Gun Nuts

In part 4, I ended up taking a look at how USPSA was managing the money generated by Front Sight, an unplanned detour that lead me to the question of whether or not USPSA’s ad sales staff is really doing a good job. Today I want to regather my focus and look at Nationals, the single largest expense on the USPSA tax returns. We’ll post the cost of Nationals and the revenue generated for each year going back to 2008′s tax return.

For the past few months I have been amazed at how much I am enjoying the shotgun portion of my 3gun training. While it’s easier to hit a target it’s takes more brute force to control than a pistol or rifle. Yet even with my pathetic excuse for upper body strength, I really like this new challenge. This was the mindset I had as I approached a 32 round shotgun stage at the Freedom Munitions Memorial Match in Clinton, South Carolina.

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Disassembling Glock magazines sucks. The new LW Glock mag tool makes it not suck. Buy one today.

I’m not saying we drove through that puddle at speed just to see if we could…and then did it again faster, but we may have done just that. Photo credit again to Brad Howe of ATV Rider Magazine.

Have a look at the gun review of the Colt 1911 XSE Rail Gun from 2011.

Do you have a great photo of guns in action with muzzleflash? Send it to us at gunnutsmedia@icloud.com for next week’s MuzzleFlash Friday or post the link in the comments!

Program service expenses are the most important ways that USPSA spends their money. These are things like putting on USPSA Nationals, running RO seminars, producing Front Sight, and my favorite catch-all category, “member services.” Again staying with the 2013 tax return for the time being, you can find these listed on page 2 of the Form 990, under “Statement of Program Service Accomplishments.” If you skip down to box 4a-c, you’ll get a picture of how the money is allocated and how much revenue is directly generated from that event/line item. Here’s how it looks on 2013′s return:

Photo by Brad Howe of ATV Rider.

Sometimes simple is the best solution. It doesn’t get much simpler than the T/C Encore Pro Hunter platform; a single shot, single action, receiver which can be mated to any number of different rifle barrels in various calibers to produce anything from a modern muzzleloader to a close range brush gun in .500 Magnum. The version I spent a day with in Wyoming was chambered in .223 with a 26 inch fluted, stainless steel barrel. The rifle’s mission was simple: shoot as many prairie dogs as possible.

Because USPSA is largely funded by membership dues and entry/classifier fees paid by the shooters, the most important part of our examination of USPSA’s finances is how they’re spending that money. Yesterday’s post covered USPSA’s revenue streams, so today we should look at where it’s all going.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve doubtless encountered this gem of a story from Fox News which covers the U.S. Army’s desire for a new handgun. The discussions about this tidbit of information online have generally been dominated by ignorance and soul-crushing idiocy. Let’s boil away all the nonsense and get a few facts straight on this.

Gun: Smith & Wesson M&P15 MOE with 20 round GI magazine. Magpul equipment in FDE.
Vehicle: Yamaha Viking VI
Scope: Bushnell AR223 3-9x40mm

This was a really great set-up for knocking around the backcountry of Wyoming looking for prairie dogs and jackrabbits to shoot. The short, 16 inch carbine was perfect for on the vehicle, easily accurate for shots on dogs at 200 yards, and with the scope dialed up to 9x you could actually see prairie dogs out to 400 yards…although hitting them at that distance was a little tough.

In my second stage of the Freedom Munitions Memorial match there was no rifle work, only shotgun and then pistol. There was some running down stairs after ditching ones shotgun. I wondered, “Whats’s with this stage designer?” Ladders (see my post about the first stage of this match), stairs… What’s next? Rappelling??!? To add to the issue of the stairs, we had to turn 180 degrees from the stage, in order to run down them. This inspired the fear of breaking the 180 degree rule. Fortunately we should have grounded our shotguns prior to turning around and were not to draw our pistols until we had passed a specific tree root, er, fault line. After that it was a lot of pistol shots, first to paper, then to steel. I felt confident with these two guns and had a plan that took into consideration my inability to move and fire at the same time.

In part 1 of our examination of USPSA’s finances, I took a 10,000 foot view of the financial picture of USPSA. Today we’re going to get into the details of where USPSA’s money comes from.

I love these old training films. It feels like the guys who filmed Adam-12 made a PSA about the dangers of getting shot at. What is interesting to me is that the techniques in this video would work just fine today. Sure, they’re probably not the fastest and most effective ways to get bullets into badguys anymore, but I’d imagine that if you trained using these techniques on the reg, you’d be in good shape to win a gunfight.

Pomona, NY – Kahr Arms is once again brightening up their product line by introducing another new color; purple. Following the success of their Cobalt Blue Kahr CW9, Black and Orange Auto Ordnance 1911, Burnt Bronze Desert Eagle and the popular Kahr PM9 in Robin Eggshell Blue, Kahr Firearms Group has partnered this time with Davidson’s, Inc., one of the largest and most progressive firearms wholesalers in America, to introduce a purple version in either the CW9 or CW380.

It’s been a long time since I’ve shot a club match, or any kind of USPSA match for that matter, but yesterday I got up early and went out to the Big Sioux Rifle & Pistol Club for their monthly club match. I haven’t shot a lot this year, but since Bianchi Cup I have been trying to get out to the range more. I didn’t expect any kind of improvement, but at the end of the day I was happy with how I did.

Time and location classified