Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms and bows/crossbows.
A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titles depending on the sport, including umpire, judge, arbiter (chess), commissaire, or technical official. Referees may be assisted by umpires, linesmen, timekeepers, touch judges, or video review officials.
Practical shooting, also known as dynamic shooting or action shooting, is a set of shooting sports where the competitors try to unite the three principles of precision, power, and speed, by using a firearm of a certain minimum power factor to score as many points as possible during the shortest amount of time. While scoring systems vary between organizations, each measures the time of which the course is completed, with penalties for inaccurate shooting. The courses are called "stages", and are shot individually by the shooters. Usually the shooter must move and shoot from several positions, fire under or over obstacles and in other unfamiliar positions. There are no standard exercises or set arrangement of the targets, and the courses are often designed so that the shooter must be inventive, and therefore the solutions of exercises sometimes varies between shooters.
The International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) is the world's largest shooting sport association, and the largest and oldest within practical shooting. Founded in 1976, the IPSC nowadays affiliates over 100 regions from Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Competitions are held with pistol, revolver, rifle, and shotgun, and the competitors are divided into different divisions based on firearm and equipment features. While everyone in a division competes in the Overall category, there are also separate awards for the categories Lady, Super Junior, Junior, Senior, and Super Senior.
The United States Practical Shooting Association(USPSA) is the national governing body of practical shooting in the United States under the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC). Its over 35,000 active members and over 500 affiliated clubs make USPSA the largest practical shooting organization in the United States and the second largest region within IPSC after the Russian Federation of Practical Shooting. USPSA publishes a monthly member magazine called Front Sight.
The Steel Challenge is a speed shooting competition governed by the Steel Challenge Shooting Association (SCSA) that consists of eight standardized stages with steel targets in three sizes; small circular, large circular and rectangular targets. Competitors are scored solely by the time it takes them to complete each stage, and the match winner is the competitor with the lowest overall time.
ActionAirgun was a commercial action shooting sports game where competitors use standardized airsoft shooting kits to shoot special courses of fire and keep track of their scores online. It is a trademarked name of ActionAirgun LLC. As of November 23, 2016, the domain for the sport, actionairgun.com, has expired.
Power Factor (PF) in practical shooting competitions refers to a ranking system used to reward cartridges with more recoil. Power factor is a measure of the momentum of the bullet, which to some degree reflect the recoil impulse from the firearm onto the shooter.
Dynamic Sports Shooting Norway (DSSN), NorwegianDynamisk Sportsskyting Norge (DSSN), is the Norwegian association for practical shooting under the International Practical Shooting Confederation. It was constituted in 1979 as Norges Forbund for Praktisk Skyting (NFPS), and changed its name to Dynamisk Sportsskyting Norge in 2013.
Multigun, Multi Gun or Multi-Gun, often also called 2-Gun or 3-Gun depending on the types of firearms used, are practical shooting events where each of the stages require the competitor to use a combination of handguns, rifles, and/or shotguns Multigun has a lot in common with ordinary IPSC/ USPSA single gun matches, and matches generally have courses of fire where the shooter must move through different stages and engage targets in a variety of different positions.
The IPSC US Handgun Championship are yearly IPSC level 3 matches held by the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) run under IPSC-rules. Sometimes, all of the pistol IPSC nationals are held at the same time, other years, they have been broken up between different ranges. In order to attend the nationals a competitor usually has to win a "slot" by placing well enough at various regional and Area Championship matches held throughout the year.
The IPSC Shotgun World Shoot is the highest level shotgun match within the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) and consists of several days and at least 30 separate courses of fire. The Shotgun World Shoots are held triennially on a rotational cycle with the other two main IPSC disciplines Handgun and Rifle.
The IPSC Rifle World Shoot is the highest level rifle match within the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) which consists of several days and at least 30 separate courses of fire. The Rifle World Shoots are held triennially on a rotational cycle with the other two main IPSC disciplines Handgun and Shotgun.
The 1996 IPSC Handgun World Shoot XI held in Brasilia, Brazil was the 11th IPSC Handgun World Shoot. The match had 609 competitors, teams from 31 nations and consisted of 35 stages. The Open division was won by Todd Jarrett, while the Standard division once again was won by Ted Bonnet of USA. Todd Jarret from Virginia had established himself as a major player before the event, having placed in the top four of the US Nationals every year since 1990 except one. According to himself he had trained well before the World Shoot in Brazil, and was quoted saying "It's really amazing, the harder I work, the luckier I get."
The 2017 IPSC Handgun World Shoot XVIII was the 18th IPSC Handgun World Shoot held at the new National Shooting Center in Châteauroux, France during the end of August and start of September. There were 30 stages divided into 5 areas, with each area being named after and having themes from one of the 5 continents Africa, Asia, America, Australia or Europe.
The 2012 IPSC Shotgun World Shoot I held in Debrecen, Hungary was the 1st IPSC Shotgun World Shoot, and consisted of 30 stages over 5 days and over 400 competitors.
The 2015 IPSC Shotgun World Shoot II held at the shooting range "Le Tre Piume" near Agna, Italy was the 2nd IPSC Shotgun World Shoot. The match consisted of 30 stages over 5 days and 635 competitors from 30 nations.
The 2017 IPSC Rifle World Shoot I held at the Patriot Park in Kubinka, Moscow, Russia was the first IPSC Rifle World Shoot. The match consisted of 30 stages over 6 days and 591 competitors from 40 nations.
The 2019 IPSC Rifle World Shoot II was held in Karlskoga, Sweden between 3 and 10 August. The match consisted of 30 stages over six days, and over 650 competitors Jarkko Laukia from Finland took gold in the Open division, which was the largest division of the match.
The 2022 IPSC Handgun World Shoot XIX was held in Thailand from November 27 to December 3. The match consisted of 30 stages over 5 areas, and the main-match sponsor was CZ firearms. The match had a capacity of 1600 competitors, and 1345 competitors from 73 countries completed. It was the first World Shoot featuring the popular Production Optics divisions, and was the nineteenth IPSC Handgun World Shoot.
