The letter (from the President of the USPSA) said:
"...Even if USPSA were to agree to not actively sanction USPSA matches outside of the US, it leaves us with two issues:
1) The resolutions adopted by IPSC define the sanctioning of matches subject to penalty as both “actively and passively”. That means that we would be expected to police matches using our rules, targets, or name outside the US, where we have no real power or authority, and no real interest in pursuing these matters in international court, wasting both time and money" (and);
"2) Over 500 foreign members, and 14 foreign clubs, could be in violation of the new rules, and consequently have to be expelled from USPSA. This may occur at the whim of the same IPSC Regional Directors who approved their applications to begin with..."
<https://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-announcements-details.php?Important-Announcement-from-the-USPSA-President-282>
His statement is the one I was referring to.
I really don't see a problem with what IPSC has done. I read it as:
a) If you are competing at an IPSC match in another country, the match director has a responsibility to make sure that the shooter is a member in good standing. This hasn't really changed. Show up to the US Nationals, and you had better be either a member of USPSA or be able to prove that you are a member of another region. Would you expect a match director to just accept any person into their match without finding out if they're qualified to shoot the match, or even to hold a gun? You remember hearing about the shooter who had a seizure at a match? He was sanctioned by his home region and not allowed to compete. How would you like it if he showed up to your match and said you didn't need to check up on whether he was allowed to shoot or not. Would you, as a match director, give anybody a blanket invitation to enter your country with all of their firearms? If so, maybe one day, you can expect the Syrian 3-gun team asking for their invitations to your match and you can be responsible for petitioning for their entry into Canada with guns. Maybe a bit far fetched, but my point is, match directors need to know who they are allowing to shoot their matches.
b) If USPSA is going to grant sanctioning to clubs to hold matches outside of the USA, they had better be aware of what goes on there. If they're going to accept money from foreign affiliates then they are responsible for them, Damn right, they should police what goes on in other places under the USPSA name. But how do they find out what's going on at a club in a foreign country? If they can't send someone, they should maybe consult someone in the country. Not some shmuck who they've never heard of. Maybe they ask someone who knows local politics, someone like, say the Regional Director of that country? If a club is asking for foreign affiliation, maybe the RD is a good person to ask why. All kinds of organizations try to do all kinds of sneaky things to play off one organization against the other. IPSC doesn't want to see that happen, so they created an article that says a RD needs to be aware of, and give their approval to matches andclubs with foreign sanctioning. I was our USPSA club contact (for TMSA) when we affiliated with USPSA back sometime in the early 2000's. We needed to get the approval of the RD, so we contacted him, gave him our reasons for wanting USPSA affiliation and we received it. No problem. But what if there was a problem? What if we were to be doing something unsafe or in violation of USPSA's mission statement. For them to say they have no authority over us is a cop-out. They sanctioned us, they can desanction us. If they think that granting foreign clubs membership to their organization is a "here, take our money, let us use your name and we have carte blanche to do anything we want, neener neener" situation, they they really should be evaluating why they would grant foreign affiliates membership.
Yes, many clubs could be kicked out of USPSA because of this new ruling. That is a "doom and gloom, the end is nigh" interpretation. Things could also run along smoothly just business as usual. His interpretation only spins events one way. I don't know what happened in the Phillipines. I don't know what has happened around the world. However, I do know that USPSA has run just fine, for the most part, in Canada because we are generally playing nice with both IPSC and USPSA. Just because the hammer was introduced at the General Assembly, don't assume it is there because of actions that occurred in Canada or were aimed at USPSA in Canada. I certainly don't think it was.
