Saturday, March 2, 2013

NRA "First Steps - Pistol" AAR

Gee....I'm using the term "AAR". Never thought I'd get here......

Got to the range today about 1030, and was greeted by the lead instructor, three other volunteer instructors, and twenty anxious students.

Some of them had fired guns before, some had not, and a few were "scared" of guns, but thought they'd be better off knowing actual facts about them, rather than relying on the the lamestream media is reporting.

The classroom part starts with The Four Rules, and then gets into the basic parts of a gun ("Frame", "Barrel", "Grip", and "Action"), and then discusses ammo.

Then grip and stance are taught, moving on to sight picture, followed by a short break.

After the break, we finish up the classroom training by reviewing what was taught, checking stance and grip for each student, and answering numerous questions.

You can tell these are very interested people by the questions they asked, and by their attitude.

While the lead was finishing up in the classroom, the other instructors and I went out into the range area, set up a table, hung targets, and loaded magazines.

The pistols in use were Ruger Mark-II's, slightly modified with dots of white-out applied to the sights. A couple of years ago when my sweet wife took the course, she complained that she couldn't get a sight picture because she couldn't see the sights!

The lead took my suggestion to use white-out, and nobody has complained since then.

The first segment was 20 rounds onto a piece of paper, just to get the students used to handling the pistols, inserting/extracting magazines, and manipulating the controls on the gun.

After questions were asked and answered, stance and grip checked again, we went to 20 rounds on a standard NRA "Slow Fire" target.

As the students fired at their first target, we watched them for things like jerking the trigger, and as always, stance and grip.

The last segment was 10 rounds at a fresh target, this time "scored".

Three of the students scored 98, so we had a 3 round shoot-off to determine the "Best Shot of the Class", who won a nice baseball cap.

So.....we started with 20 students, and turned them in to 20 graduates, with a certificate, patch, rocker, and wallet card.

The class was 100% safe, none of the guns spontaneously "went off by itself", no blood was spilled, and everybody had a great time.

And the next 5 Saturdays are booked solid, so I imagine I'll be spending a whole lot of time helping my friend teach new shooters the basics.

5 comments:

  1. Nicely done Sir! We are dealing with the same increase in traffic for new shooters and concealed carry classes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds great. 5 Saturdays? That's a lot of ammo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Keads Yeah, he said he's having to turn people away, and the classes fill up as soon as he posts them.


    @Opus Yep, 20+20+10x20 students = 1,000 rounds.

    I'm just glad I have all that Wolf and Fiocchi I bought several years ago!

    We used all of the ammo the lead instructor brought, and went through about 100 rounds of the Wolf I dragged with me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is the right way to do it, repetition, and giving them good value for the $$ they are spending. Hopefully some if not all will be back for CCW, but in Kali, it's doubtful if any could actually get a CCW down there.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kaliforniastan is a "May Issue" state, and it's up to the county sheriff to decide who gets a permit and who doesn't.

    In the coastal counties it's almost impossible to get a CCW permit, but inland is different. Riverside and San Bernardino *will* issue, along with Kern, and others.

    But if you're in L.A. or San Francisco, you're name had better be Stallone or Feinstein to get a permit.

    Us "little people" just aren't worth being able to defend themselves.

    ReplyDelete

Keep it civil, please....

Annnnd.....We Got Zip.....

 Total snow was about 6~8", but half o0f it melted as soon as it hit, and we never had more than 3" on the ground at any one time....