My CCW Class: 12 hours of unmitigated horror.

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Today, 06:08 PM #1
Molon Labe
Senior Member

wrote:
"
...


... It was 12 hours of complete horror. I am STILL in shock.
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"

What did this instructor have to say when you brought these unsafe practices up ?

Sounds like he and the class continued the foolishness, even over your calling them on it. Surely you asked folks not to point the gun at you, or your wife ... right ?

Hook686
 
What did this instructor have to say when you brought these unsafe practices up ?

Sounds like he and the class continued the foolishness, even over your calling them on it. Surely you asked folks not to point the gun at you, or your wife ... right ?
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No, and I'm kicking myself in the ass right now. :banghead: :banghead: Seriously, as a responsible gun owner and defender of What's Right™, why did I put up with this?!?! I feel thoroughly embarrassed for not speaking up. :(
 
I guess things are just different there...

When I took my ccw class, myself and a buddy of mine were the only two students. During the classroom portion, no personal firearms were even allowed in the building. The only handling of pistols in the classroom occured with the instructor's guns, all of which he (of course) verified clear prior to setting them out on the table.

While the classroom material was entirely common sense, and the shooting portion beyond insanely easy, it was still a positive experience.

I'd also suggest that an anonymous letter is definitely in order. At the very least, the instructor should be personally verifying each weapon clear.
 
I'd've forgotten about the $100 and beat it out of there in a hurry! Surely there are other instructors available.
 
Interesting. I just read a book this afternoon called The Justice Cooperative where the main characters take a class that did exactly the same thing. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking ***? Glad to hear you made it out of there in one piece.
 
Sick. I would've walked out.

Definitely write an anonymous letter to their higher ups. At least they will be aware of the problem and may even have a 'mystery shopper' come in for an eval.

"Is everyone's gun unloaded". Yup, sure is. Can I point it at your head and pull the trigger now? :fire:
 
Wow! And to think I whined about my 8 hr. course being outdoors and I was cold. (It was morning time in March.) :(
At least I didn't have 100 guns pointing at me! :banghead:
Our instructor made us leave the weapons in the cars until time for the shooting portion of the test. There was no "playing" with the firearms. He also seemed to be very knowledgeable with safe handling of guns and seemed to have a true idea about the real world scenarios that may happen. If anyone in this area (Easley, SC) needs to get their cwp, I would recommend him highly. His name is Larry Smith. The site for his class is http://www.cwpclass.com/ . Very nice and knowledgeable guy. :)
 
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OMG!
Incompentance, unfortunaly I bet this happens more than you think.
I am glad you survived the class and picked up on all the things going wrong in there now your really prepared, you need to get yourself a t shirt that say I survived the ccw permit class 2005. :what:
 
Wow! If I made it through that entire class I would have probably been physically ill when I got home.

My ccw instructor was extremely safe. He used a blue dummy gun in the classroom and stated at one point that he probably couldn't even point that blue gun at a person. On the range he had eagle eyes. Sweeping someone with an unloaded weapon was a warning and the second time was ejection from the class. Sweeping someone with a loaded weapon was an automatic ejection. Only one person got a warning.
 
The safety instruction in my CCW class was excellent. Nevertheless, there were many novices, and I also learned never to sit in the front row.

We had one nice old man that made it through the class but failed on the range. He was just too forgetful of the safety rules. The instructors, after spending much time finding out that he was just too old of a dog to learn a new trick, had to send him off of the range.
 
You could wait long enough for him to have run at least one more class, then submit a written complaint anonymously. Be sure to use the standard tricks like handle the paper only while wearing surgical gloves, seal the envelope using a sponge and tap water, etc. Not that they would be so vindictive as to try to find out who complained, but why take the chance?

Yes, anonymous complaints often don't rate the same level of attention as signed ones, but if you send it to enough people/agencies who might have jurisdiction over CCW training (including your state legislators), someone may pay attention. And you can state in the letter that you are writing anonymously because he is an LEO and you fear retribution.

Don't mail the letters from your home town post office.

