Another Day, Another Class

Well, classes. Two to be exact.

KR Training held two classes today: Defensive Pistol Skills 1, and Beyond the Basics: Handgun. What was different was the classes were held at the Austin Rifle Club instead of Karl’s A-Zone Range. Reason is simple: Karl doesn’t do live-fire there during deer hunting season so the rural neighbors can hunt without gunfire scaring all the deer out of the area.

Apart from the strong winds all day long, the classes went alright. I’m actually rather exhausted so I’m not all that motivated to type, but I’ll say a few things:

It’s great to see such diversity in students. Young people, old people, various ethnicities, various backgrounds. Guns aren’t just for old white rednecks, no matter what the stereotypes say. What made me especially happy was to see a few women attending these intermediate-level classes. For whatever reason (and I have my hypotheses), you see lots of women in beginner courses but so few in courses beyond that. I think it’s great to see anyone wanting to take their skills to a higher level, but it’s especially wonderful to see women wanting to become truly skilled shooters.

It’s good for people to come to these classes and learn their gear sucks. Any gun is fine when you’re under no pressure, shooting at your leisure, and nothing important is on the line. But if you’re betting on this gun to save your life someday? It’s good to know if it can actually run. It’s good to know what gear is bad, what gear is good. It’s good to learn how crappy those double-action/single-action guns are (I’m looking at you, Sig)… when you have that long, heavy, first trigger pull and how difficult it is to get a good first hit — especially when the first shot is the most important — well… it’s just good to learn all of this stuff under the pressure of a safe classroom environment than when it may really matter. I tell people that while we have investment, financially and emotionally, in our gear, just weigh the costs here: if it’s a range toy, whatever; but if this is your life, what’s your life worth? If your gear sucks, abandon it and seek better gear. It may take you a while to shop around, lots of buying and selling, lots of trying, lots of asking questions. Do whatever it takes, because at least for me, while I might have a little emotional attachment to my choice in guns, I have a HUGE emotional attachment to Wife and Kiddos. I want a gun that works right and works best, so I can keep those emotional attachments that matter most.

But the best part? Seeing people improve. At the beginning of BtB:H oh… we had to do some serious reworking of fundamental skills of trigger control and sight alignment — mostly trigger control. And while yes, everyone needs more practice, there’s no question there was substantial improvement by everyone in the class. I was pleased with what I saw.

Two biggest things to help? 1. Dry fire practice. 2. ball-and-dummy drill.

So, apart from being very wind-blown and weary, it was a good day. Everyone left with the same number of holes they came with. Looks like everyone learned something, and hopefully we’ll see these folks back again at future classes.