#17. DISCHARGING THE GUN WITH THE MUZZLE BEHIND THE FRONT HOLSTER POUCH CUT IS NOT ALLOWED.I'm an elderly slow shooter, and while the rule applies to me, just as it applies to everyone, I doubt that it will ever be applied against me. I understand the rule, and I understand how it is to be enforced. We're fairly familiar with the rule now, as an association, but when it came out last March, it engendered a great deal of comment.
We're starting to get the hang of it, but our sport is unbelievably fast. The human eye blinks in 300 to 400 milliseconds, and our start times are random, based on a light. If you blink, you've missed the shot. And, our rules don't allow for an instant replay camera. For all kinds of good reasons, we don't want instant-replay cameras. We rely on human reactions, human judges.
The hand-judges sometimes have trouble seeing the front cut of the holster, and the angle of the shot, and humans blink. So, it is instructive sometimes to have a camera nearby. Our game has three or four very good photographers, and Miss E is one of the best. She is unobtrusive and many times when a shooter is focused on the competition, he doesn't even know that Miss E is standing down the line with her nice camera and her trained eye. She catches some really fantastic stuff.
Below (and I've cropped the photo to make the shooter anonymous) we see a really good example of a Rule 17 violation. The shooter allowed Miss E to post the photo for educational purposes.
As far as the hand-judge is concerned, he or she is located behind the shooter and may not have seen the violation. In fact, many shooters don't get the opportunity to see themselves shooting and may not know that their muzzle is behind the front of the holster. Sometimes the shooter himself (or herself) may not realize that they are in violation.
We're learning about Rule 17, it's implications and enforcement. There is a learning curve associated with it, and we're learning to deal with it.
4 comments:
Oh, that one is going to be hard to enforce, given human nature and reaction times... And it would mean the hand judge would have to be sitting perpendicular to the shooter, which is not (my understanding) the way it is currently done.
That's exactly the problem, Jim. But, it's something we're trying to work around.
Is this a future ruling or is the date a little off?
Thanks for the heads-up about the date. I've corrected it in the main post.
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