This suggests that perhaps the way my CCW class was conducted was better. The only guns in the classroom were the instructor's demo guns. That way, no problem with people not handling their guns safely, because their guns were at home. Even the live fire was done using range guns, not personal guns.
 
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No, and I'm kicking myself in the ass right now. Seriously, as a responsible gun owner and defender of What's Right™, why did I put up with this?!?! I feel thoroughly embarrassed for not speaking up.
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You still have a chance (and responsibility in my opinion) to do so. How are you going to feel if you do nothing and hear on the news that someone in his class got killed?

Did he ever cover any gun safety rules in the class?
 
Did he ever cover any gun safety rules in the class?
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Yea, he did the obligatory review of The Four Rules at the beginning of the class. And then he proceeded to wave his (unloaded) gun all over the place, and never checked the chamber when he picked it up.
 
Sounds like a show I saw on tv

I watched a show with a guy training a bunch of women in firearms use. The women were waving the guns around, pointing them at each other casually, and in general breaking all the rules, as was the totally incompetent instructor. I thought it was a terrible example to show millions of people. Never saw any other comments on it though. It was probably typical of classes taught by guys qualified by "experience". Some folks seem to think that teaching someone to shoot is the only purpose of a firearms class. :scrutiny:
 
You hit the nail on the head, Gunpacker.

It was obvious the instructor was well-versed in self-defense tactics. But he failed to stress the importance of safety when training.

God, was it scary. Almost all the women had semi-autos, and few had the strength to pull back the slide. (They should have had revolvers.) So to gain a mechanical advantage when trying to pull the slide back, they would stick their right index finger in the trigger guard and pull the slide back with the left hand. I saw this more times than I can count. Now if I can see this going on, why couldn't the instructor??
 
Your problem is that you piscked a class that was taught by a leo.Cops have the WORST safety record when it comes to gun handling.
 
I am in OH and have has my permit for a little over a year. The class I took was not an unsafe experience. I sorry yours was.

What was your instructors take on the "in plain sight" requirement for driving while CCW in OH?

Thanks and glad you survived without ventilation,

--usp_fan
 
Molon Labe; If you are going to make a formal complaint and an allegation of unsafe actions and incompetence, sign your name. Annonymous complaints are not taken seriously, mostly because they are very hard to investigate. At the most it will get a cursury look and then a dismissal.

If you don't want to sign your name and stand behind your word, forget about it and move on.

Sorry if that sounds harsh. Don't know a nicer way to say it.
 
Unless at the range, or doing a specific one-on-one exercise with a student that wishes some training on their particular gun, I do not allow student guns in the cl assroom.

I generally have several of my guns available to demonstrate different features and on each I ask a person or persons (that I know is knowledgable) to verify to me, them and the class that the weapon is unloaded. When we work, as I do, in my house, we need to define "down range" for a particular exercise.

When I am demonstrating something I will normally use a full stream, unloaded .....squirt gun :)
 
Molon Labe; If you are going to make a formal complaint and an allegation of unsafe actions and incompetence, sign your name. Annonymous complaints are not taken seriously, mostly because they are very hard to investigate. At the most it will get a cursury look and then a dismissal.

If you don't want to sign your name and stand behind your word, forget about it and move on.

Sorry if that sounds harsh. Don't know a nicer way to say it.
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First of all, I would never provide my RL name in a public forum. Secondly, I do not care if you take me seriously or not. My point in the OP was not to make a complaint; my point was to give advice based on real life experience. Did you see the list (#1, #2, #3) at the bottom of my OP? Well there's my advice...
 
Molon Labe: Good point, there are guns lying all over at gun shows.

However, the "always point your barrel downrange" is a club rule. I always thought it was a good one. In any case, I agreed to abide by the rules of the range when I became a member.
 
When I took my CCW class my instructor personally verified each weapon was unloaded, and we also checked each other's guns as well.

Whenever the instructor was performing a demo that involved handling the weapon he asked the class to authenticate that is was indeed unloaded (after instructing on how to properly do so, of course.)
 
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