NRA Basic Pistol Instructor Course

A while back I made a post (that didn't get too much attention) about having registered to take the NRA Basic Pistol instructor course, which will allow me to conduct concealed handgun classes in my state. Someone asked (u/j1mmy_chew) me to follow up after the course, so I figure I'll do a write up of my observations and experiences.The course was two days long, and I mean whole days. Started at 8AM, didn't get done until 6 or 7 PM each day. This is in addition to having to take the basic online course prior to the days of class (the course you're going to be teaching), which takes 6-8 hours to complete.The course had very little of instruction on guns, which makes sense. It was assumed that, being guys who felt confident in taking an instructor course and having taken the online course again, we at least knew the basic stuff. There was also a pre-course questionnaire and conversation with the instructor-counselor which serves as a vetting process I'm sure, as you were asked to describe your experience with guns and shooting, as well as with teaching, if any.I was the only guy without military or law enforcement experience out of the 5 students, which I think was definitely to my advantage (I was a security guard for a year prior to law school, but I don't really think that counts). As a 100% civilian gun owner and shooter, one of my motivating factors toward being an instructor is that I find a lot of the military/LEO in-group signaling (or just the general drill sergeant approach to teaching) seems to put off a lot of your casual gun owners and shooters from training, or just otherwise feel intimidating.The course appeared to be easier for me than for the other guys, as it was mostly not about guns or tactics, but about teaching. Not that they didn't know their stuff, but because they had to work hard to break their military/police training to speak in civilian terms. For example, you are not allowed to refer to a gun as a "weapon" in the NRA course, as the NRA cares a lot about precise terminology (You have to say "gun" or "firearm," and you'd also get shit from the instructor if you said "bullet" to mean cartridge or "clip" to mean magazine). There wasn't too much trouble with things like "clip," but the former LEO guys just couldn't seem to stop saying "weapon."As the course assumed we had the requisite gun knowledge, most of the course was not really learning so much as doing. The very first exercise was to learn information about one of our classmates and introduce them as if they were a guest speaker in your course. As an attorney, my public speaking skills are pretty well developed, so this was another area that came more easily to me than to the other guys. So the course would have an hour or so of lecture on how to teach the course, how to have the right attitude, how to help people without being critical, etc, and then we would have an exercise which would just be actually teaching one area of the course to the rest of the classmates, with them pretending to be students (often pretending to be completely incompetent, which was kind of fun, assuming really poor stances or something and seeing if they would spot it and correct it).Safety was SUPER heavily emphasized, as it should be. Like almost neurotically so, but I really did appreciate this aspect. As an instructor, you need to set a good example, and this course really, really drilled in the best practices. No ammo was allowed in the classroom. Any time anyone touched any gun, they had a second person visually, physically, and verbally confirm it was clear. They had to put their finger in the chamber and magwell and say "clear." We had an established safe direction in the classroom that we kept the guns pointed in at all times, even during the exercises (which required some creative seating changes from time to time).At the end of day 1 was the pre-qualification shooting. I thought it was strange that this pre-qual was after day 1, because if you were unable to pass you were unable to complete the course. I think it is probably meant to be the first thing you do, but the range was in use in the morning for a new crop of security guards. Plus, if you failed, the instructor would let you take the class again in the future at no additional cost. No one failed, anyway, but the pre-qualification shoot was pretty interesting. The shooting was bland - we just had to shoot a 6 inch, 10 shot group at 15 yards to pass. We did some warm up shooting at shorter distances first, which also gave the instructor some time to observe our range safety habits. What was interesting about it was the choice of guns. The NRA's only requirements were that it had to be 9mm/.38spl or higher, no magnums. So basically all your normal self-defense pistol cartridges. Aside from that (and I'm sure only iron sights would be allowed), you could use any handgun you wanted. So it was weird to see what people showed up with.I showed up with my 6" 686 and shot it single-action, because why not. Another guy showed up with a tuned up Les Baer 1911. He and I were by far the best shot, and qualified on the first go. Everyone else struggled a bit, but I don't think it was that much down to skill as much as down to gun choice. One guy showed up with an XD, and he was the third to qualify. One guy didn't even bring a gun he was allowed to use (he just had his .380 carry gun), so the instructor loaned him a Glock 23. He was the fourth to qualify. The last guy had an old, double-action-only Beretta 92. He couldn't hit shit. Everyone was a bit concerned, because it was almost like teaching a new shooter for a minute there. Then finally, the instructor realized he was shooting a double action only gun. The 1911 guy offered to let him shoot the 1911, and he managed to qualify with that on his first try with it. Pretty clear condemnation of DAO triggers for anyone who doesn't already know they are godawful. It was night and day.The rest of the guys asked myself and 1911 guy how we ended up having such an easy time of it, which I found kind of surprising. I just said "we cheated obviously," and explained that we brought target-shooting pistols to the target-shooting exercise, where everyone else had duty pistols. I was surprised this was not immediately apparent to everyone, but this another one of those areas where it shows who has most of their gun experience through military or police vs. the civilian hobbyist world.At the end of day 1, we had a take-home test, open book. This was by design less of a test of what you learned and more of a reason to force you to look at the materials. We were also given our day 2 test on day 1, and were told that if we finished it that night we wouldn't have to stay around at the end of day 2 (which was nice since it lasted until 6pm anyway. We would have been there till like 8 probably if we had to do the test). So in total, day 1 was doing gun stuff from 8AM to 9pm without stopping. Fun, but pretty exhausting, and we had a another whole day after that.Day 2 was more focused on teaching the pistol course. All the exercises on this day were actually conducting parts of the pistol course (no basic public speaking introductions or a mock budgeting exercise for putting on a class like on day 1). This was another fairly interesting