Student Account of 7/12/20 Basic Pistol class

(GunDiva note: this was written by a student in our Basic Pistol class. I've been doing this long enough to know that I'll get some hate about her wanting a .22 for self-defense. A .22 that she can shoot well and confidently is better than no gun at all. My first carry gun was a Beretta Bobcat in .25 cal; as I got more confident, I moved up in caliber. If you can't say something nice in the comments, don't say anything at all. We're about welcoming and empowering students of all levels, not scaring them off.)

So there I was in February 2020, minding my own business, letting the cobwebs grow on my Glock 45 9 mm. I’d had a conceal carry permit in 2014, never used it and stopped going to the gun range to shoot. This is what GunDiva refers to as a “perishable skill.” Oh, it perished all right. If a thief had broken into my home in the last six years, I would have grabbed my Glock and thrown it carefully at his head before begging for my life.

This is not the life I aspire to.

Then the so-called pandemic hit. Then the shutdown of entire states happened, along with businesses closing, people losing jobs, losing homes, losing money. This tends to make humans a tiny bit irritable. People started wearing masks everywhere. I couldn’t tell if they were smiling or getting ready to bite me. Riots happened. People were killed. Police politely suggested we might want to know how to defend ourselves.

So, I visited Rocky Mountain Shooters Supply and traded my Glock for a Smith and Wesson: M&P 9 Shield EZ (I had to go look that up just now). And since I didn’t want to protect myself by throwing my M&P at a burglar’s head, I signed up for Double Tap’s Basic Handgun tactics class.

                                                                                                                                   

There were 11 of us in a room all day learning basic handgun tactics. What could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing actually, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t prepared for an errant bullet or blood spatter by lunch. Before going to class I inventoried what gun paraphernalia I actually owned: holster, head phones, a couple of magazines, bullets, shell casings (???), 2 different gun cleaning sets which were also gathering dust.

I sat up front in class as we went over gun safety, the NRA golden rules and watched a video of a cop shooting himself in the foot. (Ha! errant bullet!). We learned the difference between revolver and single action and double action semi-automatics (cylinder vs. magazine), we went over ammunition (powder charge, primer, bullet, case) and how 9mm ammo is hard to get right now due to panic buying. I imagined buying a reloader and setting up my backyard studio shed as a reloading operation. I could pass pleasant afternoons listening to gun podcasts and making bullets. There are worse ways to spend your day. (“Are there though?” asked a friend).

I learned the difference between bullets that penetrate and those that expand. (Full metal jacket vs. hollow point). I scribbled a note to myself: build my own gun. Reader, I’m nothing if not ambitious. I learned that while I own a holster, a belly band for conceal carry might be more appropriate for me. And DON’T GET AN ANKLE HOLSTER! It’s the slowest, worst draw. We discussed the OODA Loop when responding to a threat. I know you know all about that. Who doesn’t know about the OODA Loop? (“Like loop the loop what airplanes do?” asked a friend. No. Not like that.)

It was disheartening to discover there are more than 20,000 laws relating to firearms. If you can’t prove the attacker had ability, opportunity and intent to harm you, you could end up in jail for defending yourself. I imagined myself in the prison crafts center, chatting with other felons about how we had shot someone in self-defense and ended up sharing a cell with an inmate named Bertha. We’d rail against the system, exchange lawyer’s names, I’d tell them about my backyard reloading operation and then we’d go stand in line for our institutional dinner. If I spent as much time speaking to my neighbors as I do practicing imaginary conversations in prison craft centers, I’d have more friends. Obviously.

A simulator was used in the afternoon. These are video simulations that we could participate in and practice how we’d react in a real time scenario. The first one involved a bank robbery where the criminal shot the teller in the head. (Ha! Blood spatter!) Classmates successfully shot the bad guys which was comforting. And the last exercise of the day was to shoot different guns at the gun range. I discovered that I loved the .22 I shot and was good at it and hated the larger guns, including the revolver. I plan on using my M&P for home defense and buying a .22 for conceal carry. And to go to the gun range faithfully, several times a month.

And that, dear reader, is how a woman and her unused Glock joined the shooting community in Colorado. You might be too young to remember this, but there once was a time when nobody used the word “pandemic” and masks were only used by surgeons in hospitals.

I know. Right?

(Deborah Coyote is a local psychotherapist who lives with her rescue dog and her albino parakeet who has an excellent vocabulary. Her parakeet’s favorite mimicked phrase is: “Oooops! Sorry!” ergo the need to take gun safety training.)

