What happened at the 86 World shoot? What kind of crazy courses of fire were there that required you to holster a loaded gun during the stage?
First, reholstering a loaded pistol was common practice in pre 1986 IPSC competition in the US. This practice had been commonplace for at least a decade prior to the World Shoot in 1986. This practice was necessary because some of the courses of fire were quite physical and the competitor needed both hands free to negotiate some sections. The courses of fire that come to mind are the "Cooper Assault Course", the "Colorado Speed Shoot", and "Son of Colorado". There were many others but these are the only ones to come to mind as 30 years have passed and my memory has dimmed a bit. Some of the exercises that required a holstered pistol were: scaling a six foot wall, crawling through a simulated tunnel, vaulting a three foot fence, and crawling under simulated barbed wire. These courses were FUN! At the time the practice was not considered dangerous and, to the best of my knowledge, it is still legal in other countries of the IPSC today.
There were multiple disasters in 1986. The World Shoot was scheduled to take place at a resort called "Eastover" in Lennox, MA. The owner was an avid shooter who owned a Gattling Gun and several operable black powder cannons. Eastover put on shooting displays involving the afore mentioned weapons, Civil War "Skirmishers", and automatic weapons demonstrations involving dirt bikes (Al Zitta supplied the bikes) on the 4th of July and Labor Day. The idea was for the competitors to be able to stay at the same location where the match was held. To facilitate this, the owner who had his own construction company and 1400 acres of land to play with, agreed to build all of the ranges to our specs. At some point the USPSA BOD decided to move the match to Orlando FLA and did so, employing some of the dirtiest politics I have ever witnessed. They did our elected officials in DC proud. The match was then held in FLA during hurricane season, with predictable results; we lost one or two days of shooting due to torrential rains, I can't remember which. Please do not take my remarks as criticism of the folks who ran the match or the Orlando PD which provided the range. They did a great job under the circumstances.
One of the courses of fire involved the reholstering of a pistol. At the walk through on the night prior to the first day of the match it was noted by many shooters that this reholstering was to take place in very difficult location and posed a safety hazard. The shooter was required to reholster his weapon prior to ascending a flight of stairs. Prior to the stairs the shooter had just finished a set of four simulated rooms with multiple targets, so he also had to reload his pistol. This presented a problem as the pistol had to be reloaded and holstered prior to ascending the stairs which were considered a "holster test" where the competitor was forbidden to touch his weapon. The distance between the last "room" and the stairs was quite short; the shooter was being asked to do too much in too little time, thus the safety issue. Some of the best shooters in the world complained that this procedure was too dangerous and asked the CRO running the walk through to modify the stage to eliminate the problem. The CRO refused and eventually a shooter from Brazil, representing Taurus, attempted a reholster with his finger still in the trigger guard and shot himself in the leg. My squad was present as we were next up and, fortunately, a Canadian physician was a member so the Brazilian had expert medical care within minutes of the accident.
The BOD over reacted, IMHO, and banned the practice of reholstering during a colurse of fire, making the US the only member of the IPSC to ban this practice. This changed IPSC competiton in the US forever, and not for the better, again IMHO. Those of you who have not had the opportunity to run some of these early "physically demanding" courses of fire have no idea what you have missed.
I have read Rob's comments on this and why he favors this ban and respectfully disagree. His comments were addressed to current day USPSA competiton which is the result, in part of this rule change. The sport has evolved over 30 years and the prohibition of reholstering has been an influence on this evolution. I wonder what our sport would be like if the BOD hadn't over reacted.Maybe I just miss the good old days.
