Note to the wagging-finger crowd: I do own the targets in question. I pay a match fee every time I go to a 3-gun shoot, in addition to my club dues, just like everyone else. Where did you think the targets came from? Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves, writing as if I had proposed surreptitiously damage someone else's property.
By that logic you can simply destroy anything at the club, since you're a member and pay match fees once a month. That argument is bogus for obvious reasons.
Furthermore, in a fair number of local matches, some of the target systems
are privately owned by individuals - usually the M.D. or staff - who "lend" them for match use.
Ammo restrictions are almost ubiquitous at matches, and I mean that in the broad sense:
* most do not allow incendiary or tracer ammo
* many do not allow AP bullets or those with steel in them
* most have some sort of caliber/cartridge restriction
Rules in this class are usually there for some combination of these reasons: safety, preventing target system damage (which can influence safety, if not just screwing up match logistics as targets need to be replaced), and logistics/fairness in scoring.
Armor steel is not particularly cheap. It can be a pain in the butt to have to repair the rest of the target system (e.g. stands). If a target goes down during a match, the shooters on that stage are delayed until it can be repaired, or the stage is thrown out, or the scoring will end up unfair to the people who shot it before or after the target was down. These are all things that make the match staff's job harder, make the match cost more money, or screw up match logistics.
Also consider that sometimes the host range has rules in place about what ammo can be shot on their property, period. The match staff has to incorporate those facility/range rules into the match rules.
Impact velocity is the main killer of targets, with bullet material composition somewhere behind. At the long-range matches that I am involved with, we have developed a 3200 fps muzzle-velocity limit because, for close targets, the resulting impact velocities will cause target damage. This isn't because we're a mafia -- it's because the damage incurred if even a considerable minority of the shooters used ammo that damaged the targets would make them unsafe and unserviceable for match use within one season, if even that long. In the case of one of our matches, replacing 60 targets would cost somewhere between $2000 and $6000 and a easily a man-week of labor to repair everything. That's a non-starter.
These events do not make anyone rich. If most matches had to actually pay for the help of the staff, they simply could not be run - they'd be losing money hand over fist. Allowing destructive ammo so that a few people can save money on ammo costs, but costing the "match" a bunch of time and money in repair makes no sense.
