Savage, not everyone's a competitive shooter. As to where the guys are that prefer the RIA they aren't hard to find if you read just a few reviews or talk around. Not meaning to diss Kimber just stating what I've read and heard. But a lot of Kimber owners sure seem to have issues with them and at what they cost one shouldn't have.
Everyone that carries should be in a compitition of some kind. Find a IDPA, Steel challange, or other tactical type shoot and go out and shoot under some pressure, have to make reloads, have to engage multiple targets, hit movers, and shoot on the move using cover.
In the steel shoots you have to knock over steel targets and you get in to the habbit of following up and making sure your target goes down. In one shoot I went to in Northern Ca we could not shoot steel and had to use Bungie cords and ballons to make the target fall, many had a T shirt covering the target so you did not know where the ballon was.
I shoot in a steel style shoot almost every month, when I moved away and then moved back one of the guys I shot with commented that he was not happy to see me back as he was now going to be knocked down a number in the rankings. I explained we shot two different shoots. He asked what? I said you use this shoot as training and I shoot it as a game. You reload like you are in combat and what you learned at the classes you took and you reload from cover, I reload on the move from cover trying to get to the next stage as fast as possible. I shoot this shoot dumb and am here for the fun, I understand what I am doing and why my score is higher but you are here to use the shoot for training for your CCW and you just have ot keep up the shoot as training and not compare your self other than hits and meaningful hits and where you screw up in moving with an unloaded gun, or not shooting from cover where possible. He grinned and after the shoot he said he was happy how he shot and that he knew I would be dead in a gun fight after watching me shoot and he would be going home. My point being, do not use the shoot to win, use the shoots to hone your skills and get better at drawing, presenting, making hits, and shooting on the move and reloading. See what works. Do not let your ego of not being first get in your way.
When we started this one hte the guys was a fugitive task force guy and he had brought his pistol rig from work where it was low on his thigh. We told him it was too slow, and his mags needed to be higher. He said yea, yea, and then was beaten over and over on the dueling tree, where draw time and reload time mattered. Later he moved his gun to his hip for both the shoot and for work. He made some of his team come to the events and they were not happy about being beaten by a bunch of civilians and never came back.
