I predict resistance.
NRA has a vested interest in its concealed-carry training. (Anything spun as Right-to-Carry, but needs a permission slip, tells you something.)
It might not be a bad idea to prepare or pre-empt resistance. Those boys got credibility with pro-gun legislators, and tons of advocacy experience. Make them feel defensive, or get a few NRA CCW instructors whining against you because you're impacting their economics, and I think you can find yourself running into roadblocks.
Don't under-estimate this, nor give it insufficient consideration. NRA has become a bureaucracy. It has laudable goals, too. But, like any bureaucracy, its first mission is to perpetuate itself.
Well said, and any signficant effort may very well be met with resistance from the NRA, vetted with arguements including "we've been doing this for 100 years; how can our approach be wrong or inadequate?" The easiest response would be that their focus is primarily on long guns and concealed carry, and therefore misses the boat with respect to open carry, not to mention intermediate and advanced urban armed defense tactics and techniques.
I have thought a lot about that too, and the conclusion that I have come to is I am going to go around them as well as profess that they are "Just as good" until such time as this system has equal credability.
I am not trying to side step them, I am just looking for a standard that fills their gaps in training. I believe that the best way to do that is to create a standard that comes from those with actual experience as opposed to some guy looking through books and thinking something would be cool to try.
Good approach, Calico. If you want credibility, it'll have to be nation-wide and with a catchy name. How about the North American Firearms Training Academy, or NAFTA?
Oh, wait... :banghead:
Ok, let's try American Association of Firearms Safety and Training Instructors aka AAFSATI. Just a quick stab on the name; lots of room for improvement.
As for training standards and drills... A safety course can be compiled from a handful of firearms owners' manuals, as well as resources such as Jeff Cooper's Wikipedia entry. Meanwhile, many websites out there have collected various drills employed by both military as well as various state and federal law enforcement agencies.
But why reinvent the wheel?
Here's perhaps the best collection of safety and various firearms drills I've ever found on the Internet. Be sure to review Parts 2 and 3, as well. Meanwhile,
this resource includes both the FBI and Federal Air Marshal training standards.
I've never been a firearms instructor per se', but I was a military instructor, certified in the Air Force's ISD, or Instructional Systems Development, and have developed many formal military training courses of instruction, often from scratch.
From what I hear you saying, you're looking for perhaps a multi-level course, say either Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, or Levels I, II, and III, where Level I would meet all state handgun safety and training requirements for those needing a permit to either OC or CC. Level II might involve additional techniques such weapons retention and the use of barriers and obstacles. Level III would then be relegated to defensive and offensive handgun tactics under fire, as well as basic hand-to-hand combat techniques including blocks, defensive disarmament of a shooter, and takedowns.
Yes, instructors would be helpful! However, for a course of study and training to be accepted at state levels, you will need a trained educator certified at the federal level to help develop and most importantly document it in accordance with both state and federal training/educational standards. Goals, objectives, standards of measure/performance, along with many other aspects would need to be addressed in a three-volume system, including an Administrator's Guide, an Instructor's Manual, and a Student Workbook, for each of the three levels. If you wanted to get fancy, slides incorporating short video clips demonstrating right and wrong ways of doing things would be required, as well.
As a freelance technical writer, this sort of project is well within my grasp, but if someone were to approach me to do it, I would charge them $100,000 in equal monthly installments, plus expenses, with a time frame of 1 year. That is what is required in order to do the job
right.
I'm not speaking out of the side of my mouth, here. I'm speaking as a former Assistant Chief of Academics at a major military school who also consulted in the complete redesign of all the courseware of another significant military school.
ETA:
Here's another well-written set of drills. However, it's a set of drills, not a training course.
