Gun Nuts Media

Or alternate title: why I dislike ambi-safeties. In the course of a stage of fire, Joe 1) breaks the ambi on his STI, 2) blasts his own magazine, and 3) still manages to come in 2nd on the stage. Nice shooting!

The results are in from the 2009 Single Stack Nationals, sponsored by Springfield Armory. The Single Stack Nationals are the stomping grounds of the 1911 pistol – it’s the only gun that shoots this match, and is absolutely fascinating to watch the top shooters in the world go at it with guns that are all roughly the same. Here are the results:

Top Overall Shooter: Robbie Leatham – 1197.4090 points
Top Female Shooter: Lisa Munson – 848.7154 points

Top 10 Overall Shooters

1. Robbie Leatham – Major, 1197.4090 points
2. Mike Voight – Major, 1178.2523 points
3. Taran Butler – Major, 1161.7933 points
4. Todd Jarrett – Major, 1151.1429 points
5. BJ Norris – Minor (more on that later), 1112.6781 points
6. Phil Strader – Major, 1109.8591 points
7. Glenn Shelby – Major, 1088.7948 points
8. Tony Hawkins – Major, 1069.5131 points
9. Matt Cheely – Major, 1065.6655 points
10. Keith Dilworth – Major, 1055.0071 points

Now, when I was reading those scores, I saw BJ Norris’ score, and immediately thought “one of these things is not like the others”. According to his blog, BJ was shooting an S&W Performance Center 1911DK in .38 Super, which puts the gun in the Minor power factor. It is extremely rare to see guns in Minor in any of the divisions that have major vs. minor power factors, but if you’re good like BJ is, you can make the Minor guns competitive. It’s interesting that he should be gearing up to write a bit about minor vs. major, because lately I’ve been thinking about Minor power factor and how (if at all) you could use it to your advantage. While it requires more precise shot placement, there could be some advantages to using a gun in Minor PF in Single Stack, and maybe even Limited.