Context Is King

Throughout the hundreds and hundreds of hours of firearms training classes I’ve had, there’s been exactly ONE class that has attempted to apply the skills of marksmanship and speed to my everyday life: The Armed Parent/Guardian class from Citizens Defense Research.

I find that a little ridiculous. Yes, marksmanship is a skill and yes, you can learn it in a class, but there are reasons WHY people come to a class, and one of the biggest reasons out there right now is personal protection. Yes, people get hooked on training and turn into “hobbyists” (and Lord knows I’m one of them) but most gun owners need a reason to train that goes beyond the training itself.

Our lives do not exist in a vacuum. However, the square ranges we train on encourage us to think that what’s learned on the square range stays on the square range. In our pursuit of perfection, we forget that most people don’t share our passion for the .2 second split and the sub-second draw: They just want to keep their loved ones safe in an uncertain, unsafe world.

For instance, I enjoy the skill and the art of cooking, but my dinner menu is based on the constraints of time, budget and my family’s tastes in food. I’m not a chef in a restaurant, cooking what I want and serving it up to masses who have come to sample my creations. Instead, my skill and preferences in cooking are moderated by the people around me. My cooking doesn’t exist in the kitchen, my cooking only becomes important when I serve it up on the dinner table to my family.

So here’s my question to the firearms training community: If your absolute closest friend or relative, the person who brings you the most joy in your life, came to you and said they wanted to learn how to defend their life with a firearm, what would you teach them? More importantly, how would you make sure they started carrying their gun everywhere they could? Would you feel like you failed if you found out that, despite all your teaching, they still kept their gun in it’s box under their bed? What would you change to make sure they were safe, and not just “felt safe because they owned a gun”?

And why aren’t you doing that now?