Your worst class experience?

[Wheeler]

You know, I find it amazing that some of the schools and instructors get so focused on gear. I've been to classes where everything from revolvers to Glocks to Sigs to some sort of 1911 showed up on the line and all were well run by their particular driver.

Even more impressive after reading some of these posts is that the instructors(s) were able to work with all the students and the idiosyncracies of their particular platform, holster system, and ammo loadout.

I suppose I was spoiled by the first instructors I took classes from, I sort of thought they all did things that way.

Wheeler

[LittleLebowski]

I was covering a class for a magazine articled that ended up never getting written, much less published. The class was billed as an advanced skills class, so I showed up with my USPSA Single Stack rig. I spent much of TD1 being told how competition will get you killed "on the street". Everyone else in the class looked like three pages from the Mall Ninja catalog. The rest of TD1 was spent explaining how 1911s were terrible guns that would get you killed "on the street"; as I was the only student running a 1911...you get the picture. I called my editor that night and said "I can't write an article about these people."

I have an idea who this was. PM inbound.

[TCinVA]

Dunno about the "worst", but getting zapped in the stones with a sims round when you've forgotten to put on a cup would probably suck.

Narrowly avoided that fate today.

[Jay Cunningham]

Dunno about the "worst", but getting zapped in the stones with a sims round when you've forgotten to put on a cup would probably suck.

Narrowly avoided that fate today.

You won't forget the cup in ECQC.

[JDM]

Dunno about the "worst", but getting zapped in the stones with a sims round when you've forgotten to put on a cup would probably suck.

Narrowly avoided that fate today.

You're like a sig-line factory.

[Jay Cunningham]

You're like a sig-line factory.

Awesome.

[ToddG]

I moved the discussion about firearms periodical articles here:
http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.p...rms-Periodical

[JDM]

My worst class experience was the mandatory AZ CCW class. The instructor was a goof ball and was constantly singling me out when he would ask the class questions. It was two days after my 21st birthday which I'm sure had plenty to do with it, still inappropriate.

Once I had made it clear that I was well versed in both self defense statute, and my weapon, he focused his bullshittery elsewhere.

[evanhill]

Sometimes "that guy" can be an amusement, and sometimes he can be a danger. We had a guy in a recent class who checked out OK ahead of time (pretty decent IDPA shooter) but ended up not being quite so OK. This was the guy wearing the SEAL Team hat who "got it in Hawaii because he thought it was cool". Even after some gentle comments and offers of other hats to wear, he insisted on wearing his hat. Dude never got the clue. He was just lucky that there were no Navy guys in the class -- just a couple of Army guys. At any rate, a training bro and I picked up on some hints at meal time that this guy probably had a mental condition. Nothing clear cut enough to really bring it up with the instructor, just an intuition. When I mentioned this to my training bro, his response was "yes, and sometimes he can shoot pretty well". A lightbulb went off in my head. I've made it a point to always have at least one weapon in condition 1 handy at public ranges. Hadn't really extended that logic to a training class. Knowing the instructor, he was probably on top of the situation anyway. He did emotionally dominate the student at one point in a face to face, quiet voiced, Army sergeant kind of way. Low key enough that most of the students probably didn't notice. Thinking about it later, that may have been a deliberate and important test of whether or not the guy got to stay.

This kind of brings up an issue. How do instructors share their NFE lists (other than not very well)? My brother hosts classes every year or so and ended up with a guy in class that he later learned had been NFEd by Pat Rogers already. The guy hadn't been outed on a board or anything, so how would you know? My brother followed suit and quietly NFEd him from any classes that he hosts, but didn't out the guy in any public way. (there were no incidents other than general jackassery in the classes he was in with us, but he was NFEd on the strength of Pat Rogers' NFE). Within the next year, the guy showed up at a course in Colorado where there was a safety incident and he had to leave the class early. Yet there seemed to be no outing after that either. So, for you instructors, do you see this as a problem and if so what's the solution?

[irishshooter]

outside of the usual "suspects".......Officer Ego, Johhny Knowitall, Instructor Drill Seargant, etc. as long as i get what i came for its all gravy. the only "bad class experiences" i've had have been safety infraction related.

At a recent Advanced Pistol/FOF course a "retired" Marine firearms instructor, "senior" NRA instructor who had "over 30 years" of instruction under his belt walked over to a group of us talking to the course instructor with his pistol in his hand. we were off the line, pistols holstered in between COF. he proceeded to sweep us all with his pistol, chamber was not displayed as open, not like this wouldve changed anything regardless. we all quickly move out of his general area and the instructor "gestures" and yells to him to holster his weapon and then nearly stuffed it back in this guys holster cause he was too busy arguing that the gun wasnt loaded while telling us we needed to "calm down....i just need to show you something". douche