Training for HD overrated?

[shephard19]

It seems that some members here seem to imply that if you have no formal training then you are not a very effective home defender, but how much does this training come into play into a realistic HD scenario? It would seem me that if these conditions are met the average man who is determined to protect or die for his family or merely to protect himself will do as good as an individual can reasonably be expected to:

1. Have a way of recognizing if there is an intruder,which could be as simple as a dog who is inclined to bark.

2. Have quick access to a firearm

3. Know how the firearm functions(at the vast majority of HD ranges you don't need to be good at aiming,indeed at most such ranges pointing would suffice)

4. Know the legal situation where they live

5. Know where your loved ones are and where you would prefer to make a stand.


Most hd scenarios to me seem to hinge upon whether the home owner can recognize the threat quicky enough and whether they have a firearm with them.

 

[Kindrox]

If there is one thing I have learned on the S&T forum, is that if you arn't practicing a couple times a month, and don't have a powerful rifle/shotgun with ammo that penetrates deeply, you simply arn't going to make it in a HD situation. I mean, read that blog that cronicles SD shootings, the only people making it out alive in those situations are the folks with extensive, recent training and powerful, taticool weapons which are generally worn at all times. Nobody else!

In reality what you are saying is true for 99.9% of the stories I see.

 

[chevyforlife21]

is it realy necessary to have training? how often does someone have a thief break in while their home especially, most thieves are scared of home owners and wont break in unless no one is home and if you show yourself will run,unless of course they are home invaders. but unless you live in a bad area i wouldn't be to concerned.

 

[Fred Fuller]

As with so many very general questions, the answer pretty much starts with "It depends... ."

I've reported on at least one instance here where it was apparent that a home defender successfully resisted a home invader with the first live round she ever fired from a firearm in her life.

But is that the best way to go about it? Would you want to do it that way, given any alternative? Would you want to put your wife, sister, girlfriend, mom or grandmother through that experience?

You need not only formal training, but a license and board certification as well before you can practice, oh, something like brain surgery. Not so to defend yourself in your home.

You have to take a test and demonstrate your ability to perform in order to get a drivers license. Not so to defend your family and your home.

So what is approximately the commensurate level of RESPONSIBILITY involved with home defense with a firearm? Brain surgery? Or driving? How are you going to find out what you need to know to be effective at self defense with a firearm? How will you manage not to shoot someone in your own family, or some other innocent you mistake for an intruder?

If it's so easy, why do people with guns and a serious case of fear butcher family members or other innocents on a fairly regular basis?

If it's so easy, how come people who thought they were doing the right thing wind up in jail convicted of manslaughter- or murder- from time to time?

Are those consequences worth risking just because someone wants to avoid having to put up with some sort of training, when it's purely voluntary anyway? Did you learn to shoot with no supervision, no assistance, no 'old man*' at your shoulder? Did you learn to hunt with no one along to help and guide you?

It isn't as if anyone here has ever called for defensive training to be MANDATORY (at least that I know of), for heaven's sake. But isn't there some sort of reasonable middle ground available to us that says it's OK to look to someone with more experience and - gasp - even training, to help you learn something difficult and dangerous, like gunfighting?

Why is there so much resistance to the basic idea that training is a good idea, here and elsewhere?

lpl

* http://www.amazon.com/Old-Man-Boy-Robert-Ruark/dp/0805002391

 

[coloradokevin]

Actually, for the home defense environment, I don't believe it is probably necessary to have much training beyond that which is required to mechanically operate the weapon under stress, and that which is required to put a center of mass shot on a target at less than 7 yards. (NOTE: This might take more skills/training than you would be inclined to think, given how most folks react under the stress of life and death... That said, we sure aren't talking about the same skill set that you would need to have if you were a breaching a door with a SWAT team).

I could be accused of being one of those folks who advocates training, but that does not mean that I believe you need to be a SWAT operator to handle your average home defense situation. Obviously I'd rather be a well-trained shooter than a poorly trained one, but the practical knowledge that is required for you to essentially ambush a bad guy who forces his way into your bedroom is not necessarily great.

But, despite these opinions, I still feel that a trained shooter is a much more confident shooter! Having confidence with your weapon will allow you to perform better than you would if you were fumbling around trying to get the safety off, or trying to get a magazine inserted, or sights on target, etc. These things need to be second nature when a bad guy is attacking you!

