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.
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.
Jerry Charles Miculek Jr. is an American professional speed and competition shooter. Miculek has emptied a five-shot revolver in 0.57 seconds in a group the size of a playing card, thus being dubbed "The Greatest Shooter of all Time". Miculek holds five officially sanctioned world records in revolver shooting and over 15 unsanctioned records with firearms ranging from rapid firing pistols to the Barrett M107 .50 BMG rifle. Additional accomplishments include six shots in .98 seconds with a Barrett M107 .50 BMG rifle and a 1000-yard shot off hand with his 9mm Smith & Wesson revolver.
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.
Robert Jennings Leatham is a professional shooter who is a 24-time USPSA National champion and 7-time International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) World Champion.
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 Bianchi Cup is a major action pistol tournament in the United States, usually held over three days in late May. Since 1984 the National Rifle Association of America has designated it their National Action Pistol Championship. It is normally held in Columbia, Missouri, at the Green Valley Rifle & Pistol Club. It has the largest purse of any tournament on the action pistol calendar and is the premier action pistol championship tournament in the world. The Bianchi Cup is the only major shooting tournament that has retained its original course of fire since its inception.
Michael Paul Voigt was president of the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) from 2000 to 2012.
Tori M. Nonaka is an American sport shooter with two IPSC Handgun World Shoot silver medals in the Standard division Lady category. She was one of three members of Team GLOCK. She grew up in Woodbridge, Virginia, where she began shooting at age 3. At age 12, Tori attended the US Shooting Academy, which sparked her interest in becoming a professional shooter and led her to begin shooting competitively. On March 2, 2011, GLOCK, Inc announced that 15-year-old Tori would be a member of Team GLOCK Shooting Squad. In March 2017 Tori went independent and left Team Glock. She was replaced by Ashley Rheuark.
Michael Christopher Tilley is a professional shooter and USPSA Grand Master. He is also known for competing in the second season of History Channel's marksmen competition Top Shot.
Robert "Bob" Gordon Vogel is a professional marksman, competition shooter, and National/World champion. He is the only Law Enforcement Officer ever to win World and National Championships in the Practical Pistol Disciplines of IPSC and USPSA.
Jessie Harrison, formerly known as Jessie Duff, is an American sport shooter from McDonough, Georgia who took silver in the Open division Lady category at the 2017 IPSC Handgun World Shoot in Châteauroux, France and bronze at the 2011 IPSC Handgun World Shoot at Rhodes, Greece. In the IPSC US Handgun Championship she took gold in the Open division Lady category in 2015 and silver in 2013. She also has 16 USPSA Handgun Championship Lady category gold medals.
The IPSC Handgun World Shoot is the highest level handgun match within the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) which consists of several days and at least 30 separate courses of fire. The Handgun World Shoots are held triennially on a rotational cycle with the other two main IPSC disciplines Rifle and Shotgun.
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.
BJ Norris is an American sport shooter who in the 2005 IPSC Handgun World Shoot took silver in the Open division Junior category. He started shooting competitively in USPSA late in 2000 at age 11, and became really serious about shooting in the 2005 season. Besides being known as an IPSC/ USPSA shooter, he is also well known for his Steel Challenge participation where he became World Champion in 2011.
Benjamin Thomas Stoeger is an American competition shooter and firearms instructor who started competing actively in 2005. He placed first in the 2017 IPSC Handgun World Shoot, second behind Bob Vogel in the 2011 IPSC Handgun World Shoot, and placed third in the 2014 IPSC Handgun World Shoot behind Eric Grauffel and Simon "JJ" Racaza. He is also three time IPSC US Handgun Production Champion, eight time USPSA Handgun Production Champion.
Daniel Horner is an American sport shooter and firearms instructor who placed fourth in the Production division at the 2008 IPSC Handgun World Shoot. He shoots varied action shooting competitions with an emphasis on multigun, and is a 10-time USPSA Multigun Champion in the Tactical division. Horner competed for the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit from 2005 to 2018, when he joined Team SIG Sauer.
The USPSA Multigun Championship, formerly called the 3-Gun Nationals, are yearly multigun championships held by the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA). The Multigun Championship is always held at a separate range and date from the pistol nationals USPSA Handgun Championship and IPSC US Handgun Championship. Currently, anyone can participate in the Multigun Championship on a first-come, first-served basis.
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.
Shooting competitions for factory and service firearms refer to a set of shooting disciplines, usually called service rifle, service pistol, production, factory, or stock; where the types of permitted firearms are subject to type approval with few aftermarket modifications permitted. The terms often refer to the restrictions on permitted equipment and modifications rather than the type of match format. The names Service Rifle and Service Pistol stem from that the equipment permitted for these types of competitions traditionally were based on standard issue firearms used by one or several armed forces and civilian versions of these, while the terms production, factory and stock often are applied to more modern disciplines with similar restrictions on equipment classes.
