Magazine capacity for IDPA SSP

[oboe]

Is it IDPA legal to use a pistol [Beretta 92A1] that comes with three 17 rd capacity magazines if they are only loaded for IDPA SSP competition with the IDPA legal number of rounds? What is that - 10 rds plus 1 in chamber?

Would it be IDPA legal to use Beretta 92 magazines of ten rds if the pistol was purchased with the 17 rd mags?

 

[Hoser]

Mags may only have a max of 10 rounds in them.

The pistol may have a total of eleven (10 in mag, 1 in chamber) in it at any time.

 

[ny32182]

Yes you can use 17rd or 10rd mags, as long as they are loaded to division capacity (10rds). Most courses of fire will have you start with the pistol loaded and topped off to 10+1. Most people just put 11 rounds into the first mag so they don't have to do a separate "eject the mag and barney up" operation at the line.

If the course calls for an unloaded start, which some do, remember to pull that 11th round out of your first mag... If you forget and the SO catches it, you will get FTDR penalty if they are calling it tightly/correctly.

 

[Crusader103]

The pistol may have a total of eleven (10 in mag, 1 in chamber) in it at any time.

Not quite at any time...only to begin with. A reload from slide lock would mean a maximum of 10 rounds in the weapon at that time, not eleven, for your spare magazines cannot exceed 10.

Your first line was correct.

 

[dhfenno]

So are you saying I can't do a tac. load or a RWR halfway through a COF?
That would put 11 rounds back into a SSP gun.

 

[Crusader103]

So are you saying I can't do a tac. load or a RWR halfway through a COF? That would put 11 rounds back into a SSP gun.

No, that's not what I am saying at all.

I am not trying to be nit-picky but it does confuse some shooters. Hoser stated that

the pistol may have a total of eleven (10 in mag, 1 in chamber) in it at any time.

That is not entirely true. There are times that you cannot have eleven rounds in the weapon, such as when performing a slide lock reload.

The moment after you perform a slide lock reload the maximum capacity in the weapon would be ten rounds. If it were eleven than the shooter would have had an eleven round spare magazine, which is not legal.

That is where some shooters get a bit confused. You can start a course of fire with eleven rounds in the weapon but that does not mean that you can have eleven rounds in the weapon "at any time." Saying so implies that you could have an eleven round spare for a slide lock reload.

If you choose to do a slide lock reload followed immediately by a tac reload to bring your capacity back up to eleven, I guess that would be fine but probably not the best idea. Even still, there would have been a point in that course of fire where 10 was the max in the weapon (right before the tac reload).

Nit-picky? Maybe. But it does matter as far as the rules go.

 

[Jim Watson]

Let's try it this way.
You may not have more than ten rounds in any magazine during the CoF. Period.
You will normally* start off with one in the chamber and ten in the magazine. Whether done with a ten round magazine and a Barney or an 11 round magazine and racking the slide, the start condition is the same, 10+1.
Any reload will be with a ten round magazine. If it is a slide lock reload that gives you ten in the gun. If it is a Tac Load, that gives you 11 in the gun to resume the stage with; but there were only ten in the magazine.

*You will sometimes start out "downloaded" to force a reload where the CoF writer wants it. A simple example is the IDPA El Presidente, where you start with six in the gun, fire twice at each of three targets, reload, and fire twice more at each target.