Int’l Firearm Specialist Academy Seminar course review, Osceola County FL 8/27-29/18

Last year I happened to be surfing the net looking for something (can’t remember what) and came across a website called http://www.gunlearn.com and on a whim I clicked on the link. What I found intrigued me. GunLearn and the IFSA put on seminars that are all about understanding federal firearm laws. Anything from filling out the 4473 to the GCA to NFA and everything in between. By taking the seminars (or doing on line courses) and then passing 14 different timed online tests, you get a certification as a Certified Firearm Specialist. Now, depending on what your reason for taking the seminar is you may have no need to actually take the tests.

I do all of the test firing of firearms for any of our criminal cases which do not need a ballistic match because our lab won’t do them anymore. I’ve been doing it for the last few years. And since I’m the local gun geek I’ve helped other agencies out with their cases. I’m currently part of a federal case involving unregistered machine guns and silencers that originated in ‘15 when I was asked to help the Sheriff’s Office out. Since I’ve never had any formal training in FEDERAL firearm laws I decided to see if my agency would send me to this since there’s a very real chance I’ll be on the stand one day having to testify about some sort of federal firearm crime. Since they typically won’t send us out of state for a class like this I asked em to just pay the tuition and use the days as my duty days. I paid for all the travel expenses (I took my wife and we made it a workation). They agreed.

So my wife booked the trip and off we went to sunny Orlando (Osceola County is next door). On Monday, class started promptly at 0800. The instructor for the course was Dan Okelly. Dan had @30 years of LE experience before retiring. Dan started his career as a local cop in northern IN. He then went to the ATF and spent 23 years as an Agent. Dan was one of the guys who wrote the curriculum for the ATF’s Agent training block on federal firearm laws. Of course, bureaucratic BS reduced the number of hours and content of what was suggested. After he retired he began teaching this seminar around the country and acts as a consultant and expert witness. Unlike some ATF Agents I’ve met, he knows the federal statutes forward and backward.

There were 20 of us in the course, pretty evenly split between sworn and non sworn folks. The non sworn were a mixture of CSI/Crime lab types and several gun industry folks, including a couple from Knight’s Armament, which is just down the road in Titusville. The course was broken down into 14 distinct blocks. We covered everything imaginable, starting with the legal definitions of firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968. You gotta know what makes a firearm a firearm before you can move on. Each day was packed with information. The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office opened up their vault of seized guns and let us use many of them for hands on training purposes, which made this a very hands on course since they had lots of different interesting seized guns (think belt fed ‘chine guns, Rusky WW2 subguns and lots of others).

There were blocks on:
- firearm classification under the GCA
- nomenclature
- all the different NFA weapons
- ammunition
- proof marks
- cycle of operation
- mechanical types of operation
- testifying in court
- establishing an interstate nexus (only important if you’re doing a criminal case)
- Curio and Relics
- safety and clearing
- tracing a firearm

For a little background, I’ve been in the firearm or firearm training industry in some fashion for 30 years. I started working in a gun shop when I was 15 (it helps when your brother in laws family owns a big gun shop) stocking shelves, then working sales, then some light gun repair, then working for a gunsmith specializing in NFA weapons while I was in college, then after I got into LE I started teaching firearms classes. So I like to think I know a lot about firearms and firearm laws. I can honestly say I knew a lot more than the average gun owner, but I was shocked at how much I learned in this course. I knew I was going to learn new stuff, but the amount of information presented was amazing. It was humbling. Some of the folks in the class had little to no prior firearms knowledge and I can only assume they were completely overloaded with the amount of info presented.

This was not just a lecture course. A couple of times, Dan would pass out different firearms to everyone and have us research the firearm like we would if we were going to be testifying about it in a criminal case. After we did the research, Dan would act as the “Defense Attorney” and “cross examine” us asking us questions about the firearm we had researched. I found these portions extremely valuable, even when I wasn’t the one “testifying” and just watched the other students being grilled. Dan’s years of experience allowed him to use real world examples of times he has had to testify in court or consult with attorneys on cases.

Another useful module was on field testing firearms to determine if they’ve converted to full auto. I knew how to do this before the course, but it was nice to know what I’ve been doing is what is taught in the course.

All in all, this was one of the best courses I’ve attended in a long time. My goals in taking this class were kind of twofold. 1. Help me help my agency in federal firearm cases. We’ve been lacking in using the federal system for some of the turds we deal with. And 2. make sure I don’t look like an idiot on the stand if I do have to testify in a federal firearms case. This course met my expectations.

So, now I have 6 months to take the 14 online test modules. If I don’t take them by then, I lose out on the opportunity to do so. And they can’t be taken again and again and again. And they’re timed.

If I have one criticism, it’s that the course was not long enough. I totally understand the reasoning in the 3 day format (easier to get LE agencies to send guys to a 3 day than a 5 day), but I wish we spent another day or 2 going over case studies and doing more research and mock testifying.

I’ll let ya know if (I mean when) I pass the tests.