Practical Pistol - What's it all about? Find out in here.

[Feek]

I've had a couple of emails recently asking me about Practical Pistol.

I thought a good way to explain it is to post a couple of short videos.

The first one is a very very very basic course of fire. In fact it's the most basic course of fire I've ever seen.

On the audible start signal, draw gun from holster and engage the target with one shot.

Very straightforward, very simple. It was the first stage of the day and I think it was designed to get people into the swing of things easily. However, even a stage like this caused some people problems. There were jammed guns, forgotten safety catches and I think one guy even forgot to switch his red dot sight on.

Anyway, here is the video.

The next stage is a bit more complicated. The start position was lying on the floor, gun on the ground, unloaded. On the start signal, engage three targets behind and four targets in front with two shots on each target. The targets are just a bit smaller than the size of a sheet of A4 paper.

The video for this one is here.

Safety is the most important thing in Practical Pistol. After the stage is shot, the gun is checked by the range officer to ensure it's empty before it's holstered and the range is called clear. If the shooter points his gun outside the 180 degree angle (ie directly ahead), he's disqualified. If he points it at any part of his body, he's disqualified. If anyone unholsters a gun outside a course of fire, except in the designated safety areas, they're disqualified.

These two videos were recorded at a match at Bisley a couple of years ago, and from what I remember about it, it was a lot of fun

I'll try and answer any questions anyone has.

K.

 

[Gadget]

..

 

[intVoKs]

Imo this involves so much more skill that airsofting. Feek, do you have that video of the guy and his super fast revolver shooting?

 

[Feek]

I don't remember calling anyone sad at all. All I remember is saying that the pictures made me laugh.

Anyway, the three elements of PP are Power, Speed and Accuracy. Scoring is different depending on the power of the handgun, and obviously speed and accuracy are also needed to get the overall score up. Unfortunately, none of the guns we can use are particularly powerful these days

K.

 

[FrontSideBus]

Know any good competitions for air rifles?
Im not a bad shot with the old twentytwo.

 

[xolotl]

Feek,

What where the guns being used in those vid, They sure didnt look like real ones and the clould of gas from the front either means airsoft or pellet (as in 177 or 22).

 

[Feek]

Self Contained Air Cartridge. In other words, the Brocock style of air pistol. Running at half a knats nudger under the 6 ft/lb legal limit.

/edit - If you were to look at one closely, you'd never be able to tell that they're not live firing guns. Made out of real gunmetal and weighing and looking identical.

K.

 

[Guinnezz]

Interesting stuff Feek look forward to the open day.

 

[Longbow]

Are there any doors to open or things to go over? Or more long ranged shots?

 

[Berger]

In the second one they didnt really seem to be shooting from much distance, how is the scoring based, a combined score of accuracy, speed and "skill"?

 

[Dave85]

my god tbh that has to be very boring, and now am not saying u.

being an airsofter it certainly seems very tame to me and al stick to running around the woods in my full camo lol

 

[Feek]

If you look at the target in my sig, you'll see that they are divided up into scoring zones. Scoring is done by calculating a hit factor, basically dividing the number of points scored on target by the time taken from the buzzer to the final shot. Whoever gets the highest hit factor for the stage automatically gets 100% of the possible points for that stage and the others are calculated against that person.

The skill is deciding whether to take the risk on long shots and possibly dropping points on accuracy and gaining on time, or taking a bit longer, getting closer and guaranteeing a higher score. On a stage like the second one there, the revolver shooter has to reload so he may as well use the time taken while reloading to get closer to the targets. Standing still and reloading is wasting time that could also be used moving.

Quite a few skirmishers have come into the sport and have found that it really increases their shooting skills. Someone has mentioned in another thread that they tend to spray and prey when skirmishing but practical shooting gets you concentrating on accuracy. We've found that skirmishers start of too quickly and incredibly inaccurately. It doesn't take long for them to get a lot more accurate and that also affects their skirmishing.

In PP in the UK, we don't use live firing handguns because they're not allowed any more. We use Brococks, CO2 and airsoft but ALL guns are subject to the same safety rules which are EXACTLY the same rules as if we were using live weapons. Shooters who have come from skirmishing often find it difficult to understand why we do this but quite a few UKPP shooters also shoot internationally with real guns and they don't have to retrain themselves from their airguns to their real guns.

I don't mean this nastily so please don't anyone take it the wrong way, but new airsofters who come into the sport are often incredibly unsafe to start with, but that's simply because they've never had to think about gun safety the way we do. Up until last year, anyone could shoot one official match without doing a safety course but the rules have changed and to take part in any match sanctioned by the UKPSA, a person has to take a two day safety course in gun handling AND pass a very stringent test before being allowed to compete.

So, Dave, you're right. Skirmishing and Practical Shooting are both very very different. You get a big buzz by running around a field shooting people, and I get a big buzz as soon as the buzzer sounds to start me on a course of fire.

Which is better? I don't think it's possible to compare them to each other because they're so different.

K.