Learning From Tom Givens
Words From A True Master
Written By Massad Ayoob
Tom Givens, far left, runs the line with Relay
1 shooting and Relay 2 coaching.
I’ve known Tom Givens for decades. He has been teaching armed self-defense for 50 years. Now in his early 70s, he has delegated basic training at his company rangemaster.com to his most highly accomplished acolytes while he focuses on training the next generation of instructors.
His curriculum includes the latest research from force science and athletic science, and focuses on maximum efficiency in creating skill with the fewest rounds fired to maximize training time. Realizing many instructors are too busy to take a week off for in-service training, he has broken his instructor course into three two-to-three-day segments.
Students start with Instructor Development, then go to Advanced Firearms Instructor Development and finish with his Master Instructor program. Having taken several of his lectures at his Rangemaster Tactical Conference for well over a decade, I took his Instructor Development course in January of 2025 and followed with Advanced Firearms Instructor three weeks later. This column is essentially an After-Action Report (AAR) on that class, written by an instructor with 52 years as an instructor himself.
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Givens showing students how the brain works for them
— and where to put the bullet in the attacker’s brain!
Inspiration and Understandin
Givens makes sure his instructor candidates understand the “why” of every technique and every defensive strategy. Instructors are trained to responsibly, realistically inspire their students to be solid armed citizens, and that their decisions to be armed must be validated.
Tom explains that in life-threatening situations, panic kills. The cure for panic is confidence, he explains, and confidence is born of skill. Repetition builds the neural pathways we colloquially call “long-term muscle memory,” and Givens cites authoritative research showing that 50 rounds a week is better than 200 rounds once a month for reps that will stay with their students.
Practice must have purpose: The instructors’ students should shoot drills that show up their weaknesses and then focus on strengthening the weak points in their draw or their shooting. Rangemaster Instructor courses are shot entirely from concealed carry with realistic carry handguns. Class began with each student introducing themselves, and virtually all were already experienced instructors certified by one or another source.
He emphasized the balance of accuracy and speed and pointed out the canard of “there’s no timer in a gunfight” is false because the timer is the criminal shooting at their student. “The biggest slowdown of your effectiveness is missing,” he says, and he thus deplores instructors who don’t score their students’ targets. To emphasize the point, Givens himself scores virtually every target from every drill the Advanced Instructor candidates fire.
Don’t trust any instructor school that doesn’t have you demonstrate your instruction and diagnostic skills! In this class, we were broken into two relays and every shot fired was supervised by another instructor candidate, with constant switching of coach and student.
Targets include the B8 (NRA Timed and Rapid Fire) bullseye, the black of which is about the size of the vital cardiac area on a human opponent. Shooting is from three to 20 yards. Times are relatively tight, whether from hard low ready (gunpoint) or from the concealed holster to assorted humanoid silhouettes, many of which did not have “scoring zones” visible beyond three yards. This was to accustom the instructors to know Tactical Anatomy and be able to place their bullets accordingly. A lecture portion of the class went heavily into where the latest peer-reviewed research showed a bullet had to go to quickly shut down a homicidal criminal.
Givens pointed out a sad fact Jeff Cooper had articulated earlier: A lot of people will work harder to win a medal than to save their life. Givens taught his instructor candidates to take advantage of that and reward the top shots in the class to give them additional motivation to train. It worked: Many in the class shot better “for the award” than they did in simply shooting the same drill prior. Challenge coins were given out. Congratulations to Ryan Baker, who earned Top Shot for the entire class.
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Givens demonstrates very close-quarters shooting. He warns that instructors who don’t demonstrate will be doubted by their students.
Learning Points
Be able to teach people who aren’t your age or built like you. This particular class included a sub-100-lb. petite female and male or two the size of some black bears. The instructors in the class included one man with missing fingers and a 76-year-old with fingers twisted by arthritis. Both passed the demanding standard of speed- and accuracy-intensive courses of fire requiring 90% scores to pass.
“Use enough gun” and “have enough ammo.” Givens himself daily carries a full-size 18-round 9mm service pistol and two spare magazines of Federal 124-grain +P HST hollow points. He won’t allow less than a 9mm pistol in his instructor class. He thinks carrying a backup gun is a good idea.
Givens thinks armed citizens can learn a lot from police gunfights. In this class, he did a detailed review of the notorious 1986 FBI shootout in Miami that changed so much in police training and armament.
He noted two agents who had only revolvers emptied their five or six rounds and were shot before they could reload. He pointed out the two killers who murdered two agents and crippled several more had gotten their getaway cars by going to informal plinking ranges and killing shooters to steal their guns and vehicles, including the Mini-14 that inflicted all the casualties on police.
Though it was one long firefight, Givens showed how the incident really broke down into several gunfights between the perpetrators and the lawmen which took place in a very tight timeframe. Finally, he underlined the fallacy of assuming one’s opponent is incompetent — the two killers were military vets who were deemed highly competent by their commanders and who practiced 1,500 rounds a week with their own weapons prior to the shootout.
Never assume one certificate from one instructor school has taught you everything. Givens takes training from other instructors every year, as does this writer. Surviving deadly force encounters is a complicated, multi-dimensional discipline, each element of which can be a life study in and of itself. Tom Givens and his Rangemaster team are one of the best sources an instructor can access to enhance his or her own ability to teach good people to survive life-threatening attacks.
ME: This is the Goods, To all the Noobie’s and Experienced Gunner’s. IF your TRAINING isn’t where you want it to be FIND A QUALIFIED INSTRUCTOR WHO DOESN’T PUT HIS FINGER ON THE TRIGGER OR POINT THE WEAPON @ HIMSELF!. If you don’t 100% TRUST your Instructor—-FIND ANOTHER ONE! Same as Your LAWYER (Finding a USCCA LAWYER you feel comfortable with so if the dreaded time you have a shoot! He or She will have your back! DO THIS CONTACTING IN ADVANCE!. Put that Lawyer on ‘Speed dial’!
Life is getting Critical now in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s ASSASSINATION.WE ARE IN THE CROSSHAIRS.
Surround yourself with Folk’s you TRUST, Let go of ‘Sketchy’ people. You don’t need them in your Wheelhouse.
The Firearm on your hip or in your possession is not a DESIGNER ACCESSORY! It is PROTECTION FROM THE WORLDS EVIL’S! It’s NOT A TOY and left in a drawer WILL NOT TRAIN YOU OR ITSELF! If you don’t TRAIN UP that Firearm may be used against you to end your life and the lives of your Family.
IF you don’t ‘get right’ in your mind that STOPPING THE THREAT needs to be done without HESITATING sell that Gun and by a Pickle ball racket!
Listen to the Gunner’s on this Forum (NOT THE TROLLS!) IGNORE THEM! (Literally) Most know their stuff!, listen to the folk’s who actually speak of Situational Awareness, Firearm’s handling, Proper care and Storage etc etc. (and Cooking! Some of these folk’s can cook up a storm! 
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I’ll get off my soap box after I say this: TRUST YOU INSTINCTS! If it sounds like Bullsh!t (and that’s anything in your life!) Video’s, Articles, Posts, Comments from Co-workers, MSM (is ALL BULLSH!T!) scroll and delete!.
Life is too short to believe BAD INTEL!
WWG1WGA
HOLD THE LINE
