Saturday, May 21, 2016

NRAAM NRA Instructor Update Meeting

With over 700 instructors in the room, it was standing room only.




After a brief introduction there was a presentation by Ultimate Training Munitions.

Basically it is an interesting supplement to training idea - a replacement barrel is inserted into the firearm, preventing regular ammunition from being used.  Then the ammunition comes in three flavors - a silent blank that still operates the action and ejects, a noisy blank that similarly works the action, and a wax tip for marking targets.  This could be useful as a training aid for introducing shooting to student to shooting.  With the projectile running at slightly over 320 fps the round is similar to an air soft pellet and at 112 decibels it's quieter than regular ammunition allowing for practice off range.

At about $30 for a box of 50 in 9mm it's not the cheapest item but I can see the uses.

Then there was a presentation by NRA's affiliate Second Call Defense.

Then there was a presentation on the update and changes that have been made to the basic pistol shooting program.

The changes to the program, including an online portion as an initial phase that offers a higher level of standardization for instructors, and the online training does offer some good self-study opportunities for students.  

There was some definite pushback to the change by some in the crowd and certainly some instructors in the seats could be considered disgruntled by the changes. Change as always is difficult but it is very clear that NRA's training division is moving in this direction. Obviously, if you want to be an NRA instructor, you do what the training division requires and follow the curriculum accordingly. While the NRA training division was certainly taking the questions raised under consideration they made it clear, as if it even needed to be, that bad mouthing the changes to students or potential students is not a good nor appropriate idea.  Expect more course changes in the future.

2 comments:

B said...

Sadly though,the new basic pistol requires a great deal of time investment whereas the old one didn't, forcing students to invest many more hours before ever being in a classroom.

It sucks, and will likely keep many people from taking the course. Further those students were almost always on the fence about firearms, and most were converts after the course. Now those folks won't bother to take the course and we lose a part of our ambassadorship to those who are willing to try to learn.

The course change is a mistake without something else to take up the place of the First Steps and Basic Pistol courses as they existed before the change.

Make no mistake, the new course outline and methodology is good, it just fails to provide what the courses it replaced did.

Aaron said...

B:

I can see that being a concern, and it's a good point, but I think the timing is a bit similar form the Basic Pistol class and since you can time shift it to watch segments whenever you want it shouldn't be too bad for someone who wants to learn.

Dennis B. also raised a good point that there are a lot of people (typically more elderly) who want to learn how to shoot who aren't comfortable going online and using a computer and want everything face to face.

Probably the NRA training division needs to come up with a way to effectively address the needs of the people you and Dennis identified.