MillennialGunslinger
Member
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2017
- Messages
- 97
Hi to everyone!
I just signed up here since I was looking for somewhere to post something I just wrote, and this seemed like among the better firearm communities.
So brief context first. I bet that most of the people on this forum have taken more friends and family out to a day at the gun range than they can be bothered to remember. Same here. Personally, I like giving people a 1 or 2 hour course prior to going to the range where I show them all the basics. It's like skydiving. The prior instruction makes it feel like you're going to do something hard, technical and special. If you just hand them a Glock and say "shoot", they'll treat the activity as mundane as you do and remember it as such. So I like going into detail to give them a worthy experience.
The other day however, a family of three (gun owners but infrequent, inexperienced shooters) wanted to take their relatives, another family of three (which were visiting from a gun free country) to shoot, and asked me to come as their gut-nut friend. Personally, I hate taking more than two new people to the range. It gets way too hectic, especially if there are other shooters which don't care for safety or order. Anyway, since they were not people I knew, it was a big group and I was just a plus one, I didn't mention any pretraining and we headed straight to the range. The end result was that one of the people visiting got an extremely bad, stitch-worthy case of slide bite (the worst i've seen) while I was elsewhere paying attention to their son. I wish I had a picture to show. It was obviously using a revolver grip on a semi-automatic, and even then it was really bad.
This motivated me to finally write a little booklet for my own use to consult before I take new people to the range. Not so much to read, as to be just a detailed structure to follow while teaching someone. Right now my biggest issue is that I try to explain 3 or 4 things at the same time so I don't forget anything, and I imagine it can be confusing to hear. This way I know that if I just follow the book I'll touch all the topics I want to touch. There didn't seem to be any short booklet which touched all the topics quickly, could be reviewed in an hour, and was made precisely for taking new shooters to the range, so I wrote my own. I wrote it knowing I'd post it online so it's pretty high quality. I'd be happy to hear that it's useful to others, since it was a lot of effort put in just to use it myself.
Just to make it clear, it isn't for newbie to read and call it a day. It's basically for the experienced gun owner print out, put on the table and explain the points out loud and using the book as a structure to follow and backup for what they don't remember on the fly (like the names or number of firearm malfunctions). Also, some illustrations are just plain easier to understand on paper, like explaining how to use gun sights. It's really made for someone who is familiar with more than the basics, but hasn't studied it enough to know it by hard or all the technical terms. It probably is also great as a quick guide for avid hobbyists to brush up their skills from time to time.
So with no further ado, here's a link to the pdf:
Firearms 101 - Quick Guide for New Shooters
Let me know what you guys think. I'll probably get it professionally printed and bound for my own use, so any suggestions before that are very welcome.
I just signed up here since I was looking for somewhere to post something I just wrote, and this seemed like among the better firearm communities.
So brief context first. I bet that most of the people on this forum have taken more friends and family out to a day at the gun range than they can be bothered to remember. Same here. Personally, I like giving people a 1 or 2 hour course prior to going to the range where I show them all the basics. It's like skydiving. The prior instruction makes it feel like you're going to do something hard, technical and special. If you just hand them a Glock and say "shoot", they'll treat the activity as mundane as you do and remember it as such. So I like going into detail to give them a worthy experience.
The other day however, a family of three (gun owners but infrequent, inexperienced shooters) wanted to take their relatives, another family of three (which were visiting from a gun free country) to shoot, and asked me to come as their gut-nut friend. Personally, I hate taking more than two new people to the range. It gets way too hectic, especially if there are other shooters which don't care for safety or order. Anyway, since they were not people I knew, it was a big group and I was just a plus one, I didn't mention any pretraining and we headed straight to the range. The end result was that one of the people visiting got an extremely bad, stitch-worthy case of slide bite (the worst i've seen) while I was elsewhere paying attention to their son. I wish I had a picture to show. It was obviously using a revolver grip on a semi-automatic, and even then it was really bad.
This motivated me to finally write a little booklet for my own use to consult before I take new people to the range. Not so much to read, as to be just a detailed structure to follow while teaching someone. Right now my biggest issue is that I try to explain 3 or 4 things at the same time so I don't forget anything, and I imagine it can be confusing to hear. This way I know that if I just follow the book I'll touch all the topics I want to touch. There didn't seem to be any short booklet which touched all the topics quickly, could be reviewed in an hour, and was made precisely for taking new shooters to the range, so I wrote my own. I wrote it knowing I'd post it online so it's pretty high quality. I'd be happy to hear that it's useful to others, since it was a lot of effort put in just to use it myself.
Just to make it clear, it isn't for newbie to read and call it a day. It's basically for the experienced gun owner print out, put on the table and explain the points out loud and using the book as a structure to follow and backup for what they don't remember on the fly (like the names or number of firearm malfunctions). Also, some illustrations are just plain easier to understand on paper, like explaining how to use gun sights. It's really made for someone who is familiar with more than the basics, but hasn't studied it enough to know it by hard or all the technical terms. It probably is also great as a quick guide for avid hobbyists to brush up their skills from time to time.
So with no further ado, here's a link to the pdf:
Firearms 101 - Quick Guide for New Shooters
Let me know what you guys think. I'll probably get it professionally printed and bound for my own use, so any suggestions before that are very welcome.
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