The most successful practical pistol club I was ever associated with tool a fairly relaxed approach to the “competition” aspect of it. It was very much focused on regular folks and police officers who wanted to improve their defensive handgun skills with handguns they actually carried.
You could run a race gun, but you were not going to impress anyone.
Most fun I ever had, mostly because the folks with the big egos got shut down in a hurry. That was a key element to success as so self anointed experts do a superb job of chasing off the new folks.
I’ve seen that from time to time in Bullseye shooting and in service rifle/high power competition. When the cultural becomes all about personal achievement, rather than brining in new members and making them feel welcome, clubs die.
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The CMP effect on service rifle is a tangential problem. DCM used to run the equivalent of a well regulated late 1960’s - early 1970s NASCAR or Grand National type of event (where they actually ran cars, or in this case rifles, that came off the production line, with a limited set of required or allowed modifications) to ensure a good balance, using an actual service rifle or copy, with just enough refinement to allow for healthy completion and measurement of progress. If it was 1.5 MOA accurate with issued ammunition, you could be competitive.
CMP ruined that by going back to stock as issued condition rifles, eliminating any meaningful ability to measure improvement, while quite frankly watering down the marksmanship side of the house just to sell surplus guns to collectors , and worse, flippers.