I don't believe that you need to shoot hundreds of rounds per month to reach this proficiency level, but I do believe that most folks should take some time to handle their weapons and become intimately familiar with them prior to an attack. Practicing dry firing even once per week is more than a lot of folks are inclined to do, but will help you gain the familiarity with your defensive weapon so that you aren't wasting valuable time during an attack.

 

[PandaBearBG]

You don't really need any skills at all, just know where the safety is and the trigger and which end to point towards the BG. But proficiency and accuracy and confidence in your actions is what training, whether professional or just practicing at home can improve. My personal opinion is that training is good if you live with your kids or family or roommates that may wander around the house, you want to be able to make controlled decisions instead of just shooting everything that moves. It's like driving, ANYONE can do it, but how well and safely you do it depends on you and how much you learn from experience.

 

[Frank Ettin]

You don't really need any skills at all, just know where the safety is and the trigger and which end to point towards the BG....

Really, how do you know?

How do you know, if it ever happens to you, what sort of problem you'll be faced with? Will it be an easy, straight forward problem or will it be one of those unusual situations that is more difficult and complicated? Will you be all alone and have to deal with only one BG, or will you have a bunch of friends and family around and have to handle multiple BGs? Will you be able to quickly get all the innocents together and in a safe location, or will your friends and family be scattered around the house?

So really, you don't know in advance how good you're going to have to be to be able to handle your particular emergency, if it ever does happen to you.

And since you don't know how good you're going to need to be to prevail if the worst happens, how good are you? How good are you at handling and manipulating your weapon under the extreme stress of a fast and violent encounter? How good a shot are you if you have to shoot quickly under stress? (I see guys all the time who can't put two successive rounds within two feet of each other in a large silhouette target at seven yards, slow fire at a stress free range.) How good are you at shooting and moving? How good are you at reloading under stress? How good are you at clearing a malfunction under stress?

Will you need all those skills? Probably not. But you really don't know, because you really don't know when your emergency is going to happen, if it ever does, nor can you know how it's going to happen or what it's going to take to solve the problem.

How good do you have to be? No one knows. But the better you are, the better your chances will be.

Thomas Edison used to say, "The harder I worked, the luckier I got."

 

[mljdeckard]

Here's the thing about training. It all sucks. It's all unrealistic. It's all set in circumstances other than what you will be using in real life. In the army we never stop training. When you get a little bit of rank, you are the one who conducts the training. You do this training as you say to yourself; "This is NOT the situation I will be in in war."

I voiced this feeling to some of my leaders. They replied that of course it's unrealistic. But then they asked me; "Would you rather that we drop you in the fight with no training at all?" You have to start somewhere. Even exposing what is unrealistic is starting somewhere. Even if all you learned that day is that "This isn't how it will work in real life", you have still learned something. They also reminded me that we take more time and resources to train than any other military. As bad as ours might be, it's STILL the best in the world.

If you think training is unnecessary and futile, ask yourself, when you're pie-cutting a door in the middle of the night, working your way to your child's room to make sure that the intruder you know is SOMEWHERE in the house isn't inside that doorway waiting for you to come through the door, "Do I wish I had practiced this with some force-on-force training a few more times?" The answer will always be yes. You will NEVER feel ready. There is no such thing as enough training. There is no level of training you hit where all of a sudden you can walk into gunfire and not feel scared.

Massad Ayoob takes a week off of every year to train. If he needs to train, YOU DO TOO.

 

[Nicodemus38]

if unrealistic training is ABSOLTELY needed for a person to even have a chance to defend themselves, how are the people who cant afford 2-3,000 to attend a yearly training course supposed to defend themselves?
seriously, its been proven that the unhappy person who possessed a loaded weapon they could shoot, who had the will to kill to protect them and their family, has far better chances at "success" then the person who has 10,000 in training but doesnt have that "its all or nothing" mentality and freeze up from indecisiveness.

 

[mljdeckard]

You need to look at it in priorities. They are IN ORDER: mindset, skillset, toolset.

Yes, the first thing you must do is make yourself mentally ready to use deadly force. You must decide that if it is him or you, it's going to be him and you will live with the consequences. No amount of training will make you ready if you have not done this.

