Redstate

By kowalski Posted in Archived — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

As promised, today I'd like to say a few words about the mandatory course that everyone who applies for a firearms license in Massachusetts has to take in order to qualify to fill out the form. You need to take the course in order to be able to produce the certificate to both your local chief of police and to the FBI in Quantico, who look up your record when you submit your application for firearms licensure in Massachusetts.

The good news is that the course was really a lot of fun and with a good instructor (like mine) was also very informative. I've never shot handguns -- all my shooting experience has been with rifles and one or two shotguns in the past, so this was a completely new world for me. And the bad news? Sorry, this time there wasn't any. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

At my local gun club the course begins at 8 a.m. sharp, and the range is reserved until 6 p.m. Usually it doesn't take the full ten hours if there are fewer than 15 students, and today we didn't have a crowding problem -- instead it was just the reverse. It was such an absolutely beautiful day here in Massachusetts that we had a number of cancellations and no-shows, and so I found myself taking the course with one other adult guy and two children, one 14 and the other 12 years old. The older boy was accompanied to the range by his father, who is a master builder who has restored several national historic monuments, and the younger boy came along with his dad, who is an electrician. Aside from that it was little old me, the instructor, his wife, and the club ombudsman.

Basically the course is a straightforward but fairly concentrated walk through an NRA pistol training manual that's targeted at about the 12th grade level, with several other adjunct topics added. We covered each of the chapters in depth, reading them aloud, and discussing the contents in detail with visual aids. The instructor brought along all of the visual aids provided by the NRA (a series of illustrative posters) but also provided a wealth of other material, including printouts of state firearms regulations, several of the necessary regulatory forms that anyone who wants an FID/LTC must submit, etc. At the end of the course the students are tested on their absorption of the material, with a passage cutoff of 70%.

The course is made a lot more interesting by having actual firearms around to illustrate various points of the manual, and our instructor didn't disappoint: he came prepared with two varieties of .38 special (one with a much larger and more robust frame for taking +P ammunition), a Ruger 10/.22 semiautomatic, a Glock 9mm, a Ruger .45, and two or three other S&W handguns. All the guns were meticulously maintained and we passed them around to illustrate various differences between their operating and handling characteristics as we went through the course book.

I'll make a long story short at this point (please feel free to ask more detailed questions if you'd like) but after about 4 hours of classroom instruction, note-taking and discussion we decamped to the firing line to try some actual shooting, first with the Ruger .22 and then with the larger .38. The four of us were then put through our paces actually firing the guns from a benchrest at 50 feet. The focus during this phase was on handling the guns properly, observing range safety rules, and learning proper shooting technique. Each of us fired several five-round groups with each gun, with the instructor pointing out to us where we were having problems with grip, position, trigger pull, sighting, etc.

The Ruger .22 was a great little gun to shoot: accurate, well-constructed, easy to load and a lot of fun. The bigger .38 with FMJ ammo. was more of a challenge: more recoil, much louder "bang" (of course we were all wearing ear and eye protection) and a very different feel and "picture" through the sights.

The boys who took the course with me today were really a tribute to their parents. Both of them were extremely interested in what they were doing, and they really focused on taking the course seriously; they asked some very good questions too, some of which only a kid can ask! I really enjoyed having them there. When you can get a 12 year old kid in a room full of adults who are covering some occasionally dry material to really focus on what he's learning for four hours at a time, you know that he is *interested* and that his parents have done a good job. Both of the boys comported themselves very well, and they each passed the shooting and written tests.

After the shooting qualification, you take a written test of about 50 multiple-choice and T/F questions covering the material you've been presented. I'm a good test taker, so I finished first and scored 100%. One of the kids afterwards asked me, wide-eyed: "I saw your score. What did you, cheat?" Truth to tell, I think my prior experience as captain of my high school rifle team was a little bit of an unfair advantage here. I told him not to worry about his score, which was in the high 80's.

I spent $50 to take this course and it was an honestly pleasant experience from one end to the other. I learned a lot about pistols in a controlled and safe environment and the instructor was very thorough. He's a licensed gunsmith and firearms dealer in Massachusetts and he and his wife really do a great job of putting the course materials together and presenting them well. In fact, the only thing I wish is that we'd had more time to extend the course over another weekend, but as a rough barometer I absorbed as much in eight hours as I had in about 2-3 months of tryouts when I first took up shooting in high school. At the college level, I'd say it was the rough equivalent of an intensive weekend seminar with a very small class size.

I wish more people in America had the opportunity to take courses like this "right in their backyard" so to speak. It was literally a blast, and I can tell you even as I write this several hours afterward that I absorbed almost everything that was presented to me, because the course was structured very well. The NRA knows how to teach people the basics of firearms ownership and responsibility better than just about anyone. The course isn't avant-garde (except for the humor provided by the instructor, who in my case happened to have a great sense of humor) but it is designed to focus your attention on the basics so that you can absorb as much as you can in a short period of time:

1) What is a handgun?
2) How does it work?
3) How do you shoot one?
4) What safety precautions should you observe?
5) What safety measures *must* you observe?
6) Practical, hands-on experience with a firearm.
7) Local legislative information.
8) Where to go to learn more.
9) A relaxed but not "too relaxed" classroom environment.
10) An honest learning experience that's worth the money.

Anyone thinking of owning a firearm, especially a handgun, should contact the NRA and take the course -- even if it's not required in their local jurisdiction.

Rating (and I've taken a lot of "online learning" courses that were much worse than this) -- 4.5 out of 5 stars. I'm withholding half a star only because I don't think the NRA does enough to advertise this wonderful service to the public -- a service that professionals like my instructor are both happy and eminently qualifed to provide for a relatively modest fee. They should have prime-time TV ads, in my opinion.

Preserve Liberty -- Join the NRA

[Update: If you're wondering how I fared during the hands-on shooting phase of the course, I did pretty well. With the .22 Ruger I put 4 out of 5 shots in the center bull with 1x and with the .38 standing with a two-hand grip I had my windage almost perfect but my elevation was waaaaay off because I was precompensating for the recoil. I have no doubt that with about another 100 rounds through a .38 +P or similar large-caliber handgun I could lick the elevation problem and put most of the shots in the X ring. Shooting a handgun is, well, different. This is the first time I've done it.]

Cross Posted @ The Minority Report