Training Junkies

 Lot of talk lately about training junkies when it comes to classes. I noted several years ago that any training company that isn't nationally known (Gunsite) is likely to have 150-250 students, and those same students keep showing up, class after class. This is probably why some instructors do a lot of traveling, otherwise they'd be dealing with the same group, and that group by its very nature won't typically be enough to sustain somebody who is dependent upon this for their sole source of income. This article isn't really about income levels and professional instruction, but I will note that it isn't easy to make tons of income in this space. The number of instructors you know that are making their entire living from this endeavor is small. (Many have pensions from LE, other revenue streams, etc.)

So the real conundrum as an instructor is how to coax the tons of firearms owners out there into classes. Not the junkies, but the other people. Depending on who you want to believe, somewhere around 17 million guns were sold in the USA in 2022 alone. Now obviously many of those guns were sold to people that already own guns, but even a small percentage of that number going to new owners means that the potential audience for firearms instruction isn't shrinking.

A lot of those new firearms owners do take one class: concealed carry. They aren't interested in any further instruction, and the only reason that they did the CC class was due to state requirements. In their mind no other instruction is wanted or needed. As a side note, I don't want anybody to have to take a class or training in order to exercise any right. But I do want them to pursue training because they desire to, not out of any requirement. If I've seen anything, it is that governments do love to heap requirements on people's ability to carry a gun, and at some point it becomes so difficult, time consuming, and expensive, that most won't bother. This disproportionately affects lower income individuals, and so those requirements are really an exceptional tax on the poor.

If there were some reliable way to convert the CC class attendee into a student of other classes, it would definitely stimulate the training economy. If you've figured that part out, you're definitely winning. If I have noted anything, it is that most shooters are getting their education about shooting from the online world. In some cases I've seen people really do well from that, but I have also seen people miss substantive things through an incomplete education in that venue.

I taught a private lesson to a family several months ago. They were avid shooters, but didn't have a lot of understanding about achieving accuracy with a pistol. One of the family members talked to me about learning from Garand Thumb. Not that GT doesn't know what he's doing, but 99% of his channel is really entertainment. He is the online version of "come to a show, be entertained, possibly get some info." There are several instructors out there that do the same thing in person. Cool stories, engaging personality, and you go shooting with them, but any reliable feedback on your skill and abilities is rare.

So, if you have figured out how to get more gun owners into classes, share! I know Maj Toure is doing it community activism style, and that seems to be working for him. I ask these questions completely selflessly, as I only do private lessons currently. Open enrollment classes don't have a lot of upside for me right now, and my day job is also firearms instruction, so that is enough for me. But I would like to see the training community grow beyond the same group of people who keep coming back. (No offense to you guys, and I enjoy seeing you at every class I attend, but some new faces would probably be good for us all!)

I know some of the hurdles already: fear of failure, fear of the unknown, remote training locations, austere training locations, cost, travel time, and I'm sure there are others. Solving a lot of these issues would require a substantive and ongoing investment that most instructors either can't or won't afford, which is why you see classes held out in a remote field with a porta-potty if you're lucky. Things like running water and HVAC are luxuries when it comes to this training community as it currently exists.

Did I mention that I'm open to ideas?

The Importance of the Pre Season

 Just like a sports team, when it comes to my training season, I do pre-season work to prepare for the hijinks.

Some of it is probably obvious, like going to the range and making sure that everything I demo is squared away. That's just the surface level stuff, though. I shoot often enough that I don't really need to do much of a run up, as I'm almost always at the range. I may take some detours into things I'm trying to improve on, like raw speed.

All of my lesson plans get reviewed at a minimum. Anything that needs to be changed, will obviously get changed. Some things get out of date quickly, and some things evolve. The lesson plans I'm using are nowhere near the same ones as even two years ago.

Power points also get reviewed and freshened up with new photos, graphics, and any changes that need to be made to properly reflect the lesson plans.

All of the equipment that I'm going to be using gets looked over and checked to make sure it is all in working order. Anything not meeting specifications gets repaired or replaced.

I also have to order consumables for the season. The biggest of which is targets. I don't want to tell you how many targets we go through, it is pretty crazy. I go out of my way to reduce waste, but some of it is unavoidable. Other consumables: gun cleaning stuff, spray glue, dummy rounds, binder clips, wooden stakes, and batteries.

