United States Practical Shooting Association

United States Practical Shooting Association

Headquarters	Burlington, Washington
Region	United States
Parent organization	International Practical Shooting Confederation
Subsidiaries	Steel Challenge
Website	uspsa.org

The United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) is the national governing body of practical shooting in the United States under the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC). Its over 25,000 active members and over 400 affiliated clubs make USPSA the largest practical shooting organization in the United States and the second largest region within IPSC after the Russian Federation of Practical Shooting. USPSA publishes a member magazine called Front Sight six times a year.

IPSC was formed in 1976 at a meeting in Columbia, Missouri, led by the late Jeff Cooper. It was here that the sport of Practical Shooting was formally established after years of independent efforts around the country to build upon the handgun skills and training for self-defense. The early days of the sport can be traced back to the 1950s and the quick draw “leather slap” competitions that grew out of America's love affair with the TV westerns of that era.

In 1984 USPSA was incorporated as the US Region of IPSC.

Practical Shooting challenged the then accepted standards of technique, training practices and equipment. Its early pioneers developed scenario-based competitions to accurately measure the effectiveness of their own shooting techniques and equipment. The rapid shooting on-the-move style of Practical Shooting gave birth to the term “Run and Gun” so commonly used today to describe the sport.

For more than 30 years the sport has served as the test bed for new products and the unofficial R&D for the firearms industry. With some competitors annually shooting in excess of 100,000 rounds, no other venue offers a better in-service assessment of a firearm’s performance or the brutal gauntlet of high-level competition through which a gun must survive to be declared reliable.

USPSA is a 501c(3) non-profit Delaware corporation and currently headquartered in Burlington, Washington. The association is organized into 8 "Areas", each of which is represented by an Area Director at the board meetings of the organization. Further, each Area is divided into sections which is represented by a Section Coordinator responsible for coordinating the activities of clubs within his/ her section, and managing the nationals slot distribution process.