Helping others

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This past Sunday I had a great, sold out pistol class in Okeechobee. This class had a lot of new faces that I had never met before, and a few things really set in on me while I was teaching it…
 
The class had a good amount of beginners in it. For a few it was actually their first real training course, while some others were still working off of 15 to 30 year old government/law enforcement training (that probably had not been practiced in that time gap).
 
There was also a wide spectrum of gear, from unacceptable holsters that I had to immediately remove from the range for safety reasons before we even started, to Serpa’s and other subpar examples. There were also some very tuned up shooters in the course with tricked out Glocks and solid gear to run them with.
 
After spending some time working in the training industry at a national level (traveling throughout the year to teach, attending SHOT Show and NRAAM, training at national level events like OTOA, working for companies in the industry, etc.) I’ve seen the spectrum of students and instructors from the local levels to the widely known popular level.
 
One of the things that sticks out to me is how the level of student can change the more well known you get. It’s like a hierarchy, and the higher you are in popularity the more you can charge, the more you charge the more “serious” the students become, and so on.
 
At that level, “the industry” (everyone who considers themselves “in the know” about gear, weapons, training and tactics and falls into similar choices and beliefs) gets pretty harsh in their views of the average gun owner. If you are on social media, which seems to be where “the industry” actually lives, you will no doubt run into this harsh attitude.
 
Name calling and shaming for weapon and gear choices, making fun of people for being poor (“the poors” as they call them) and just a general negative attitude towards anyone who is not at least making a good attempt at being in the cool club is pretty much the norm.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I do get it. The gun world is full of absolute bullshit. The NRA, the glossy magazines and the TV shows all pump out garbage information about garbage guns and gear and the masses eat it up because they don’t know any better. In fact, they believe it is good information because all of those named sources are actually the most well funded and best looking sources out there. I mean, they’re on TV, right?
 
So, we have this general gun culture that is at best misguided and misinformed on a large scale. It is a problem. I am saying this after years of working in gun stores, working at public ranges, working for holster manufacturers and other companies in the industry as well as running my own training company for many years. (To the NRA, the magazines, the gun shows on TV, the manufacturers, you ARE the problem.)
 
Many of the people at my class this weekend would fall into those categories of dislike: less than optimal gun choices, a lack of fundamental skills like grip and trigger press, beliefs in myths about gunfighting and, especially when it came to gear and holsters, it was a serious struggle.
 
I even had one contraption calling itself a “belly band” that was basically an oversized Ace bandage with no velcro and a patch sewn into it to “hold” a gun. (If you make such a contraption and sell it to the public to carry guns around, you should be absolutely fucking ashamed of yourself, whoever you are.) It literally hit the top of my list as the worst holster ever seen with my own eyes.
 
To the guy’s credit, he immediately recognized that his rig was unsafe and told me it was not going to be suitable for the course, so he did recognize his poor choice just by being exposed to the introduction of the course in the morning.
 
It took some of the others a few hours of struggling with gear failures to get the idea that their choices were not only poor for training, but that such failures in a life or death situation on the street would be catastrophic.
 
I was patient. I was helpful. I kept the class safe. If something was unsafe, it was not permitted to be used. The failures that did happen, were well within the safety margin so I let them happen for their educational benefit. I didn’t attack anyone. I didn’t shame them.
 
I did my best to balance the class out and deliver the goods to everyone who showed up, no matter their skill level. People learned on Sunday, and when I asked the question at the end of the day, “Did you feel like I provided a safe and comfortable training environment for you today?” It was a quick and resounding “Yes!” that followed.
 
I ended up with this group for a few reasons. I am not established yet in Florida locally, so I am attracting new people into the fold by design and that is a good thing. Another reason is because the course was intentionally priced very affordably. My overhead is lower because I am a short drive away, and I want to build the type of local training culture that I had successfully built in Ohio for so many years.
 
I am intentionally declining more and more opportunities to travel and teach, opting to stay close to home for my family now. So, I end up with beginners, newbs, bad gear, and all that comes with them.
 
All I could think about at certain points throughout the day is how interesting it is that I have traveled full circle to come back to where I started: teaching average people how to be safe and effective with the guns they carry.
 
Average people. People who do not eat, sleep and breath training. People who work jobs, raise families, have hobbies, who do not live on social media talking about grip stippling, flashlights and triggers for the 57,000th time. I was very happy to see these people showing up for a course. I am happy to be of service.
 
I am happy to be of service because that is why I am here. To help people. I did not become a firearms instructor because I thought it was going to be super awesome, or because I want to be some famous instructor guy. I sure as hell don’t do it because it’ll make me rich, because it definitely will not. I started out doing it because I saw bad things happening and I wanted to fix it as much as I could.
 
I saw cavalier attitudes with little experience to back them up, macho personas based on purely bad information, and flashy bullshit based on just plain garbage (the days of plate carriers at “pistol” classes comes to mind).
 
I saw good people trying to be prepared to defend themselves and stay out of the cemetery or prison while doing it, and they were being fed information that would lead them directly to those places.
 
That is why I started this, and that is why I still do it.
 
As I make my long talked about and planned for partial exit from the industry, I look to maintain my ability to help the average people who are genuinely looking for help. I intend to teach a limited number of courses annually.
 
I have very little interest in making the cool club person feel “cooler” by having attended my course. I have very little interest in working with someone who is looking to shave that next 2/10ths of a second off of their Bill Drill time. Not only is it not my lane, but it’s not what I prioritize in fighting and self defense. Glory seekers will not find satisfaction in my classes.
 
That is where the most money is. But unfortunately, it’s not where the greatest need is. The greater good is served by welcoming more good people into the fold of the knowledgable and trained populace, and eliminating the dangerous misguided information that saturates the concealed carry population as a whole.
 
I have also found over the years that many professional students who think they are really tuned up are nothing more than great shooters. This is because there is still a shortage of classes about fighting, and a ton of classes about shooting.
 
At best you can work your way up to CQB courses, which are limited to working inside of structures and largely founded on team-based military or law enforcement doctrine. Solo foundational fighting knowledge is hard to pass on in a one or two day course, and even harder to find someone attempting to do it.
 
If my course is “open” enrollment without prior training requirements, you are welcome to make it your first training course. Those who are “tuned up” are also welcome to attend. You will see the foundational levels of how I prioritize what is important in fight training.
 
If my course lists having “developed fundamental skills and equipment choices” as a requirement to attend, then you should not show up unless you clarify with me directly that you are where you will need to be.
 
It was no shocker to me to get these students of course, because it was a no pre-requirement course. I am just happy that I have retained the ability and humility to be able to help these people raise their skills and equipment to be safer in their defense plans.
 
I will still run advanced level courses, as well as my favorite: the application-approved-only limited spot courses where I take 6 hand picked people out and we go hard on a specific skillset or procedure. There is no money in that, I do it because I love it.
 
I don’t have any tolerance or time for shithead people who think they know something, that they actually have no idea about, and they are unwilling to learn any different.
 
I have all the time in the world for the average person who doesn’t know any better, but they are genuinely out there trying to learn what they don’t know and improve their position.
 
As I go forward, progressively I want training to be something I do because I enjoy it and because I enjoy helping people, not something I do to strictly for money. It has a higher purpose than that for me.
 
 

 

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