Reflections on Guns099

After a friend experienced a scare at her home, she asked me to put together gun class for a few of her friends. Well, an informal class for a few of her friends turned into something much more and I ended up scheduling three classes.

My goal (and my friend's goal) was to make the ladies who attended far more comfortable with the idea of guns, and to learn to use them safely. I went to work putting together a curriculum that would put the students at ease and answer some of the questions I've heard over and over. I thought back to questions and concerns I'd heard during other classes and started with very basic knowledge: things that oftentimes instructors - even instructors who teach at what they think is the very basic level - assume that their students already know. This assumption of knowledge creates fear or frustration for students who have never seen, or handled, a gun in real life. My primary goal became to give these ladies that information so that they would feel comfortable and confident in attending a basic pistol course.

As a general rule, I'm not really a fan of segregating classes, but I also know that for a lot of women it can be intimidating to walk into a class of men, especially if they already feel intimidated by the course material. I thought back to everything I'd learned during my shooting career and tried to boil it down to exactly what these women would need to know.

My outline looked something like this:

• animation of a semi-auto pistol (We want to know *why* something works. Sometimes, explaining it brings clarity, but seeing how it works in a safe manner - with a cut-away animation - usually explains things better than I can with words.)
• auto vs. semi-auto (I found this important because the media can't seem to get it right. If I had the opportunity to straighten out a few misconceptions, by God, I was going to take it.)
• pistol vs. revolver
• long guns (single shot, bolt, semi-auto)
• 4 rules of gun safety (We discussed, in depth, the why behind each rule and the reasons for the redundancy in the rules. I also explained that they would run into instructors who use different verbiage for the rules, but like the Golden Rule, the basis is the same.)
• gun store etiquette
• basic range commands
• how to clear a gun (I tried to drill it into the students that *every* time they pick up or receive a gun, they needed to clear it for themselves.)
• how to pass or receive a gun (and then clear it - "trust, but verify")
• how to load a magazine (and the differences between a single stack and a double stack magazine)
• how to load/unload a gun, using snap caps
• basic grip
• basic stance
• basic trigger control

As you can see, what the outline contains are things that we, as shooters, take for granted, but at one some point we had to learn all of this. In fact, I found out from several women who had been "taught" to shoot by friends or family members that they didn't even learn these basics.

I used judge the fuck out of anyone who handed me a gun without clearing it first. 

I did. 

However, after teaching this class I realized that's a skill I picked up while working at the gun shop, it was never anything that was taught to me. That changed my attitude. If someone hands me a gun without clearing it, that gives me the opportunity to teach them how to do it safely. That said, if I teach someone to clear a gun before handing it to me and they get defensive or refuse to do it, that's someone I don't need to shoot with.

I believe in teaching in "baby steps" - I broke our hands-on portion down to small tasks that we spent time conquering before we added anything new. We started with clearing a gun, passing it, receiving it, and clearing it again. Once everyone was comfortable with that, we added loading magazines with snap-caps, then loading and unloading the gun using the same four steps we used to clear it (safety - magazine - chamber - safety). When the students were comfortable with that, we added in grip, stance, and trigger control.

By the time we went out to the range, we'd put it all together. I added range time simply so they could see how the steps fit together; they only shot a total of ten rounds - enough to give them some confidence, but not so much to fatigue them.

I considered the classes a success based on the smiles and confidence the women portrayed. Several of the women went on to take a basic pistol class and thanked me for what they learned in Guns099.

I believe Guns099 is an important course for *any* shooter, not just new women shooters. Instructors, maybe consider adding some of these basic steps into classes that you teach. You may find that your students respond positively.

Why A "Women's Only" Class?

That was my question when the GunDiva asked me to assist her in teaching a Women's Only class.  All my classes had been with guys, with sometimes a woman or two sprinkled in.  Hence, my shooting philosophy evolved into: "Chances are, if I'm ever in a real self-defense situation, I'll be up against a guy. So it's a good idea to be shooting with guys." 

For example: If you look closely,  maybe you can see the tip of my boot about halfway down this line of guys.  We're blasting away in a CQB - Close Quarters Battle - scenario.  For the record, there is another woman at the end of  this line, the instructor's wife.  (I  have a strongly held belief about shooting with husbands and boyfriends, and it's DON'T - but that's a different blog post.)

Back to the Women's Only class - I, of course, said Yes to the class, because it was the GunDiva asking - a great opportunity for me to learn something, too.

So off I went to the first class with my preconceived notions about "Women's Only" classes firmly intact - e.g. Are we catering to the idea that women can't hold their own in a class with guys?  Is it true that women are intimidated by men, and therefore we're going to "coddle" them into being good shooters?