This doesn't mean that just because you have the mindset, you can ignore the skillset. Saying you are serious enough about survival to take a life, but you don't think it's worth some time and expense to train brings into question how serious you are about the mindset. No one said it has to be yearly. No one said you HAVE to go to Thunder Ranch or consider yourself unworthy. There are basic NRA defense courses you can take locally for little or no fees. There are handling drills you can (AND SHOULD) incorporate into your training as you shoot. Shooting is a perishable skill. Once you learn it, you have to keep it up. When you are fighting for your life, you will sink to your lowest level of training. It is ethically irresponsible to not train. If we talk for hours in here about the best ammo to use indoors, and ways to make sure that innocent people don't get hurt, the very minimum you must do is make sure you can shoot well enough under stress to put the lead where it's supposed to be. If stopping a bad guy is mostly about shot placement (WHICH IT IS,) then you must be able to place the shot.

When you decide that defending your life is worth killing someone over, then you must also decide that it is worth some time and expense to make sure you do it well. IT IS NEVER OVER.

 

[Kindrox]

You don't really need any skills at all, just know where the safety is and the trigger and which end to point towards the BG....

That seems a little out of whack. I think you need to have at least practiced with your weapon enough to be completely comfortable with it, know the controls with confidence, have shot it enough to know what if any problems to expect and fix them quickly.

With a pistol it is suprisingly easy to miss at 10-20 feet. I have had a few people ask about my loaning them a gun and I don't do it. Get your butt to the range for practice, then get your CHL, or no gun for you.

I don't think you need to shoot every weekend but shooting at least several times a year seems very prudent. I shoot every two months or so and think that is a good baseline. And I think equally important is mental preperation - at what point are you going to pull the trigger. I think a BG is going to pick up on any mental hesitation or any lack of confidence in your weapon skills, and that can't be helpful to you in your moment of need. So I believe that if you haven't got that down, you for sure need more training.

 

[Domina]

Honestly I think shephard19 hit it on the head. The only thing I'd add is do what you can to make yourself less of a target. Put some tasteful bars on windows, keep your doors secure when everyone is inside, don't associate with the sorts of people and activities that draw home invasions (in so many cases it's drug/gang related), and if you have a choice don't move to a bad part of a town. Seems to me those would cut down your odds quite a bit, and shephard19s suggestions will help take care of the long odds chance that you have a problem.

It's good to learn to shoot under stress for general reasons, because if you ever have to shoot you will likely be under stress (I'm fortunate to live in a state where matches that help you with that are easy to find). It's good to have a plan for how you would defend your home in the rare chance that it is attacked, and even to safely practice what you would do in a hurry.

Personally I wouldn't pay good money for a course on it though.

 

[ilbob]

I am pretty much convinced that knowing how to run the gun and a mindset that you will not allow an intruder to kill you or your family is mostly what it takes. More extensive training is a good idea, but it won't help you one bit if you are unarmed or disinclined to kill if it comes down to a situation where that is necessary.

 

[Frank Ettin]

if unrealistic training is ABSOLTELY needed for a person to even have a chance to defend themselves, how are the people who cant afford 2-3,000 to attend a yearly training course supposed to defend themselves?...

As best they can with whatever skills, ability and talent they do have.

There's nothing magic about owning a gun. And if you have a gun, you will use it as well and as skillfully as you can, and whether that will be good enough will depend on circumstances. Sometimes it will be and sometimes it will not. But the better you are the better prepared you are likely to be for whatever happens and the more likely you will be to succeed.

It's like anything else in life. There are no guarantess, but in general, the more skilled you are, that better educated you are and the better trained you are at doing some particular thing, the more likely you'll be to be able to do that thing successfully.

In a high stress situation, one defaults to his level of training, whatever that level might be.

...its been proven that the unhappy person who possessed a loaded weapon they could shoot, who had the will to kill to protect them and their family, has far better chances at "success" then the person who has 10,000 in training but doesnt have that "its all or nothing" mentality and freeze up from indecisiveness....

Exactly where and how has this been proven? How many folks have been identified with 10,000 hours of training but lacking a necessary mindset? Yes, mindset is vital, but personally, I've not met anyone who has voluntarily, on his own dime, taken any significant amount of serious training but who lacks an appropriate mindset or necessary decisiveness.

...I think you need to have at least practiced with your weapon enough to be completely comfortable with it,...

One thing about practice, you'll want to practice doing things the best ways and you want to practice the right things. If you practice doing things wrong, you will become proficient at doing the wrong things and will never be as good as you would have been practicing better ways of doing things. Training shows you what to practice.

Another thing about practice is that the goal is to reach the point of being able to manage the gun reflexively, without conscious thought. In a fast moving, violent encounter, you want to be able to focus on identifying what's happening, deciding what to do about it and taking the action. You don't want to also have to be figuring out how to make your gun work.

