Troy McManus

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

I saw this on a meme on social media and it sort of struck a chord.  I get a lot of questions describing a mistake some RO allegedly made at a match, or a declaration by a supposedly knowledgeable RO or local “rules guru” that is completely wrong and not found in the rules, but I have also been guilty of this very thing.  Case in point, I was asked recently about a situation where the RM did not disqualify a competitor for being more than 6 feet from a berm and uncasing a PCC.  The original sender wasn’t complaining as much as just wanting to know the possible reasons for allowing this.  I explained the rule, and then asked, “Who was this?  I will try to send him some information and educate him a little bit.”  Imagine my chagrin when the original sender said, “Um, well, it was you.”   Ope!  Once he said that, I remembered the match and circumstances, and I had to admit that yes, per a strict interpretation of the rules, it should have been a DQ, but at the time, he wasn’t pointing the gun at anybody, and was somewhere around 7 feet from the berm or so, with the gun in a cart.  And, remembering that match, I was probably distracted by something else at the time.  All things considered, it seemed like the right call, and I can’t say I wouldn’t do it exactly the same way again, but I got a little lesson in humility and I haven’t forgotten it.