The Overlooked part of Winning

Often times in competitive shooting there is always someone whose got a gun they’ve been tinkering with & haven’t had time to go to the range to test it but they wanted to come to shoot the match or they did a hotel special, like hastily installing a new trigger or sight, the night before nationals start. These are bad ideas.

Why Are These Bad Ideas?

Importance of Reliability: 

This plays into multiple areas of match performance. The most significant area you won’t realize it will affect is your mental game. How is this going to affect your mental game? It will affect your mental game by taking some of your focus away from the match because some of your mental focus is transfixed on: Is the gun going to run today? If it doesn’t run, this often snowballs into trips to the safe areas and time spent trying to band-aid the situation to make the best of it. The time spent in the safe area takes away from loading mags, stage walk-throughs, and watching the other shooters run the stage. It puts you at a mental disadvantage overall. If the gun does work, then you are happy & you are still mentally transfixed on it working, which is still a mental distraction. No mechanical gain is going to make up for the mental distraction.

Tuning Your Gun for Optimal Performance VS. Finding the Balance: Avoiding Over-Tuning

Tuning your gun for optimal performance with your grip & your ammo might not be a reliable combo for long-term use. We have watched people make a gun completely unreliable by short-stroking the recoil system, cutting coils & adding recoil buffers because that is how the gun doubles best with their combo of factors. But it doesn’t run if the gun is dirty or stuck in a small port; it doesn’t run. Yes, You’ve optimized performance but over-tuned everything & the gun no longer functions with typical match demands. But man, it doubles like a dream. At about the 75% mark of where a lot of people want to tune their gun to, the gun is pretty well tuned up & doesn’t require the Maintenance schedule of an exotic car & recoils back to the same spot, and has a sub 3lb trigger.

Matching Gun to Ammo and Shooter & The Power of a Dumb Reliable Gun

Not all guns like all ammo or even bullet profiles or powder charges. your grip can have affect on this as time goes & you learn or develop your abilities you may change your ammo combination which in turn lead to you needing to change striker springs/ hammer spring or recoil springs maybe both will have to be changed. a simple change in oal can have big affect on your sights coming back on target how is this so? an increased overall length will change the feed angle & drag caused by stripping the next round out the mag.

Key Maintenance Considerations

Most competitive Shooter use there guns more in a year than they get used by most customers in a life time.

• Firing pin block/ Striker plunger spring every 6 months! This a safety feature that keeps the gun safe…
• Trigger return springs once a year
• Recoil spring if its super light for application you may need to change it every 1k rds or once a month most are every 6 months
• Mag Springs every 6 months/ every 5k (this also depends on mag total)
• Hammer Spring/Striker spring Every 6 months or 5k rounds

Competitive shooting demands precision, reliability, and an understanding of the intricate relationship between guns, ammunition, and shooters. As one fine-tunes their firearm, finding the balance between performance & expectations, the need for meticulous maintenance diminishes, and the gun effortlessly returns to its position with a sub 3lb trigger. However, it is essential to acknowledge that not all firearms are compatible with every ammo or shooter, necessitating adjustments in striker springs, recoil springs, or overall length. Regular maintenance is indispensable in unlocking the path to victory in competitive shooting.