Choosing Your Pistol For Competitive Shooting: Part 5

One of the most important considerations to make when getting started in competition shooting is choosing a pistol to compete with. There are many factors to be considered, such as what competitions you plan to compete in, what divisions in those competitions, action type, and availability of holsters. Today we’re going to discuss how to choose your pistol for competitive shooting in part 5 of our series.

Firstly, you need know what type of game you want to play. You need to first decide what game you want to play. If you want to shoot something like USPSA Limited, your pistol choice will be differ from a pistol for IDPA SSP. Most of us like shooting several different disciplines, so finding a pistol that is legal for several different games is essential. Most games require a 9mm or larger in an auto, and .38 special or larger in a revolver.

Secondly, you need to consider capacity. Most games have some limits on the capacity or rounds that your pistol can hold. However, you shouldn’t get too caught up on this and buy a low capacity pistol, as you can always just load your magazines to the lower capacity. Some other games allow you to run high capacity magazines, so for a do it all pistol, having some flexibility in this regard is a good thing. More rounds in a magazine will give you more flexibility on when and where you plan to reload, which can impact your score considerably.

Third, will it fit in the box? Both IDPA, and USPSA Production require pistols to fit into a box of exact proportions for the pistol to be legal in these games. The proportions of the boxes are made available to the public, and generally, you will not have an issue fitting in the box with a regular duty type pistol.