ABOUT ALIBIES / REFIRES (SIMPLIFIED) 11/08
by Paul Harold
The NRA now calls an alibi a refire. When a shooter claims a refire, it is the job of the range officer to determine if the refire is allowed or not.
In general, a refire is allowed when a shooter’s equipment fails. A refire is not allowed when the failure is the fault of the shooter.
In Timed Fire and in Rapid Fire strings when the shooter has a dud, or the pistol malfunctions or becomes disabled, a refire is allowed. If a bullet has been struck by the firing pin but the round did not go off, a refire is permitted. If a round is fired and the case is not properly ejected from the gun and the spent case jams the gun’s mechanism, a refire is allowed. If the optical sight fails, that is, the battery dies, or any other reason the sight fails, a refire is allowed.
A refire is not allowed when it is the shooter’s fault. If a shooter loads an empty magazine, a partial magazine, or fails to load a magazine at all, a refire is not allowed. If the shooter fails to fire the pistol (pull the trigger) a refire is not allowed.
In the Slow Fire stage, a shooter should clear his own malfunctions, however, if the pistol becomes disabled, call the range officer and let him know. You will be told what to do next.
In Timed Fire and Rapid Fire strings, if you have a malfunction, assume the Ready Position and raise your non-shooting hand. DO NOT touch your pistol with your non-shooting hand. If you do, your refire may not be allowed. At the end of the string, the range officer will come to you and look at your pistol and hear your explanation of what happened. Depending on what he finds, he may ask you to point the pistol down range and pull the trigger. If the pistol fires, the refire is not allowed. Otherwise, he will tell you to remove the magazine and open the slide. He will confirm how many shots were fired before the malfunction. If a refire is allowed he will instruct you on when the refire will occur. It will be after all other shooters have completed that stage of fire.
Before a refired target is scored, the range officer will write on it the number of shots to be accounted for. For instance, if a shooter had a malfunction after two shots were fired, the target would be a 12-shot refire target and "12 shots" is what the range officer will write on the target.
The number of shots a shooter is responsible for on each target is ten plus the number of shots fired in the string during which the malfunction occurred. This could be as many as 14, and it includes shots which did not hit the target. This is true whether or not the shots were actually fired, and whether or not the shots were fired but missed the target. For instance, on a 12-shot refire target the shooter might only have eleven shot holes. It could be that one of the 12 missed the target. It could be that the shooter ran out of time. It could be that another malfunction occurred. In any case the missing shot counts as one of the 12 shots the shooter is responsible for. Missing shots will be scored as misses, and included in the lowest ten shots counted for score. If there are only 2 hits on a 12-shot refire target, the score on that target is zero.
If a malfunction occurs when a refire is not allowed, a shooter may attempt to correct the problem and continue to fire, within the time limit. This may happen, for example, if the shooter gets a dud or a jam during a refire string; or when the shooter had a malfunction during the first string and claimed a refire, and another dud or jam during the second string.
P.H. Nov. 2008
