This is the first part of my script for a youtube video I am making, help me by making it more engaging while still being informative:

Hello and welcome to the channel. Today I want to provide an overview on how to get involved in competitive shooting. As a firearms instructor and rangemaster one of the most common questions I would get was “How do I get into competition shooting”.  

And to be honest, that is a very fair question. When I finally made the decision to give comeptition shooting a try in 2022 it wasn’t very clear how I could go about signing up for a competition, what kind of gear I would need, what was allowed, and what the rules of a given competition were. 

Funny story, one night when I couldn’t sleep I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how to find local competitions. I wasn’t a member of a gun club in my area and the majority of my shooting and firearms training was done at public retail ranges or private property.  

Long story short I sighned myself up for a Steel Challenge match and just winged it. So, to save you the hassle of having to do your own deep dive, I am going to explain to you how to get into competitive shooting.  

First, competition shooting is very much a sport. There are a lot of rules, scoring methods, divisions and classifications that factor in to how you compete. There’s a lot of debate as to whether competition shooting is good training or if it promotes bad habits. We will get into that briefly near the end, and I may go over that topic in more detail in a later video. 

We’re going to cover some basic aspects of various types of competition shooting, such as USPSA, Steel Challenge, IDPA, 3-Gun competitions, and what some of the difference are among them.  

We will go over gear considerations, how to find local matches, where to register, and where to find the rules so you can show up to your first match prepared.  

 

So let’s begin where I did. With Steel Challenge.  

 

One thing I love about steel challenge is the low the barrier to entry. What I mean by that is you don’t have to be very experienced in Dynamic Shooting to be able to compete effectively in Steel Challenge. Almost all of Steel Challenge is performed from a stationary position.  

Steel challenge is also great because it’s entire focus is on your ability to shoot proficiently under time. If you aren’t great at mag changes, dynamic movements, or shooting on the move, it doesn’t matter. Because the point of steel challenge is to shoot all 5 steel plates on any given stage as fast as you can. Misses aren’t penalized, you just keep shooting until you hit the target.  

What else is great about steel challenge is no matter where you go, you will always face some combination of the same 8 stages, shown here, Occasionally you will run into what’s called a “club stage” at a local match, which is just a fun stage designed by the match directors. But the stages that matter for your score will always be the same 8 stages. Which means you can really practice at gamifying your approach and getting very very fast on just those stages.  

It’s great to get into if you want to get really fast on the draw, and engaging multiple targets as quickly as you can.  

So the way steel challenge works is when it’s your turn to shoot, you’ll enter the shooter box and make ready. Once ready the RSO will give the command to standby. On the audible start signal you will draw and fire your weapon at each steel plate as quickly as you can. There will be one plate that is marked with either a red post or a red plate. That is called the stop plate. YOU MUST ENGAGE THAT PLATE LAST. Any plate you engage after shooting the stop plate will result in a significant time pentalty. And any plates left without being shot, will also result in a time penalty. Because this sport is all about time, any penalty like that and you can basically consider that stage a loss. So it’s very important to make sure you hit all steel, and ensure the stop plate is your last target. As long as that plate is engaged last the order in which you engage the plates is entirely up to you. Some people like to always shoot plates as they see them left to right, or right to left. There are some stages, such as 5-to-go where the order of how you engage the targets isn’t really up to debate, as it’s been determined that engaging the plates in a specific order is your best bet for a good score. There are other stages, such as roundabout where different orders of engagement are equally effective and it’s really just up to the shooter’s preference. 

You will will have 5 string in a stage, and your best 4 times will go towards your score for that stage. So if you really mess up on one string, don’t worry, that one will get thrown out. 

Remember this is an overview video, if you want more of a deep dive into all things steel challenge let me know in the comments below.  

Next up we have USPSA. USPSA stands for United States Practical Shooters Association. It is a subdivision of IPSC, the International Practical Shooting Confederation.  

USPSA incorporates dynamic shooting courses of fire to test your skills in precision, speed, and movement. In USPSA you will have to reload on the clock, and you will be scored based on points as well as time in a calculation called “Hit Factor” which is simply total points divided by total time to give you Points Per Second. You typically will engage a mixture of steel plates, and paper targets. The paper targets, shown here have different scoring based on where your shots land on the target. Shot’s landing in the Alpha zone are 5 points, shots in the Charlie zone are 3 or 4 points depending on whether you are shooting Minor or Major power factor, and delta zone is 1 point.  

Now you’re probably wondering what I mean by Minor or Major power factor. In USPS, you have a slight point advantage if you shoot a more powerful round. Typically, anyone shooting a .40 caliber or .45 caliber handgun would fall into major power factor, while shooters using a 9mm handgun fall into minor power factor. However, in recent years there are shooters who hand load their own ammunition who, through various calculations involving velocity, weight of the projectile, and foot-lbs of energy are able to run 9mm Major. I am not going to get into those calculations here, but you can find the specifics online. What’s important to take away from this, is that depending on what ammunition you run, your scoring will be impacted. I personally run 9mm, because that is my preferred caliber. Typically you have better split times on your controlled pairs and this is essentially the justification for the difference in scoring. 

Also, it’s important to note that in USPSA, 9mm is the smallest caliber you can run. In ISPC, for countries where civilian ownership of 9mm is banned, .380 is allowed.