What is United States Practical Shooting Association or USPSA?

The Quantico Shooting Club and its members, Quantico Practical Shooters, host a monthly USPSA match on Quantico Marine Corps Base. USPSA challenges new and experienced shooters on their pistol handling and marksmanship skills. The Quantico Practical Shooters are identified as USPSA Club VA22 and are located within the USPSA Area 8.

Balance-Accuracy, power and speed are equivalent elements of USPSA shooting. Practical shooting evaluates these elements equally along with safety in mind. Practical competition is diverse and the stages are constantly changing. Practical competition is free-style and allows the shooter the freedom to decide how best to shoot in the competitive situation provided. The USPSA website can be found at www.uspsa.org.

New shooters may begin the sport with the gun and equipment they already have, in most cases, within the Production Division. which at a minimum may be a striker fired handgun, an outside the waistband holster which covers the trigger guard, a riggers belt, magazine pouches for magazines and 5 magazines. Information on equipment, rules, and Divisions can be found in the links below. In addition to the gun and equipment shooter will need about 200 rounds of ammo for each match along with hearing and eye protection. 

Matches hosted by the Quantico Shooting Club consist of 5 stages which may include a classifier stage. A classifier stage is how USPSA classifies shooters into different levels. All Quantico matches use Practiscore for match registration and can be found at www.practiscore.com. Matches hosted by the club can be found by searching for QPS on the practiscore website under matches. New shooters can email the club with further questions. We suggest visiting a match prior to shooting in the match. That way any questions can be answered by experienced staff. 

It is recommended that shooters have their first competition experience at one of our Steel Challenge matches. Movement is minimal and each shooter will hear the USPSA range commands at least 30 times. These are the same commands used at our USPSA matches. We feel that new shooters should follow the crawl, walk, run concept in building their skills while ensuring safety while competing. Please read the rules for USPSA found on the USPSA website at www.uspsa.org/uspsa-rules.php. prior to attending a match. 

The video below provides an example of one of our club members and match staff shooting a USPSA match. To se the stage he is using a Glock 35 in. 40 caliber and is shooting in the Limited Division.