 

[unloved]

Something I rarely (maybe never) hear people say. HD/SD is a very serious subject, but training is FUN! I mean, we all enjoy shooting, right? Learning and practicing hand to hand, edged, and impact weapon skills is good exercise and it's just plain fun!

 

[Broken11b]

Im always amused with these threads.
The anti training people have a point. Home defense is possible without training.
Most of the pro training people are not mall ninja tacticool advocates, they are just saying there is no harm in seeking any possible edge you can get in a life or death situation.
Some people might not need training, a good head on your shoulders and adequate knowledge of how their home defense tool works.
But many many people could benefit from it. Some of you think you dont need training. I dont know you so you might be right. But someone coming onto this thread searching for knowledge is not done any favors from someone posting that no training is needed.
I have seen many people who learned bad habits, thought that they knew all there was to know etc etc.
If you think you have learned all you need to know about home defense, more power to you, I hope youre right. But dont mislead those who dont have the knowledge, or try to dissuade them from seeking knowledge that might save their lives.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...training is FUN!...

Absolutely right. I've always had a lot of fun training. Not only is training fun, but I've met interesting people. I've also made vacations out of a couple of trips to take classes -- seen new parts of the country, did some interesting things, etc. The first time I went to Gunsite, in 2001, I spent the Sunday afternoon after the class with Jeff Cooper in his home watching the Grande Prix of Monaco.

 

[PandaBearBG]

fiddletown - I think I didn't really make myself clear, you must have not read my last sentence. What I said is true, the basic function of a gun and where to shoot. And in high stress level situations, most people react on instinct, people without training or even a high degree of practice with their firearm can suprise themselves with quick reflexes and suprising skill. I'm not saying everyone has it and will not miss, but it's been known to happen. Alot of people take training and turn it into unconsious habit which in turn becomes instinct. I absolutely agree that training will reinforce and improve mindset, reflexes, and skill. TRY READING MY WHOLE POST. What the OP was talking about was what were the BASIC skills necessary. I am an advocate of practicing and preparing with firearms and bad situations. More training doesn't always guarnantee a win in SD/HD, if it were so cops and SWAT and military would never get shot by thugs or kids or third world insurgents (many who are kids). With an exchange of bullets NOTHING is ever guaranteed.

Now my personal opinion is to practice practice practice, and if you got time and money for training and the desire for it then by all means. I am all for drills at home and planning ahead with your family. I never said otherwise. I'm just saying anyone that feels threatened who has never fired a gun and has a gun to protect themselves can do pretty well defending themselves, maybe not as well as a Green Beret, but the basics.
Remeber back in the 80's Angela Cavallo a 100 lb woman who lifted a car to save her son, or Lydia Angyiou who wrestled a 700 lb bear to save her child? I've seen trained military crack when bullets start flying even with all their training, and a girl who never shot a gun in her life hit cans at 100 yards. Some people can just do it some people can do it when things are at their worst and some just can't. If people don't feel like they need to train, then some probably don't but training certainly helps many and vastly improves knowledge and technique. My opinion is a lot comes down to character, courage, and the will to do what you have to, to protect you and your loved ones.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

for me one of the reasons i prepare for a variety of things is so that when the smoke clears i can live with myself no matter what the outcome.good or bad. if i have prepared then i can accept that life is fickle. now my paranoia makes me take preparation further than some folks

 

[Frank Ettin]

...And in high stress level situations, most people react on instinct, people without training or even a high degree of practice with their firearm can suprise themselves with quick reflexes and suprising skill....

What you seem to be suggesting is that sometimes one will "rise to the occasion", but actually under stress, one is far more likely to default to his level of training. Or sometimes one gets lucky.

The better trained and more practiced you are, the better the chance you will be lucky.

...Alot of people take training and turn it into unconsious habit which in turn becomes instinct. I absolutely agree that training will reinforce and improve mindset, reflexes, and skill.....

I agree that training helps reinforce mindset. Training also teaches one the skills. Diligent practice makes those skills reflexive (instinctual) so that one can perform those skills on demand, without conscious thought.

...I am an advocate of practicing and preparing with firearms and bad situations. ... my personal opinion is to practice practice practice, and if you got time and money for training and the desire for it then by all means....

Yes practice is very important. Practice, diligently performing over and over again a particular physical skill, makes that skill reflexive, so that you can perform it on demand, without conscious thought. The value of professional training is that it teaches you the skill so you will know what to practice. And repetitive training helps improve your techniques when performing those skills that you then continue to make reflexive by continued practice.