Three classes later, this is what I observed:  Yes, it is true that some women, especially those who are new to shooting, don't want to start out shooting with men.  But it's not because they are intimidated by men.  It's because they know these three things:

1.Women who sign up for a shooting class know they don't know everything about shooting.

Please read Robbie's "Where Are the Lady Hunters" post from September 17, 2018, paragraph 4.  To paraphrase - Women are better "students of shooting" than men. (I have heard this many times from other male instructors.)  They keep an open mind.and are open to suggestions.  Men can fall prey to the idea that they already know everything about shooting.

The women in the Women's Only classes did not interrupt the instructor to highlight something they knew that the rest of the class was just learning. They did not ask questions"above the level of the class" to prove how much they knew, or thought they knew,  which can  be a disservice to the other students, especially if the instructor gets sidetracked without finishing up the original idea.

The women in all three classes cooperated with the instructor, letting her be their guide, helping to create a very positive learning environment and a very positive experience.

2. The women knew they were in the class to learn.  They were not there to compete with each other.  They weren't there to prove anything, except perhaps to themselves.   

3.  Many of them knew what it was like to go shooting with their husband or boyfriend.  And at best, they shot a gun and learned a little, enough to whet their appetite for more knowledge.  At worst, a woman shooting with her husband or boyfriend will have a miserable experience and learn nothing, because husbands and boyfriends are rarely qualified shooting instructors, very , extremely  rarely.  One exception is the husband of the woman you can't see at the end of the line in the photo at the beginning of this post.  Her highly qualified shooting instructor husband treated her like everyone else.  She held her own, kicked butt for two days, and did a great job of shooting.

One of the things that most impressed me about all the women who came out to take the Women's Only class, was that they came out to take the class.  They found a qualified instructor, paid their money, and spent the time to learn more about shooting.  And all of them left the class wanting to learn more - with good reason:

The class was AWESOME!

All I can say is, I've been shooting for more than a decade, and I wish I'd had this class before I ever picked up a gun.  What I learned from the class is that what intimidates women about guns are the mechanics, the literal, physical mechanics of the guns, not other shooters who may or may not be men.  Guns are powerful tools, "power tools," and most women don't spend their lives working with power tools.

So GunDiva broke it all down for us, starting with a cutaway animation on "How Guns Work" - everyone loved it.  You could see the "lightbulbs" going on all around the table.  I've never had another instructor understand how important that one simple bit of teaching could be.  GunDiva also explained the different kinds of guns and had pictures - and through it all, she was giving us the language of guns, the language of shooters in the simplest of terms, stuff it took me far too long to sort through, because in most "Beginning Classes" this is all presumed knowledge.  The same with "What is a Safe Direction In a Gun Shop?"   That generated a lot of great questions, and GunDiva had well-formed answers that increased the confidence of each one of the beginning shooters.  She made them feel safer about handling guns.  More than that, she actually made them safer gun handlers.

During the hands-on part of the class, the students had the opportunity to load magazines and rack the slides on the pistols we were using.  These can be initially awkward and/or difficult moves.  But we took the time to get it right.  Took the time for the students to feel comfortable with those mechanical manipulations of the weapons, before we went out to the range. 

And even though this wasn't a marksmanship class, everyone shot pretty darn well, and a few were excellent!

In truth, I know men who aren't mechanical, don't work with tools, and don't have a clue how a gun works.  They probably need their own class, too.  Maybe a "'Men Who Can't Run A Power Tool' Only Class."  And I can't help but wonder:  Will they be intimidated by women shooters?

Oh, hell, yeah!

A New Project

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine from Defensive Pistol contacted me about his tactical handgun course.  He's been teaching basic pistol for a couple of years now, and has been holding his tactical class about once a quarter.  But demand for his tactical class has gone up and he's looking to add instructors, so he contacted me.

I couldn't answer him fast enough!  Hell yes, I will help him out and teach his tactical classes. We get to work on:

• draws
• point shooting
• flash site pictures
• reloads (administrative, tactical, and one-handed)
• and outage drills

Essentially, he told me, anything that we've done at a Defensive Pistol match we'll be covering in class.

I'll be co-teaching his class first, in a couple of weeks, before I branch out on my own.  Since it's a class of his own design, I want to make sure I'm teaching it the way he wants it taught, so there will be lots of note-taking on my part.  Since I am a teacher in real life, I know how it feels to turn your "baby" over to another teacher.  Because of that, I'll be diligent in making sure the class is taught the way it's designed.

I love doing new things and I think this teaching gig will be right up my alley!