Bob Mayne of the Handgun World Podcast:
There seems to be a lot of people who want to be instructors, but not enough who want to take classes. So, if you want to be a firearms instructor I think you will like this episode…
Listen to episode at Handgun World
Instructy stuff starts around 19:30 and covers what we should know in order to teach different levels of students as well as business & marketing.
Matthew Schafer of Schafer’s Self-Defense Corner:
When I work with a class that has women in it, or a class of kids, I take the time to give this speech:
“I want everyone to realize that it is very important to follow the rules that society has set down for us. They keep us safe and make sure that people don’t harm us or take things from us. However, there are certain times when it is ok to break the rules. Any time someone is trying to hurt you or take you someone by force it is ok to break AS MANY RULES AS YOU NEED TO in order to stop them. If that happens, you have permission to break the rules. You have permission to yell as loud as you can, swear, bite, punch, kick, and hit as much as you want. You have permission to hit them in the groin, poke them in the eye, and hit them in the throat…
Continue reading at Schafer’s Self-Defense Corner…
h/t Phil Wong of Gator Farm Tactical
Randy King of KPC Self Defense & Randy King Live and Erik Kondo of Conflict Research Group International:
If you’re not a good enough instructor to bring students in and retain them on your merits, if you have to scare the hell out of them to make them stay out of fear that when they leave your gym they will be attacked by random ninjas and vigilantes and rapists all the time… stop teaching! Just stop – you’re not doing anybody any favors. If you need to keep people in by making sure they leave terrified, or you bring them in by making them terrified…
I’ve been saying / writing this for some time now, but I think the topic deserves its own post:
It is extremely critical that you train with different instructors.
Trainers all have different personal / professional experience, preferences, physical capabilities, region, and philosophies. This directly impacts what they teach, how to teach it, and most importantly, what they don’t teach.
For example…
Yup. That goes at least as much for instructors as students who don’t teach.
Lots of new stuff in the Resources area. In addition to Books & DVDs, we’ve added sections for:
Instructor Development Course Directory
You can also find these under the Resources menu up top.
Note: as with everything else on this site, listing does not necessarily imply endorsement or agreement.
John Farnam of Defense Training International:
See John Farnam’s full 40-minute lecture on Range Conduct & Firearms Safety in the following two videos, and get his unique perspective on safe gun-handling and maintaining a realistic training environment.
These videos are part of the DTI Operator series.
IDJ member Dann Sternsher of G4 Personal Safety writes:
An old classic on instructional design for adult learners from back in my grad school days of instructional design is available online… it does a great job of overviewing many classic learning theories and is surprisingly still relevant in discussing adult learning today… a good read for instructors… and an easy read for academic-type material… it’s also a reminder that much of what I see firearms instructors “discovering” in terms of best practices for instruction and training is already known and just being applied to this particular field…
Click here to read The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (PDF)
Thanks Dann!
Andrew Tuohy of Vuurwapen Blog:
I have been conducting experiments relating to firearms for a number of years, some of them quite mundane and others rather unorthodox. Many of the unorthodox experiments have never come to light, either because nothing of value was learned, or because I had decided to compile their results over a long period of time before releasing the data.
One series of tests which falls into the latter category relates to what, exactly, makes guns blow up. We’ve all seen photos of exploded firearms and bloodied hands or faces that result from a “kaboom,” or catastrophic failure of a firearm or the ammunition it fires. As a result, a lot of people exercise an overabundance of caution relating to any ammunition that “looks funny” to them – even going so far as to discard cases with tiny dents in them, for fear of causing an explosion.
While it’s always a good idea to err on the side of caution when working with items that contain 1,000 times more pressure than a car tire, it’s also a good idea to have an understanding of what can really cause a catastrophic failure. And my experimentation has shown to me that the common knowledge relating to this topic is entirely wrong…
This is a clickbaity sentence, but the results seriously surprised me. Amazing what happens when you actually test things.