Much more recently I've been going out of my way to physically prepare myself. Contrast that with years previously where I was just letting myself get fatter and more out of shape. I could get away with that at a younger age, but now that I'm more "senior," I need to be more proactive about my physical abilities. There's a lot to go into with this, but suffice it to say that I'm doing a lot of weights and supplemental cardio. I'm doing all of that more with an eye toward injury prevention. I don't need to go giving myself a case of rhabdomyolysis. (Been there, done that. Not fun.)

What do you do in order to prepare for your work? Do you find any similarities between that and me? I'm curious, let me know.

2024: It is going to get interesting!

 Election years are always difficult if you are a shooter, especially in terms of ammunition availability and pricing. Every election seems to generate the same sturm und drang: THE END OF DEMOCRACY and such. While I don't think that much hinges on a presidential election in the USA, they are certainly important, but this discussion isn't really about that.

What I'm concerned about really centers on the aforementioned inability to get bang bang fodder, but there are related issues. If we get riots, if there's another pandemic, if we have lockdowns, if the planets align a certain way, etc., things will get difficult in general, not just when it comes to trying to buy a few boxes (or cases) of 9mm. While I can't even begin to predict what can or will happen in the next 12 months, I suspect it'll be a bumpy ride.

Now is a good time to start considering those potential issues, so if you haven't already, I'd buy a few extra cases of ammunition. It won't go bad, and it isn't like you won't use it! Whatever you usually buy for practice, buy some more. If you have the budget, I'd buy the whole year's worth right now, and then continue to supplement it as time and and cash flow allows. 

If you reload your own ammo, get primers and powder now. It is all available and while it isn't cheap, it is probably as cheap as it is going to be. (And that sucks, but this is reality, not "what should be.") And for that matter, if you don't reload, but you always wanted to start, DO IT NOW. I even put together a video about it, which you can watch here. 

There are obviously other considerations. In general, having 72 hours worth of shelf stable food and water in the house never hurt anybody. Make sure you have a decent first aid kit along with some trauma level stuff in the event of the worst. Know how to use it all.

Take care of you and your family, as I fear things will get weird. If you live in a major city, have a plan to bug in and bug out. I hope I'm wrong and that 2024 is a very uneventful year, but as things keep repeating, I doubt that it will.

Lastly, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! Despite the fears that I have, I also have high hopes for us all. Be well!

Maine Shot Holmes' Target

 

A deceptively simple target, as well as a drill that is low in round count, for those of you trying to save your shekels. You can download it here.

America: We're fat and we're hurting

 Fat kid checking in here. I know, you've probably seen more recent photos and videos and said something like, "Hey, he isn't fat!" Well through a lot of effort and drugs, I'm currently not fat. But that said, I got a fat kid trapped in my body, and if he gets his way, he'll come out hard and fast, so I have to keep him contained. Trust me when I speak from the experience and perspective of being a fat kid.

My most recent weight loss has had several friends and acquaintances coming to talk to me privately about losing weight. I'm trying to help them as best as I can, but I know that I have some advantages and not everybody shares those.

But the mere fact that these people are coming to me tells me that there are a lot of people who are struggling with their weight. I know that there is a whole movement out there, "healthy at any weight," but some heavy people are neither healthy or happy with where they are at. And for every person coming to me, there have to be some uncounted number of people that I'm not aware of, that are just having real troubles.

The human body has evolved to feed itself. If we don't do that, we die, and so hunger is a strong drive. For the vast majority of our history, we've been under-fed, and it is just in the very recent time we live that calories are in wild surplus. Add in to that the "food" industry, kicking out engineered food like products that have very little nourishment, and we're in a really bad place when it comes to being able to stay lean. Bad calories are cheap and easy, and so the fight to eat decently is real. The other issue is that those engineered foods tend to not cause satiety, which means that you just want to keep eating way past what your caloric requirements are. Over time, eating like that will really cause hormonal issues, and that is where I found myself back in January of this year.

The good news, the wild hope, is the new spate of GLP-1 agonist class drugs, such as Semiglutide, Tirzepatide, and similar. Of course, they are quite new when it comes to drugs, and therefore long term use of them is an ongoing study. One of which I am voluntarily participating in, obviously. I talked to a doctor friend of mine, and he thinks these drugs are going to change the face of obesity, diabetes, and related mortality causes. Then again, due to their newness, they're experiencing shortages, and when they are available, they aren't cheap. If we're not careful, this could quite readily turn into a haves vs. have-nots, where the rich can easily stay thin and healthy, whereas the economically challenged have no such benefits. Generic versions of these drugs are years away, certainly because of how big pharma is making money hand over fist when it comes to obesity treatments.

