On a training night of the Daily Gun Show, Gun Websites walked through how firearms instruction developed, from almost nothing to the huge training community of today. This is a summary of that live show, drawing on the instructor and school research behind Minuteman University and the After Action.net Firearm Training Timeline.
Before formal training
- As guns evolved from hand cannons through muzzleloaders, revolvers, cartridges and semi-autos, there was little formal instruction beyond the manual of arms and how not to shoot each other on the march.
- Good shooters existed, from exhibition shooters to frontiersmen, but teaching was mostly “you missed, shoot again.” Little was written down.
Marksmanship and the military
- In 1871, William Conant Church and George Wingate founded the NRA to improve marksmanship, and wrote military marksmanship manuals.
- Police departments began to adopt guns and manuals in the early 1900s, and some held competitions.
- In 1934, Congress gave FBI agents general authority to carry firearms, a response to Prohibition-era organized crime, and the FBI’s practical pistol course followed.
Fighting skills
- William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes, police officers in Shanghai, learned from countless real fights. They taught close combat to Allied forces in World War II and published Shooting to Live in 1942.
The modern technique
- Jeff Cooper, a Marine, organized practical pistol competitions in California in the late 1950s.
- Jack Weaver won with a two-handed hold, and two hands on a pistol became the dividing line of the first great training debate.
- Cooper founded the American Pistol Institute, later Gunsite, in 1976, and gave the community the four safety rules and the color code of awareness.
- Early Gunsite instructors and students, including Ken Hackathorn, Massad Ayoob and Clint Smith, spread out and founded or shaped schools of their own.
Specialists and a new generation
- Instructors added specialties: low light (Michael Harries), the reactionary gap (Dennis Tueller), verbal de-escalation (George Thompson), close-quarters grappling and knives (Craig Douglas), legal aftermath (Marty Hayes), and instructor development (Tom Givens).
- Schools multiplied: Lethal Force Institute in 1981, Thunder Ranch in 1993, Tactical Response and Front Sight in 1996, and many more.
- After 2001, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and SWAT officers brought fresh experience, and figures like Chris Costa and James Yeager brought training to huge online audiences.
- The spread of concealed carry and constitutional carry brought millions of new carriers and a wave of competent women instructors through groups such as the DC Project, Girl and a Gun and A Girl and A Gun.
The takeaway
- Training is a lot like martial arts or music: many styles, each with its own emphasis, but the fundamentals of sights, trigger, breathing and decisions are the same everywhere.
- Sample several schools. You will get better with each one, and meet people at the same stage you are.
More
- Explore the Firearm Instructors directory and the Firearm Training Timeline.
Based on a video from the Gun Websites YouTube channel. Take a class, write your after action report, and keep it in your training log.
(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)