Is Pre-Registration for Matches Helping the Shooting Sports?

A little while back I received an email from a listener who wished to remain nameless. He decided to get started in competitive shooting, and found a local club that hosted matches, checked out their website, and showed up to shoot his first match. When he arrived, he we met by an apologetic match director who informed him that the match was full, and since he hadn't pre-registered for the match, he unfortunately wouldn't be able to shoot. I don't think this is something that happens all the time (this is the first time I've ever heard of it happening, actually) but it is something that match officials should be aware of. At the very least, update your websites when match registration opens for the next match, or point people to the Facebook page or wherever that you're posting the registration links. (Also, note that Facebook won't show your post to everyone who likes your page unless you pay them, so only posting it to Facebook might not be the best plan.) I'm curious what everyone else things about this. Was this just a one-off thing and not a big deal, or are there some better protocols we could put in place to keep this from happening? Gear that Doesn't Suck I've had an old pair of Mechanix gloves that I use every couple months to get a grip on the oil filter on my car when doing my oil change. They really do a good job of adding some grip to an otherwise slimy/slick filter. However, at a recent match, I used them for re-setting the steel plates that were falling off their stands when shot into the thick muddy clay. They're not waterproof, but they did keep the mud off my hands, and rinsed off nicely in a mud puddle. I'll continue to keep them in my trunk in case I have a muddy match with falling steel again in the future. The News The internet was all up in arms about some zoo somewhere shooting a gorilla to save a baby human from it. I don't really care about that, but I'll say that I do trust the people who are gorilla experts and the decision that they made. However, there was some absolute derp on the internet when this story hit where people were talking about how they would have been the hero here, and shot the gorilla with their CCW gun to save the kid. Listen, your pistol isn't a magical death ray, and it's no match for this sort of animal. Wait for the guy with the big rifle to arrive. That's why you carry a 10mm because you know you might have a to kill a gorilla at the zoo someday or a grizzly bear. You've also certainly heard about the new "documentary" that Katie Couric just put out. It's called "Under the Gun" and the tag line is "In the gun debate, truth is the ultimate weapon", which is HILARIOUS, because as we're finding out, they were anything but truthful when making this film. They supposedly interviewed John Lott, and then didn't include any of that interview in the film. They had a roundtable discussion with some folks from the Virginia Citizens Defense League and edited it to look like they didn't have an answer to a hardball question, when in fact they did. One of the VCDL folks brought along his own voice recorder, just in case this sort of thing were to happen. Lastly, it's coming out that the producers of the film may have actually broken federal law several times. Yeah. For real. Plug of the Week: Tacsoup on Facebook. Check out this page, these folks are hilarious.   Contact If you've got anything for me, shoot me an email at [email protected]