And therein lies the rub. Long story short, I ran a State level IDPA match. A shooter did something, it was brought to my attention, I could find no rule prohibiting his action, so I assessed no penalty. A shooter later related the incident to Ken Hackathorn. Instead of citing a rule, guideline or principal, Hackathorn's first and only question was, "what class was he?"
Why would it matter? If the action was wrong, then it's wrong regardless of the shooters ranking.
Yes, and we've discussed that before. I don't agree with such a simplistic statement by KH, though I think I understand what he was getting at. An FTDR is (at least in part) a mindset problem. The action itself is not a major fault (though a minor one), but doing it purposefully is. Therefore it is quite difficult to fairly assess such a penalty. It is absolutely NOT class-specific, but the experience and practices of the individual shooter certainly can provide a strong clue as to their mindset toward the spirit of the sport and the willfulness of that action. Anyone who says, "I'll take the penalty because I come out ahead..." under any circumstances is, by definition, earning the FTDR.
However, IDPA also instructs MDs to be mindful of these issues and to do all they can to create no situations which will put the shooters in temptation of committing such violations. (And of putting the SOs in a position to have to assess those penalties.)
If the COF was set up so poorly that head-shooting a hostage really DID earn a fast shooter fewer points down than shooting the stage correctly, that's the fault of the MD, and the stage should be tossed.
...
As a practical example of how this could be called? Say the scenario is set up so that the threat target is behind a non-threat close to and visible to the shooter at the start of the stage, but the activator for that threat to pop out won't be hit until late in the stage, forcing the shooter to reposition to re-engage that threat when otherwise he'd be able to finish more quickly without having to come back and hit that threat. He could plug the good and bad guy at the beginning, and never have to return to engage the bad guy as intended. In certain stages, I guess, this maybe could save the 5 seconds. But it would also be PERFECTLY clear that the shooter did that completely intentionally.
I'd give an FTDR for that, absolutely. And the SO would be able to verify when and how that shot was taken.
But the same stage, shot correctly but the shooter returns to that target and accidentally clips the non-threat on his last shot? No, that's clearly accidental.
Again, though...bad stage design.
