I co-taught a Concealed Carry and Home Defense Fundamentals class last night. I always forget how much I love teaching until I get in front of a class.
There are certain questions I’ve come to expect while teaching and then there are off the wall questions I’ve never considered.
Well, it was more of an action and a question at the same time…
I had this poor lady, while we were taking the shooting part of the chp to ask me if I would not mind loading her mag for her. while I didn’t mind, I was not sure if that would be okay.
After being told it was alright, this poor lady had stuffed two bullets backwards in the magazine. I’m not sure HOW she got them to go in…
But once I instructed her the right way to put the ammunition in the magazine, I assured her it would be a lot easier now! She had no trouble from that point forward.
There’s a universal loader for magazine fed handguns that is so much easier on arthritic hands it should be in. every instructors bag.
I do concur(Everytime I say that I think about Leonardo from that movie with him and Tom hanks, I can’t for the life of me think of the name now).
I do give the poor lady props for somehow managing to fit those in backwards…it had to of took some incredible strength.
I had the question from the student about whether lasers are better (thus the other thread).
We had a question about the best way to carry and the lead instructor started talking about IWB/OWB, 3’Oclock, appendix etc…I let him finish before I spoke up and advised the ladies that in addition to carrying on/around the waste there were a number of other on-body/off-carry options that may also work for them and gave them a number of resources they could go to (including articles from Beth A) to see other options that might work best for them (it was a “Girls and Guns” class and unfortunately our two female instructors couldn’t make it and some of the guys forgot to “bridge.”)
The question that I most expect (and usually get) is “what gun is best for carrying.” We obviously told them the gun that works best for them (men and women). One of the other instructors did a nice job of explaining that THEY needed to go in hold the gun, fire it see how they liked it etc vs just taking advice from their significant other and then we went into the irony of how many times the significant others will recommend the “cute” petite .380’s vs larger size platforms and how the recoil on those is actually worse than the larger handguns and they needed to take that into consideration also not just concealability (the ladies all agreed when we finished firing at the range that the .380 ACP we had was less comfortable than any of the 9mm we had out there for them).
We had a couple of shooters who were completely new to guns start loading their magazines backwards also. We were using maglulas so it was easy to just slide the round in once it was depressed.
I helped load only for the sake of time, but made sure all of the students got plenty of opportunity to load their own (since the instructors weren’t going to be around to do it for them down the line, might as well get the practice in now and get it right).
"Excuse me, what is a Glock?"
Lady asked after CCL Instructor showed us his carry pistol saying “That’s a Glock”.
That wasn’t awesome… but somehow unique 
Yes, sir…I thought the same thing…
After reading your response, I’m guessing this is pretty common, right?
With my limited experience, yes I’ve found it fairly common and I’m not quite sure why.
I always wondered why handgun magazines didn’t take a que from the magpul AR magazines which show which way they bullet is supposed to go (maybe some do and I just haven’t seen them).
One question I’ve never heard and wish we covered in our classes, is field stripping the weapon and cleaning it…probably because I have “clean gun OCD” but I think it would still be a helpful segment to cover.
I’ve seen the backwards loads too. I can’t remember having that trouble myself, but 5 or six people so far have done it in the last year, so I guess it’s a thing.
Field stripping and actually carrying everyday are also big.
Also, can I shoot bad guy if he’s running away.
I do agree…
They should have classes on cleaning the weapon!!! I wonder if in the beginner’s course at RRR they do have this in the teachings…hmmm, it would be good to see, and if not maybe throw it in there!
@Sully_LST, it’s crazy you bring this up, while I’m not an instructor, I have debates all the time on this question all the time on social media. They will say, “I have castle doctrine in my state.”
People, I SWEAR!!
I was actually in a car incident and the guy ran away, I can’t say shooting him in his back ever crossed my mind…
For some people that might not be the case.
Sometimes you wonder if people value human life as well as the repercussions that follow after shooting someone running away…you would think this is common sense, but common sense is not oh so common these days.
I actually had a kid in a class that was a spitting image of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory wearing a Green Lantern tee shirt staring thoughtfully at a Ruger GP-100 that asked me
Him: How do I set this to STUN
Me: (After looking to see if he was serious and debating on several reply’s) You take your finger OFF the trigger and smack him on the top of the head with it.
Him: The rubber part or the shiny part?
Me: Either one will do fine. (He seemed satisfied with that answer)
He also went on to do precisely what I had said in class and turned in a VERY respectable group.
Cheers,
Craig6
About 30 minutes into the classroom portion my instructor asked if any of us had noticed she was concealed carrying right now? I was the only one that raised their hand. She asked me to identify where the firearm was located.
She was height challenged and AIWB carrying with a tight almost spandex top as the cover garment. She said I was the first student to ever notice it (where is the bang my head against the wall emoji?)
That’s a classic move us instructors do. I’m typically in a dress shirt and sweater vest. I’m super anti-tactical. I love the move of explaining holster positions by revealing AIWB.
My boss, Bob Margolis, looks like the typical 60 year old golfer — until he starts pulling out flashlights, folding knives and med packs. The CAT TQ is always a hit too.
Agreed, but many of us need to get through the basic safety stuff. The training company I work for developed a course called “Beyond Basic Pistol.” It’s only 20% classroom and 80%. At the end of the shooting we help people disassemble and clean their guns.
Maybe look for classes like that in your area.
My CPL instructor not only covered it but had every student do it.
Yep.
Also this…
“So this guy keeps bothering me and asking me out. I keep telling him to go away. If he doesn’t, can I just shoot him?”
… not my class and not my student… and the instructor spent some time talking with her then excused her before we got to the range qual. 
Just going with Not Ready for CPL.
I’ve had alot of students load ammunition backwards, I developed a little saying “bullets towards the bad guy” people seem to get it when I say that.
I’ve also had people try to FORCE magazines backwards (even though the bullets were loaded properly in the magazine).
Question for the instructors. So, you’ve gotten a similar question repeatedly. Why not just incorporate the question as part of your presentation?
Can’t speak for others but for us it’s engagement. We want them to ask questions and discuss not just download one way to them. So we leave a few spaces open where we know there will be questions and use that as leap off points for discussions. If the questions aren’t asked we make sure we bring them up as discussion points in other parts of the lesson.