There are different skillsets and knowledgebases that involve firearms. Given that firearms knowledge and skill can range anywhere from benchrest shooting with black powder rifles all the way up to the most hairy crap-your-pants combat situation you can imagine and everything in between, it becomes incredibly important for you as a training consumer to understand where the holes in your game are and how to go about addressing the holes in your game.
If, for instance, your primary goal is learning what you need to be competent as a citizen who carries concealed on a daily basis, a course from Todd Jarrett about how to tackle IDPA stages is not going to be what you're looking for. It would be equally inappropriate to go to a team-intensive CQB course where you have to run around in a stack of dudes taking down rooms. While you can learn some valuable lessons in either course, much of it would be useless for your stated purpose. Some of it could be downright dangerous. If you try to clear a room in real life like you would run an IPSC stage, you will D-I-E. Similarly, if you try to clear a room by yourself like you would do it when there are five other guys behind you with body armor and machine guns, you will D-I-E.
So if your goal is learning what you need for daily concealed carry and handling a situation in your daily life, who do you train with? There are a number of good options. Ken Hackathorn puts on a very practical pistol course with a LOT of good tips on mindset, preparation, and the realities of surviving the fight AND the aftermath of the fight. I would highly recommend training with him. Larry Vickers also puts on an excellent handgun course with many of the same high points. The 5 day Tactical Pistol I and II courses at the U.S. Training Center (formerly Blackwater USA) are great, in my opinion, for teaching you how to competently handle the firearm and relating the central themes that will be important to you. While several of the instructors come from Tier 1 military units, they are also well versed in the realities on the street for the average LEO and ordinary joe here in the states. While I haven't yet trained with them personally, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Paul Howe or Tiger Swan for similar courses.
Once you've had a sufficient base level of training on the practical realities of using a handgun for serious social purposes, it would be beneficial to spend some time focused on skills courses. In other words, courses aimed at helping you learn to use the handgun in as efficient a manner as possible. This is where competition shooters can really teach you useful stuff. They can teach you how to push past your limits, how to learn to balance the desire for speed and the requirement for accuracy (because misses are unacceptable in real gunfights), and how to make every manipulation as efficient as possible. The caveat is that you have to keep your practically oriented thinking cap on so that you look at what you're being taught through the prism of being able to operate in a real world gunfight. As an example, some of the guys with competition/square range experience teach using stutter steps right before you break a shot to give you a more steady shooting platform when shooting on the move. This technique works great when you can plan where your feet are going and when you can take a shot...which is almost never when the intended target is moving and shooting back.
The Tier 1 military units in the US have at some point brought in competition shooters to teach them how to be more efficient with their main personal weapon systems. They've done this because becoming more efficient with a handgun or an AR carbine could mean the difference between neutralizing a threat and dead teammates. They do NOT bring in the competition guys to learn gunfighting A to Z, but to build their skills in being able to put bullets into a target as efficiently as possible. While the world of competition shooting and of gunfighting are very different in many ways, when it comes down to actually taking the shot the same things are important in both arenas....trigger control, an acceptable sighting reference, and acceptable hits on the intended target.
...so how do you go about selecting the appropriate people to train with?
1. Look at their background –– Look at what they've done in their past as a clue for what skillsets they may have mastered well enough to be able to teach you. Unfortunately this step isn't as simple as it seems because there are a number of people who inflate their backgrounds to make themselves more impressive. As an example, a relatively well known instructor was recently caught fibbing about his membership in the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors. The best way to tell who the real deal is and who is padding their resume is to do your homework.
2. Look at their course reviews –– paying particular attention to the reviews from students who either A. are involved in some sort of armed profession at a high level or B. who have trained with a number of different training outfits/instructors and as such have a reasonable ability to contrast and compare. A number of reviews written up on the internet are written up by people who have VERY limited experience, and as such their reviews aren't very helpful much of the time. They may believe it was fantastic instruction...but they really don't know enough to know if it was good, exceptional, or goofy as hell. It's sometimes akin to asking a starving man to critique a meal, or asking Stevie Wonder to judge a beauty contest. That doesn't mean that relatively inexperienced students can't write a good review...I've seen some GREAT reviews by people writing about their first course....but I've also seen a lot of fanboy style reviews that weren't helpful.
I mention course reviews for a simple reason: An instructor's background doesn't mean he knows how to teach. I've met combat hardened individuals who have survived some of the hairiest shit imaginable and performed above and beyond expectations in combat situations that couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag. Being a badass is one thing, but it doesn't help your students any if you can't teach them the skills you know. Being able to teach is a skill unto itself. By reading the reviews and looking for cues like how the instructor built the level of difficulty of the course and how he structured the drills and whether or not measured improvement was achieved, you'll be able to get a decent read on what his abilities as an instructor are. Note the repeated use of the word "measured" here. Meaning that the students were put through some sort of objective standard where an increase in performance was quantified. This is a much different phenomenon than the student simply "feeling" that they did better.
3. Beware of goofy shit –– One of the benefits of looking at course reviews from experienced students and from people who are involved in an armed profession at a high level is that they'll be able to warn you about goofy shit...techniques, practices, or concepts that have serious flaws. These usually happen because instructors wander out of their lane, teaching things that they aren't really qualified to teach or attempting to innovate and be clever just for the sake of being different or having something named after them. Believe it or not, it happens. While there are some legitimate differences in opinion out there, there are also some objectively stupid ideas out there being pushed by some people. An example would be accuracy....if an instructor puts his students 5 yards away from three 24" x 24" steel targets and has them run El Presidente drills where any hit on steel is a good hit...well...that's some seriously goofy shit. (Been there, done that) A two foot A zone at 5 yards is a damn poor accuracy standard that requires absolutely no control from the student. If you shoot like that in a gun game you'll end up penalized for misses or DQed for hitting a no shoot. In real life you could well end up killing an innocent and spending a number of years sexually servicing your cellmate.
4. Find good sources of information and ask questions –– if you want to know how to sort information about what works and doesn't in competition, find a forum where you can find people with vetted backgrounds who know their stuff about competition shooting. If you want to know how to sort information about what works and doesn't in combat, find a forum where you can find people with vetted backgrounds who know their stuff about combat. The right guidance from people who have more experience than you can make all the difference.
It's possible for someone to have survived a gunfight and have not even the tiniest clue of what they are doing. Being shot or shot at doesn't result in a Highlander moment where you learn the secrets of the universe. What gunfight experience and significant research about the ins and outs of real fights does provide is a realistic grounding so that stuff that looks good on the range, but is in reality goofy as hell in the real thing, doesn't make it into the curriculum.
I've learned valuable stuff from people who have been through hellacious fights, and stuff from people who have never been on the wrong end of a muzzle before.
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Originally Posted by rob_s
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