A few notes from gun school.

Today was the second and final day of my Defensive Handgun course at Shootrite Firearms Academy.  This was a two day basic handgun self defense course.  Day 1 largely consisted of things I was already familiar with but was a very good refresher.  Day 2 was a lot of stuff I was intellectually familiar with but that I had never put into practice on the range.

I'm going to be doing a detailed post for both days of the course soon but I wanted to make a couple of quick observations.

First was that I was the youngest of the seven people attending the course.  I am 29 and the next youngest person there was 36.  Most of the attendees were 50+.  This actually kind of surprised and disappointed me.  I definitely need to recommend that some of my friends get up there.

There were three men besides me, and three women.  That was a pleasant surprise.  One of the women had just jumped into shooting after Sandyhook.  She went from being ambivalent about guns to being extremely pro gun as a direct result of the attempts to limit the Second Amendment.

There were a variety of guns.  There were three Glocks (mine, another man's, and one woman's). The other two women were shooting a S&W Shield 9mm and a Sig P250, respectively.  One man was shooting an XD and the other an Ed Brown Cobra Carry 1911 (probably the nicest gun out there).

Everyone was shooting 9mm pistols except for the 1911 guy and one of the Glock guys who was shooting .40.  No big surprise here.

Everyone shot about 400-500 rounds and there were, to my knowledge, no malfunctions that were not a result of operator error or deliberately induced for training purposes.

Oh, and everyone could shoot.  And I mean everyone.  This was good because it gave us a chance to advance into some stuff that doesn't normally get covered in this particular course.

All in all I had a good time.  I feel like I really took away some good stuff.  Tiger McKee, the owner and lead instructor, is a very open minded type.  He acknowledges that people may have a different way of doing things and he is ok with that.  He said over and over, "This is the way we do it, and the way we teach it.  We want you to try it, and if you find it does not work for that's ultimately your decision.  As long as what you are doing is safe, I have no issue with that.  Just give our way a chance."  He also made a point of explaining the "why" of his methods, rather than just saying "this is how it is done."

A couple of the things I probably won't do his way.  But he convinced me on at least one thing, and that alone was enough to make the two days worth it.

More to come.