 92 9mm), and take the overall win.  For me, practice beforehand hadn’t delivered stellar performance, but it HAD helped to guarantee a safety net where “fallback” wouldn’t fall TOO low.

The lesson is, I guess, that the more you drill with the relevant skill, the more you retain that skill for “on demand” performance. The deposits practice makes in your bank account of what some call “long term muscle memory” give you a balance against which to draw a check when you need to pay out some skill for something important.  That’s a check you can’t afford to bounce.

There’s a reason cops practice. It’s the same reason we all should.

Practice target: Gun is S&W Model 64 .38 Special with Craig Spegel “Boot Grips” designed for concealment.

Match day. With Stage 2 of revolver event complete, score is 180-16X out of 180-18X possible, so far. Model 64 is in Ayoob Rear Guard holster by Mitch Rosen, on right hip.

Gail is happy that she has practiced with that old “20th Century gun,” S&W Model 67 tuned by Bill Pfeil with Hogue grips and riding in Milt Sparks #1AT holster.

Practice pays off. Match director Mark Rominger, left, hands Mas a gift certificate for a new S&W pistol, prize for top overall shooter. Score was delivered with Beretta 92 9mm pistol that’s concealed under Mas’ EOTAC lightweight vest.

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.

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.