Chris Baker over at the Lucky Gunner Lounge posted an interesting piece recently on “Five Reasons Firearms Training Fails.” 1. Time and Cost Both of these are relative, so that for some it is just a matter of priorities. For others, the costs of training can actually be prohibitive. The cost of ammo is a … Continue reading
Weekends are a time when I catch up on listening to podcasts. I subscribe to nearly 40 podcasts, of which half are gun podcasts, and so I am usually in catch up mode. This past weekend I was struck by two very opposing views of defensive gun use presented on two different podcasts. The first … Continue reading
I have to take a break from my series of posts on the civilian gun training industry to address some blowback I received for comments I made that were printed in a story about road rage and guns in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Back in February (5 months ago), I had a fairly lengthy and … Continue reading
This page collects my posts on the private citizen (i.e., civilian) gun training industry (or community). These posts offer my initial reflections on the topic as part of my ongoing research. Therefore, I welcome readers’ reactions, responses, references, elaborations, and corrections. My recent set of posts on the rise and organization of the civilian gun … Continue reading
In my previous two posts, I have (1) considered non-governmental certification of instructors as an option to provide consumers of civilian gun training with information about the quality of services they are purchasing, and (2) looked at Tom Givens’s Rangemaster Firearms Instructor Development and Certification course as an example. In my last post I looked … Continue reading
As I noted in the first of this series of posts, this summer I began collecting data for the chapter of my book that will cover the civilian or private citizen gun training industry. My first stop was a Rangemaster Firearms Training Services instructor development and certification course conducted by Tom Givens. This course represents … Continue reading
In thinking about the civilian gun training industry as a profession, I have drawn extensively on a 50+ year old article by sociologist Harold Wilensky on “The Professionalization of Everyone?” [1] Having outlined what a profession is and the typical process by which an occupation is professionalized, Wilensky concluded by observing that “many occupations which … Continue reading
