I'm an Appleseed Shoot Boss and State Coordinator here in Oklahoma... been with the program since '09. All the instructors I know are good dudes. However, I have seen some (particularly the young dudes) cop an attitude. Here's the deal... we are an all volunteer organization. Our instructors are all recruited from our student pool. If you shoot Expert on the AQT and come to at least 2 Appleseeds, you are qualified to be an Instructor in Training and start working your way up the ranks by proving you can effectively teach the material.
So occasionally you get a young pup who hasn't had any training experience and hasn't really been exposed to other styles of shooting who has some skill and comes out and shoots Expert. Naturally getting that patch gives him a little bit of ego boost. Getting invited to be an instructor does too. So you have a guy who's only exposure to training is our method of teaching sling-supported positional shooting, who gets a little excited about being an Expert Rifleman and marksmanship instructor, and may have a notion that our way is the only way to shoot a rifle, and that anybody who does anything different is wrong. Though we don't really teach this, he may also have inflated notions of how effective he would be in a gunfight or whatnot with these techniques.
We try to make sure all our guys check their egos and put a damper on these kind of attitudes on the part of our guys, but the nature of a volunteer org. is that sometimes they slip through.
"This motto may adorn their tombs
(Let tyrants come and view):
We rather seek these silent rooms
Than live as slaves to you."
Lemuel Haynes, 1775
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