Over the next few weeks look for fresh stage designs (like the above) to appear in the ASI stage library. ASI welcomes submissions from club
s around the country – including yours!
Dustin Wylie will be leading the charge on implementing new stages, so even if you have submitted a design in the past, please re-submit it (to [email protected]). Past submissions ended up going to different people, and we know we lost track of a couple in the hand-off process. We’d much rather have two copies of your designs than none at all!
When you’re drawing up a stage, keep in mind that ASI stages are designed to be “shoot-able” by entry level people. Movement is minimized, targets have ample scoring surfaces, and the shooter is not required to perform complex skills. Advanced tasks (like shooting on the move) should be made optional. Many of our stage instructions say things like “shots to be fired while moving or stationary” in order to keep from pushing the new shooter too far out of their comfort zone.
Right now the founders are discussing adopting stages from the Hand Sized Handgun championship 2017. Rick Breneman’s flair for challenging low-round-count courses underpins a lot of his success!
We particularly value stages like Breneman’s that come from outside the founders’ circle. We need fresh perspectives and the particular “style” of regional course designers (like Rick) to keep ASI vital.

When Dustin Wylie and Robin Taylor were teaching the RO course in Alaska recently, a question came up about “what happens when someone accidentally shoots a prop?”

The answer comes down to context. If the shooter fires a shot while not aiming at a target, that’s an accidental discharge — and the hole in the prop is evidence of the fact that they weren’t aiming at a target. However, it is possible to lean around a barricade, and simply misjudge whether one’s barrel has totally cleared the edge.

The shooter shown below is a participant at the USPSA PCC National Championship. (Remote camera.) He has a clear line of sight to the target with his sights, but unbeknownst to him, his barrel is still aimed at wood.

You can see wood being blasted off the barricade as he valiantly tries to make that difficult off-balance shot.

If you’re concerned about people blasting the edge of your barricade (like this) we suggest extending the edge of the barricade slightly with a bit of easily-replaceable trim. Cardboard works well too!

Because of this phenomenon, ASI barricades are meant to create a vision barrier only — declaring the barricade to be “hard cover” makes scoring much more difficult. (The RO’s that had to sort out the below situation for USPSA had their hands full!)

The ASI rules are full of not-so-obvious policies like this one, which flow from the Founders’ many years of match experience. They’re designed to make the match easier to run, and easier to understand for everyone — without a lot of unnecessary rule-making.

ASI Releases Newest Rule “Book” and Keeps Promise to Maintain Short Rules for Competitive Sport While Promoting Gun Safety Education in a Fun and Social Setting.

The 1.5 rule book is still only 8 pages and streamlined compared to the 1.4 version. You can read it here: https://asi-usa.org/rules/

“We’ve opened up the playing field to allow the ’30-something’ calibers that are often banned by other sports,” says ASI CEO Robin Taylor. “Examples include the .32 ACP, .32-20, 7.62X25, .30 Mauser, and the entire .32 S&W family, including the .327 Federal Magnum. Also, the rule allowing revolver shooters to use a frame-mounted optic appears in print at last, along with a handful of minor corrections and fixes.”

If you find any errors or problems (typos included) Mike Meisner is working on putting together a “fix list” for next year’s release. He can be reached at [email protected].