Concealed Carry Omaha held our second Defensive Handgun 1 course last Saturday. We had a handful of extremely dedicated men show up and train in the cold rain and mud for about 5 hours until the weather finally broke. Most people that have a concern for personal defense never make it much past purchasing a firearm and sending a few rounds down range once in while. If you feel that you have a personal responsibility to protect yourself and family I commend you for having a proper attitude. But just like purchasing a guitar and strumming the strings once in a while does not make me a musician simply because I have a desire to become one, likewise purchasing a handgun and being aware that my personal defense is my own responsibility does not equip me to properly defend myself. Becoming a musician takes instruction and practice and just like anything else so does being able to use a weapon to defend yourself and others.
I commend all of the guys that decided to put there money where there mouth is this weekend by taking this class. I realize that it was a large investment for these gentlemen. With the cost of the class which I am purposely keeping as low as possible and the price of ammunition which I really wish I could control and the time invested to spend an entire Saturday at the range I can understand their sacrifice and I am so grateful that they have chosen me as an instructor. This is a responsibility that I do not take lightly and I put a lot into making sure that my students get their moneys worth. I spend about two weeks on the road each year investing in my own training and I know that not everybody can make that large of an investment in their training but I would highly recommend it if at all possible.
I will leave you with this and then open it up for questions and comments. I did not come up with this analogy but it does fit the application perfectly. If you think of acquiring any type of skill in the same way you would think about acquiring or purchasing a new car. If you are trying to purchase a new vehicle for $40,000 without putting any down payment and you are trying to have a low monthly payment like $140 per month it would take you 40 years to pay it off . Now lets put a large down payment like $20,000 on it and lower our monthly payment to $110 per month. We will now own that vehicle in 20 years or half the time with a lower monthly payment. If eventually you would like to be able to shoot competitively in an IDPA or USPSA competition and you try to get there by just shooting 100 rounds once a month it will take you a life time to progress to your desired skill level. Now if we apply that same logic that we did with the car purchase and go out and take a few classes that give us a high round count in a short amount of time we can look at that as a high initial down payment by getting some good repetition and building a solid foundation of muscle memory. Once you have this muscle memory your maintenance on this skill might only take 50 rounds each month if you have that high initial down payment. I don’t know food for thought. Let me know what you think in your comments below.