“If you make money your priority, or ego your priority, you’ve got a problem. And there’s lot of that, it’s become rampant in this game in the last ten years.
To decide that you know everything about firearms and tactics is about the most pompous thing you can do. A doctor’s got to go to university, an auto mechanic is going to be out of work if he doesn’t get updated training on all this technology in cars today. A weapons instructor just says, Hi, I’m a weapons instructor and I know all about guns and training and tactics and strategy.
You look at instructor resumes, and they’ve taken all the classes, but what have they done? They’ve taken everybody else’s lesson plans and put them into a program of their own and they’re teaching it like a parrot.”
– Louis Awerbuck
Firearm User Network 
Jun 25, 2014 @ 11:22:19
There are over 100 million gun owners in the US. There is not enough capacity amongst the very small group of people who have all the “right” life experience (as defined by Awerbuck) and skill (same) to meet his standards for being a “trainer”. Taking all the classes from the A-list trainers IS “going to university” in the firearms training business, along with achieving some measurable levels of skill (usually via competition rankings). Repeating good information from credible sources is no different than what professors and school teachers do. His attitude makes sense for the old days when less than 1% of all gun owners were interested in tactics and defensive pistol skills, back when Gunsite was the absolute fringe of the firearms world, shunned by the NRA as “too radical” because they ran a hot range and allowed people to draw from a holster.
The world is different now. In some states the percentage of people who carry daily is as high as 10%, more typically 3-5% of the population (not just gun owners). There is a need for credible trainers, and criticizing those who are pursuing the best available path to develop as instructors (since there’s no place you can sign up to be in a bunch of armed citizen individual gunfights to get the ‘street cred’ he says we all have to have, and military combat is typically not similar to any armed citizen situation), is not helpful. What the industry badly needs is better defined, and more widely accepted minimum standards for post-CHL level instructors. The NRA standards for Personal Protection Outside the Home instructor are considerably higher than for other ratings, but not high enough, and there’s wide variance in what’s required to get “instructor” rated at various private sector schools, from tough to easy.
Interest and demand for post-CHL level training has motivated a lot of people to open their own schools, with very wide variances in qualification. As long as those teaching put their qualifications out there, students are free to evaluate and choose who they train with. Many cannot afford $2000 5 day classes with A-list trainers, which is where shorter local courses offered by B- and C- listers who have at least studied with the A-team do far more good than harm.
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Jun 25, 2014 @ 11:51:37
Thanks for adding this.
I took Mr. Awerbuck’s point as that one should seek on-going improvement from multiple sources, should seek some form of higher-level experience proving skill beyond just being a student (competition is excellent for this), and that at no point is learning complete.
Many instructors are really novices that obtained a certificate or two by making it through the appropriate number of class hours without hurting themselves. In some military environments, certifications can be substituted by merely having sufficient rank (the NCO assigned to run a range as a detail.) They aren’t much more skilled or knowledgeable than the completely new people they teach.
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Jun 25, 2014 @ 13:03:04
For those that don’t know, Louis Awerbuck passed away earlier this week. I knew Louie and considered him a friend and colleague as well as one of the best instructors to learn from for students of all walks of life. I agree with him in that too many people try to teach firearms or anything else without having command of the subject they are teaching. Merely repeating what someone else said or did without being able to do it and explain it fully is a sign of what Louie referrs to as a parrott. If one wants to be entertained and burn up a lot of ammunition while learning little, a parrott is fine. If they want to make permanent positive change in their shooting skills then they need to find someone that can demonstrate how to do it and discuss why the particular skill is important to learn and coach the student quickly to success in performing the task. For a serious instructor it’s not about the money, it’s about what the student knows and can do when they leave the class that they didn’t know or couldn’t perform previously.
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Jun 26, 2014 @ 09:00:59
Go to this link.
http://louisawerbuckinterviewwithamadman.blogspot.com/
I especially like his comment about teaching “14 year-old girls;” it’s so true!
The best-shooting pistol class you will ever see is a dozen fourteen-year-old females who have never touched a pistol. Are they gunfighters? I don’t know, but as far as mechanical shooting goes you can’t ask for anything more. A class of fourteen-year-old females will turn out amazing pistol shooters. They don’t have an ego, they haven’t got the prior mistakes, so they don’t know how to miss.
More via this site:
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2014/06/in-memoriam-louis-awerbuck.html
Thanks to John Buol for leading me to Awerbuck.
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Jun 26, 2014 @ 12:45:24
John T., girls/women generally tend to listen well, and without either the male ego or the male “this is what I saw in a cool movie” mentality. They do make great students.
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Jun 26, 2014 @ 17:30:49
Of course, adult males do not have to be poor students…
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