area, because almost everyone but me struggled at least a little bit with revolvers, especially single action. Two of the guys had never shot a revolver, one had never even held one. The other two who had shot revolvers only had a cursory knowledge, and I had to teach all of them how to load and unload a single action revolver. Again, this highlighted the problems with having years and years of experience, but only with the specific guns used in law enforcement/military.For the latter part of day 2 we did some more shooting, but this time with the students bearing the responsibility as range safety officers, taking turns playing instructor and student. There was one point, in fitting with the general theme here, where one of the former LEOs did something in the wrong order, and handled it in that kind of way that the course is really trying to prevent. Basically, he told us to load and make ready (guns at low ready, the next command would be "fire when ready") prior to telling us to put on our eyes and ears on. So here we are standing there with loaded guns in our hands, with no eye or ear pro. I was pretty worried that maybe someone else had put on their ear pro on their own, and that he would tell everyone to fire when ready and blow up my ears. We, the fake students, started murmuring reminders, hinting at what he forgot. He realized his mistake, but he started barking out authoritative commands, saying to do what he said because he was the instructor, etc. Then he told us to put our guns down and put on our eyes and ears anyway, which he could have just done without the fuss. But that's the attitude that puts off a lot of new shooters from getting formal training, or which drives people away from some shooting ranges. I'm sure everyone has had that kind of experience once or twice, so I guess this is why the NRA course is so deliberately trying to train that kind of stuff out of its instructors. I hope that he realizes not to do this in the future, as he is in the process of opening a shooting range, and your average customer doesn't want to be yelled at like some kind of police academy recruit. He was actually a really nice guy aside from this, so it took everyone by surprise.By the end of day 2 we had a bit of a shooting competition. I came in 2nd, behind 1911 guy. Again, I'm not sure that means we are much better shooters than the others, because we had target guns. I let everyone in the class shoot my revolver at the end, since I was the only one who had one, and since it really wouldn't do for people to be teaching a basic pistol course if they've literally never shot a revolver.As for the class as a whole, I enjoyed it very much. All the other guys were cool guys, and it was nice to meet them. The instructor was also really great. He set a very good example for how to behave as an instructor. He had a calm, inviting demeanor, and projected the "I'm here to help you succeed at this" attitude rather than the "I'm the one who will fail you" attitude. If anyone reading this is considering becoming an NRA certified instructor, it isn't a terrible way to spend the weekend. Total cost was $450 for the instructor course, $60 for the online course, and then another $30 to the NRA for the credentials. This is in addition to the cost of ammo, travel, accommodations, and any other related expenses to spending a whole weekend doing this. I'm sure there is some variation in the price of the course based on the instructor as well.If it wasn't clear from the story, my only advice to anyone interested in taking the course is to:Know what type of shooting you will need to do and go prepared for it. Bring a gun that is easy to shoot well. While being certified for this course is enough for me to teach CCW in my state, it is not a CCW course. It really doesn't talk about CCW at all. It is a basic pistol course. It is not cheating to bring your target pistol, even if you are planning on using what you learn to teach CCW.Check your previous experience at the door, especially if it is military/LEO. Go in as a blank slate. It will be easier. Roll yourself back into a "new shooter" mindset regarding safety. Absorb the procedures. Don't let yourself think you know better, and you will almost certainly learn something you didn't even know you didn't know.If you aren't great at verbal communication, or public speaking makes you anxious, this might not be for you. There are plenty enough instructors out there who know a lot about guns but who are shit at actually explaining it to others in an approachable way. This was by far the most challenging part for several of the people in the class. It is interesting to see people who were career law enforcement officers or marines or whatever get nervous about just having to give a short presentation for 5 other people, or to fall back on an attitude of training recruits rather than people who just paid you good money to be treated with respect in your class.Once I finished, I had my credentials in 2 days (non-NRA members have to wait a few weeks, and the credentials cost $50 instead of $30, so it is worth joining at least at the most basic level if you intend to take this course). Then, to comply with state law, I had to submit an application and course syllabus to the state police. They should give me an instructor ID in a few weeks according to the lady at the state police headquarters, and then I can officially teach the class. It is strange that my state's CCW statute lays out the required elements of the course, but almost none of it is really about CCW. It is the basic safety, nomenclature, and how to shoot, the laws on self defense, home firearm safety and child access prevention, gun cleaning, and then live fire. Notably, it does not require that you cover the actual CCW law (prohibited locations, etc) or anything about how to actually conceal a handgun/carry methods. Those I guess have to be squeezed in to the other bits, so I added it to my syllabus where it fit the best. The law has all the hallmarks of anything that is designed by a room full of clueless congressmen. I suppose this is one reason why I have been dissatisfied with my previous CCW courses - the instructors are required to teach everything except what the students are generally most interested in learning, like the nuances of where they can and can't carry.The funny thing is, you don't have to actually teach the basic pistol course to teach CCW in my state. But you have to be certified to teach that course in order to create your own course that complies with the statute. And nothing really stops you from opening a firearm training business (at least not in my state) even if you don't have any credentials. The only thing the credentials are required for is CCW classes. Firearm training is an otherwise unregulated profession. All the NRA asks is that you respect their branding. You can only call it an NRA course if it is THE NRA course, and while you can say you are an NRA instructor, you have to have a disclaimer at least as big as that or bigger saying that "this is not an NRA approved course." As my instructor put it, you can go ahead and start teaching "357Magnum's tacitcal defense rapid fire night shoot extreme course," you just can't have the letters "NRA" in the name of the course. via /r/CCW http://ift.tt/2eoRADO