Are You Being Served?

I chatted John Hearne a bit today about the state of the art of the firearms training industry. I mentioned to him that I’m not teaching any classes right now (for a number of reasons) but even if I was, I’m not sure I’d be teaching the right things.

Let’s start with what we know, by the numbers, what the average armed citizen needs to do in order to come out on top in a lethal force encounter.

1. Stay in Condition Yellow when out and about.
2. Have a gun on them.
3. Be able to access it in a reasonable amount of time (let’s say two seconds or less).
4. Be able to shoot a 5×5 drill or something similar, on-demand.

Anything beyond that is nice, but not essential. We know all of that starts with a) keeping your head out of your phone when you leave your house and b) having a firearm on you wherever you can legally do so. Skip that part, and the draw time and accuracy requirements don’t really matter all that much.

So what do we teach in our classes? Grip, stance, sights trigger. Reloads. Malfunction drills. BlahBlahBlahBlahBlah. We teach the mechanical processes of achieving on-demand marksmanship because we can score progress via shots on the paper and shot timer and because it’s fun to send rounds downrange. What we can’t improve in that environment is the most essential skill of all, getting our students used to concealed carry.

Imagine what the fitness industry would look like if all it concentrated on was reps in the gym and not nutrition or lifestyle changes: “Gosh, Billy, I don’t understand, you should be able to make that weight. Here, let me hold your cigarette while you give it another go,” yet that is exactly what happens when students show up to a defensive pistol class in tactical gear and not their daily carry gear. We are teaching range skills, not lifestyle skills.

I’ve said it before; what we need the most right now is the firearms equivalent of a personal trainer, someone you’d check in with on a monthly or even quarterly basis. They’d ask you questions like,
“What problems are you running into carrying your gun with you everyday?”
“When’s the last time you trained? What did you work on?”
“How can I help you achieve success?”

And you’d work with those students to achieve your goal of living the armed lifestyle, much like a weight loss coach teaches you how to eat and how to work out.

However, in order to make this work, we need to make living a lifestyle our goal, and not a sub-second draw, and I’m not sure that trainers WANT to make the focus of what they teach. In their eyes, it’s up to the student to quit smoking, their job is confined only to what happens in the gym.