Competitive Equity

Chris asked on the Facebook group about competitive equity at matches: Ports - all ports being the same high or low height. Should they be mixed height? I'm taller than most shooters. Not the tallest guy on the range, but above average. Personally I don't have a problem with MD's mixing up the height of ports, as long as they aren't going too crazy with it. Tall shooters can get low, but short shooters can't get higher. I think there's a size and height of port that can work for every shooter, and then it's totally kosher to add in something like a low port here and there. I like low ports, mostly because I like to hear people grumble about them, and also because I like to see people really get tested on their prone handgun shooting skills, which is something that nobody practices, and a lot of people struggle with. Walking stages - should stages be open the day before for people that can travel? I had to ponder this one for a little bit, and while it's not completely fair that someone could walk the match the day before, and someone else couldn't, as long as the the range is open for everyone to have the opportunity to walk the match, I'm pretty much okay with it. Because if we close the stages off completely to everyone until match day, do the match staff that helped setup the match not have an advantage over everyone else? My thing is this: If the range is open to everyone to walk stages the day before, and you just can't get an early flight in to the match, that's not the concern of the match, that's your problem. What about Match Directors who setup stages that will be used at a future major match, at a local match ahead of time? Setting up exact stages seems shady. I haven't seen that before, at least that I can think of. However when the Carolina Cup was still the big IDPA match in my area every June, if you were to shoot at that range in the few months leading up to the match, you could definitely tell that the match director was working on different things to get ready for the match. Things like tweaking the speed of moving targets, engagement orders, different props, etc, but I don't think he really ever setup entire stages for everyone to shoot ahead of the match. Personally, the big competitive equity thing that I see is pepper poppers screwing people over. If I were king of the shooting sports, the first thing I would change would be to treat poppers the same as falling steel. If it's hit and doesn't fall, that should be a stage equipment malfunction, and the the shooter should get a re-shoot. Plug of the Week: Watch this episode of This Week Tonight, and tell me what you think about the messaging that they're countering. Is this the sort of messaging the pro-gun people should be putting out there?