Practical Shooting Club

The sport of practical shooting originated from competitions in California in the 1950s with the goal of developing handgun skills for defensive use, but quickly evolved into a pure sport with little grounding in the original purpose. The sport soon expanded to Europe, Australia, South America, and Africa.

IPSC was founded in May 1976 when practical shooting enthusiasts from around the world participated at a conference held in Columbia, Missouri, creating a constitution and establishing the rules governing the sport. Jeff Cooper served as the first IPSC President. Today there are over 100 active IPSC regions,[1] making practical shooting a major international sport which emphasizes firearms safety highly.

Through international rules concerning firearms, equipment and organizing of matches one tries to unite the three elements precision, power and speed, which is also the motto of IPSC that is Diligentia, Vis, Celeritous (DVC), Latin for “precision, power, speed”. Only full caliber firearms are used, i.e. for handguns 9×19 mm is the smallest caliber, and the competitors try to achieve most points in the shortest time possible.