We all know people who buy a gun for home defense, load it and lock it away with the sure certainty that it will fire when needed most. These firearms should have been cleaned, broken in and tested with their choice of self-defense ammunition. Locked up, they collect dust and the lubrication dries up.

Just like your gun, your shooting skills can get rusty if you leave them on the shelf for too long. I try to stress to my CHL students the need for continuing practice.

Despite of a lot of trips to the range to oversee my classes' shooting qualifications, I usually only shoot an average of once a month. If more time goes by, I can easily tell my speed and accuracy have suffered. These are perishable skills.

Shooting a nonmoving target in a lane becomes boring, and most ranges prohibit things you should be practicing like drawing from concealment garments, moving to cover while shooting, rapid fire, tactical reloads and continuing to advance on your targets. These are the skills you need in real-life encounters.

Learning to shoot while moving is a humbling experience. Add your movement or a target's movement to the equation, and it becomes a learning experience. These are also the skills that may help save your life.

Competing in International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) matches is fun, adds a little stress to your shooting and enables you to practice all of the above skills plus much more. IDPA as a sport has grown, and matches may be found in most cities.

The courses of fire are designed approximating real-life scenarios, such as at an ATM machine, being in the cabin of a plane, entering a room, etc. A local club match may have five or six scenarios set up in action bays. Regional and national matches will have many more.

IDPA stresses both accuracy and speed. You are timed through the scenario, and penalty time is calculated by multiplying your misses by a time factor and added to your overall time score. This adds a little more stress to your shooting as you are going against the clock, everyone in the squad you are assigned is watching and you have a range safety officer following right behind you.

Remember IDPA is a game, thus there are gaming tricks that should not be used in true self-defense. As I tell my class when we discuss the differences between cover and concealment, "a lot of what you see on television can get you killed."

If interested, go to IDPA.com, read the rule book and find a local match in your area.