No, it's not a trick question.
If you compete, be it bullseye, IPSC, IDPA, GSSF, etc., you probably have a pretty good idea of how good you are. There are standards, classifications, rankings that can serve to give you a pretty good idea of your ability.
If you compete, you probably also have a pretty good idea of how good your gun is.
If you are shooting a Lorcin (that jammed all the time) and languishing in D class, you would have to be pretty delusional to convince yourself that you and your gun were actually pretty good.
If you have survived a gunfight, are you and your gun any good? Maybe, maybe not. But the sample size is too small to draw any meaningful information.
An example. A lot of people have very high opinions of Sig handguns (not picking on Sigs - just the first name that popped into my head that doesn't have a large presence in competitions). Why? If we are discussing quality, I would agree. If we are discussing "shootability" or "combat worthiness" (or any other such description, take your pick), why are they good? Is it because such and such police agency has adopted them? Is it because you know of someone that used one in a shootout, and they survived?
In various posts both here and on TFL, I have defined the essence (I have been taken to task for the use of the word, but it works for me) of combat or competition shooting to be:
"The ability to place multiple shots on multiple targets, quickly and accurately, from a variety of positions, using a sufficiently powerful gun."
Your own definitions may vary, but I wouldn't imagine that they would vary a whole lot. And if they do, that's OK.
Competition allows us to quantitatively assess our abilities, and the suitability of our guns. If you are competing and you are not winning (or placing at a relatively high level), either your skills or your gun or both are lacking. You could say something like, "Them games is all rigged. I could beat any of them hotshot IPSC'rs in a real shootout." Maybe you could, maybe you couldn't. They only way to tell would be to have a real shootout with them, and that isn't likely to happen. While competitions of all types have their limitations, the do provide a repeatable and quantifiable method for assessing skills. If you don't like competitions, what are the alternatives?
When we don't compete, it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that our skills are greater than they are. We can conveniently forget about our misses and malfunctions, and tell "fish stories" about how good we really are. Competition does not afford us that luxury. The results are what they are, printed for all to see.
I see competitions as the best way to determine our skill level. If you disagree, let's hear the alternative. And, AFAIK, competition is the only repeatable, controlled forum, where participants can choose their guns (as opposed to being issued like for police and military), and that has a large enough sample size to have any statistical validity when answering the question about whether or not a gun is good.
I am not trying to gore anyone's sacred cow here. I see competition as the best arena for answering these questions, but I am sure that it is not the only one.
What say you???
Scott