Vantage Point North

Särmä TST Shooter's Belt with a Ghost holster and my Armscor My old and faithful CR-Speed IPSC belt started to deteriorate after 17 years of use (and occasional abuse), so I needed a new belt for my competitive shooting. After a quick check on what’s available, I decided to buy something that would allow me to have a single rig for both IPSC and its reservist oriented cousin SRA as well as potential 2-gun brutality matches. Being an ethical chap who likes to ride on a very high horse, I decided that I want something  that is local, or at least made in a country that has some basic respect for human rights and workers conditions. I saw that Varusteleka had just released a Shooter’s Belt into their Särmä TST line of combat equipment. I’ve had some good experiences with their clothing, such as the merino hoodies and sweaters and with my wife absolutely loving their windproof jacket, I felt rather confident to try out their belt, that is designed in Finland and manufactured in...

SRA competitor with a tst-class equipment (Photo by: Heli Soini) I’ve been shooting the Practical Shooting aka. IPSC for the past 15 years and unlike most of my peers, I haven’t competed in its Finnish cousin SRA or Sovellettu Reservilaisammunta, that is roughly translated as Applied Reservist Shooting. This weekend I finally managed to schedule the mandatory safety course for the SRA. But what actually is the SRA? To understand the sport, we have to first take a short hike across the Atlantic in to the USA, where Practical Shooting was formed. It’s, as the name implies, a shooting sport that focuses on the practical and efficient use of modern self-defense and law enforcement style firearms. The competitions consist of a number of stages that pit the shooter against a scenario with multiple targets. T he stage is timed with a shot timer and the targets are scored. The final result is a hit factor that is calculated by dividing the score with the time used. While t...