Practice will make you proficient at doing whatever it is that you are doing. There can always be the question of whether you are doing something in a good and effective way.

...More training doesn't always guarnantee a win in SD/HD, if it were so cops and SWAT and military would never get shot...

Agreed, but that doesn't mean that less training would have produced better results.

...My opinion is a lot comes down to character, courage, and the will to do what you have to, to protect you and your loved ones....

Yes character and courage (and mindset) are vital. Whether they will be enough will depend on what's happening. Sometimes they will be enough, but perhaps sometimes they will not. You have no way of knowing in advance.

Character and courage are good. Character and courage plus skill and proficiency are even better.

 

[bdickens]

Here's the thing about training. It all sucks. It's all unrealistic. It's all set in circumstances other than what you will be using in real life. In the army we never stop training. When you get a little bit of rank, you are the one who conducts the training. You do this training as you say to yourself; "This is NOT the situation I will be in in war."

I voiced this feeling to some of my leaders. They replied that of course it's unrealistic. But then they asked me; "Would you rather that we drop you in the fight with no training at all?" You have to start somewhere. Even exposing what is unrealistic is starting somewhere. Even if all you learned that day is that "This isn't how it will work in real life", you have still learned something. They also reminded me that we take more time and resources to train than any other military. As bad as ours might be, it's STILL the best in the world.

If you think training is unnecessary and futile, ask yourself, when you're pie-cutting a door in the middle of the night, working your way to your child's room to make sure that the intruder you know is SOMEWHERE in the house isn't inside that doorway waiting for you to come through the door, "Do I wish I had practiced this with some force-on-force training a few more times?" The answer will always be yes. You will NEVER feel ready. There is no such thing as enough training. There is no level of training you hit where all of a sudden you can walk into gunfire and not feel scared.

Massad Ayoob takes a week off of every year to train. If he needs to train, YOU DO TOO.

Absolutely. You can only make changes to your plan as needed in the middle of it if you have a plan to begin with.

 

[3pairs12]

If oyu think training for HD is overrated I can give you my buddies phone number and he can tll you about the 2 times his house alarm went off in the middle of the night. All went well but first time terribly ill prepared but all was clear. Second time prepared followed his plan and all was clear again. For weeks after the first incident he couldn't help but think what if some had been in his home, how bad would it have been/ The second time i think he slept better the following night.

 

[sidheshooter]

I don't believe that one can ever know too much about any non-trivial subject with real physical ramifications, be it HD or cooking or making music or raising kids or investing or rebuilding a car.

Whatever; if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

In addition, training allows for greater defense of one's self after the fact; in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of the court, in the eyes of the community, the family, etc. It's not just acting correctly, it's also being able to articulate that you acted correctly.

The good news is, a little bit does go a long way. IMHO, even a basic NRA defense course is so far beyond nothing at all as to be absurd.

You don't have to be Mas Ayoob, or even take his classes. But not getting a bit of basic instruction from easy-access folks who've already thought the core issues through is like not wearing a seat belt, not using saftey goggles in the wood or metal shop, or not reading the textbook for the class in college.

BTW, I'm not saying that any of the above should be legal mandate. I don't support things like helmet laws either, as a rule, but neither am I one for feeling sympathy when folks can't be bothered to educate themselves even a little to stack the deck in their own favor and increase their chances of success, before they find themselves in a bind.

Of course, the fact that we are even debating the finer points on a forum called "Strategies and Tactics" makes the point by itself; this isn't the car and driver forum. Even the OP's original 5 criteria indicates some level of training, if only of the mind, far, far beyond "never gave it much thought..."

 

[Fred Fuller]

Anyone here ever seen a hunter have a serious attack of 'buck fever?' Heck, anyone here ever HAD an attack of buck fever? I'll tell you a story on myself, to break the ice on that subject. Nothing to do with defensive shooting specifically, but perhaps illustrative nevertheless.

My first deer lo these many years ago was a huge (for the region) rocking-chair rack 10 pointer. Scared me so bad, I'd swear in retrospect that I put the first round out of the .30-06 in the clear space right between those giant antlers. It was on a deer drive with dogs, the way we hunted at home in central Alabama then. I got dropped off on the first 'stand', on a two-rut dirt road at the bottom of a fairly steep hill that had been clear-cut of its timber the year before. I went about a third of the way up the hillside, found some concealment, and settled down to wait. The truck carrying the rest of the hunters went on down the road, dropping off hunters occasionally along the way, and took the dogs and the driver around to the other side of the hill to turn the dogs loose.