I am sincerely hoping that by next year the availability of these drugs will go up and the cost will go down. With any luck those among us who can't afford these drugs now will be able to in short order. I'm hoping that these drugs will continue to work well for people and that there are no hidden gotchas. Of course, if there are any long-term gotchas, I'll probably be able to tell you, as I'm going to keep taking these drugs. Paraphrasing Charleton Heston, "you can take them from my cold dead hands."

I've lost over 40 lbs, largely due to Tirzepatide. Mrs. Graydog has lost over 50 lbs doing the same thing. Heck, she's the one who found out about this drug and showed me how well it worked. It has been life-changing for both of us. We were in really bad health before, and the difference is night and day. Tirzepatide kick started me eating a good diet, getting in real workouts, and actually giving a shit again about my health. I'm hoping and praying that even if Tirzepatide won't work for you, that there is a solution on the near horizon, especially if you're one of my silent and hurting friends.

And if you are hurting out there and you want to talk to me about it, please do. I won't judge, because duh, I've been there. But for certain drugs and other factors, I'd still be there. A change of life or circumstances, and I could go back. I'm 6 months into being healthier, but that also means I'm really only 6 months out from being just as bad as I was.

So there's good and bad news in this post. Even if you can't afford or don't want a drug, you have more power within you than you give yourself credit for. You can be better than you were, and if you do it every day for a while, you'll be really amazed with your results.

Extraction 2: A Wild Ride, but Suspend Your Disbelief!

This was an excellent flick, and I am happy that Netflix has stepped into the gap to do some action flicks that don't hit the big screens any more. I don't know that I realized just how much I miss such films until I sat down to watch Extraction 2. If it weren't for films like this, there wouldn't be much in the way of action stars. I know that you're probably jumping up and down going, hey, what about John Wick? Well, except for that one. But if you saw JW4, you know that film arc has come to a close. But I digress...

Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as Tyler Rake, a military vet turned contractor. If you saw the last film, you know that our lead character took some serious injuries and it implied that he was dead, or at least his continued life was seriously in question. This film opens with a quick recap of that fateful end of the first film, and you'll quickly have to suspend your disbelief when it comes to the amount of damage that our hero can soak up and keep living. I won't spoil it, but just assume that he's a super hero and able to put up with things that would kill any normal human, or any several humans.

Speaking of the John Wick franchise, the action and fight scenes in Extraction are grittier than the JW series, although there are certainly gun-fu elements in both, as well as a great mix of martial arts surrounding the gunplay. I'm reminded of John Woo in his heyday, and if you've never seen any of those films, your next stop should be Hard Boiled. You'll thank me later.

One thing about Extraction 2 is that the other team members working with Tyler Rake are excellent as well, and action stars in their own right. A set piece this big wouldn't work without some other actors doing some really amazing work. Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Bessa are really the unsung heroes of this film, because everybody knows Chris Hemsworth and he is a herculean on screen presence. Farahani and Bessa don't come with the same level of reputation, but still hold their own.

We even end up with some emotional attachment to various characters because of their relationships and what happens to them all. A lot of action films seem devoid of this, but Extraction 2 gives this homage without being overly saccharine. 

If you like action films at all, I highly recommend this!

Concealed Carry Class

I just started teaching a class that meets the training requirements for a Virginia Concealed Handgun Permit. I hadn't bothered with it previously, having no real demand for it, but a colleague wanted one for one of his family members, and wanted something that wasn't cookie cutter. 

I put together that class. If I were to summarize it, it is probably 99% how NOT to shoot somebody, which, in my opinion, is important. If somebody wanted a class espousing going out and trying to find somebody to shoot, this is definitely not that class. This class covers the following:

• Firearms Safety
• Legal Concerns
• Elements of Lethal Force
• Civil Liability
• Situational Awareness
• Conflict Avoidance
• Common Sense Concerns
• Home Safety
• Places Where Carry is Prohibited
• Basic Firearms Fundamentals
• Concealed Carry Draws

This class is 75% classroom, 25% range. If you're looking to get a basic "how to shoot" class, this isn't it, it is much more concerned with keeping you safe and legal.

I am only doing this class by appointment, 1-3 students is where I'm at right now, I won't take more than 3 at this time. I doubt I will do more than 2 or 3 of them in any given year. I'm not trying to be busy every weekend, but I know that some of my colleagues and former students are looking for something that will certify them for a Virginia CHP, and so I'm offering this on a very limited basis.

If you are interested in this class for you or a friend or relative, email me: juan.laluz@graydogllc.com, and I will get you details.