Deer that have been driven before are notorious for sneaking away in front of a developing drive. The buck that came bounding over the hilltop and headed down straight for my hiding place had obviously been the object of dog drives all his life. So he was getting a head start, headed out the back door before the dogs even got started tuning up.

Only thing was, I'd wandered right into his back door. He was headed right at me, bouncing over that hilltop and down my side of the hill like a giant rubber ball.

Did I mention he about scared me to death? This was the last thing I was expecting. Yeah, it was a deer hunt. Yeah, we were 'spozed to find deer. But it wasn't supposed to go quite like this. I wasn't... ready yet. The dang dogs hadn't even got warmed up, after all.

But eventually the message trickled down my ganglia that I needed to shoot this monster bouncing down the hillside at me. So up came the Remington, off went the safety and BOOM went the first shot.

Sight picture? WHAT sight picture? Sights? What sights?

Anyway, nothing happened, the maniac antlered giant rubber ball kept bouncing down the hillside (RIGHT AT ME!!!) just like before, scattering gravel, popping brush. So, BOOM! again. Again- sight picture? Sights? Huh?? You mean I'm supposed to, like, AIM or something?

I still remember my sluggish brain finally turning over slowly and bubbling up a coherent thought. "There's only two rounds left" was the thought. "If he gets down to the road and crosses into the brush he'll be gone for good. Gotta HIT this sucker or he's gonna get away." There was also this small matter of losing shirt-tails for missing deer in the crowd I was hunting with, but we won't get into that right now.

Well, I moved a bit behind my bush to keep him in view, and he saw me and froze right there. About 20 feet away. Couldn't see anything in the scope but a blur. 'Aimed' down the side of the barrel for behind his shoulder and touched off #3- BOOM!

Downed the rifle and looked for the deer.

No deer. Nowhere. Not going down the hill. Not going up the hill. Not going across the hill. Poof. Vanished.

Well, that about did for me. I had to sit down. Not only had I missed the biggest deer I had ever seen (3 times!), I had somehow managed to lose him too. I gathered my wits for a minute, and decided to go look for tracks. He HAD to leave tracks.

But he hadn't. Not any more tracks, anyway. See, the rain had washed a little gully in the hillside right there, and the bullet had rolled him over right into that little gully and he disappeared. Until you were standing right over him, that is.

I had to sit down again.

Anyway, when the drive was over and the pickup came back, I was standing at the bottom of the hill, last to get picked up. Everyone had heard the shots. They figured it was me. Where was the deer? No one would believe me at first when I said I needed help getting him out of a gully up the hillside.

'Till they went and looked.

Yep. Buck fever. It happened to me. I've seen it happen to other people. I've seen one guy levering live rounds out of a Marlin 336, thinking he was shooting at a deer and never pulling the trigger. I've even seen people act stupid over the grenade burst of a covey of bobwhite in front of a dog that they KNEW were there going in, and nearly shoot someone else in the party, or a dog. And this over a little bird, too.

So, how will you do when your worst nightmare kicks in your door at oh dark thirty?

Isn't it a better idea to get some idea how best to handle the situation ahead of time? Or will a lifetime worth of Hollywood do it for you?

I can say this. Louis Awerbuck costs more than a good movie, but it lasts three days and it's a lot more entertaining to boot 8^). But training doesn't have to be a top name professional instructor- most of the local NRA instructors do a really good job, and don't cost a lot. And there are a lot of other local instructors as well, with LE or military backgrounds, who do a creditable job yet won't break the bank. Training doesn't have to cost a fortune or take place a thousand miles away to help you improve your personal odds of getting it right in a pinch.

No, you don't HAVE to have training to defend yourself and your family effectively. I would object to anyone trying to make such a thing manadatory, I think. But that doesn't stop me from thinking it's a good idea to prepare yourself ahead of time to fight for your life if you ever had to do it.

lpl

 

[JShirley]

I had the opposite experience. On the hunt I actually took my first deer, I had at least 4 good opportunities before I took that first- so close that I was afraid to bring my SxS up to eye level- shot. My problem was being overly sure, of being too hesitant to shoot.

I finally got over that. And, after thousands of fast, close-range rounds fired, I am absolutely unafraid that I'm going to miss an aggressor a few feet away, while holding a longarm. I don't actually understand such fears- at that range, you just about have to work to miss, with a shoulder arm.

J