Originally Posted by
Dan Lehr
I agree with what you've posted.
I think that your 'trainee is properly motivated' is absolutely spot on. I feel that many of the students I helped train, especially the female officers, approached firearms training with a great deal of trepidation. They went in with the notion that they were not going to enjoy firearms training and, of course that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We can do a lot to remove that mindset, but unfortunately the rigid, this many hours, this many rounds, regardless of the weather, schedules which permeate LE training are ill-suited to address many of the concerns.
The students in your Gunsite 250 were motivated to be there because they saw a need for the training, which is one of the first hurdles to be cleared when instructing adults.
In a recent thread Bill Jordan, Charles Askins and Skeeter Skelton, the old Border Patrol shooters, were mentioned. Their motivation to be great shooters was probably the fact that during that era, and in that location, it was said they were involved in a gunfight on an average of once every ten days. Easy to see why the Border Patrol produced such shooters.
Contrast that with the officer from an agency that doesn't have many officer-involved shootings on patrol. In those circumstances, the officer may not be persuaded to feel the need to be a gunfighter is the most pressing skill to develop. If it were, those particular folks would have already self-selected out.
I often found myself looking at student officers and wondering what drove their career choice? Why does a slightly built, short statured person choose to become a police officer? Isn't it apparent to them that even with good conditioning, and good skills, a 130-pound versus 240-pound ground fight isn't likely to do their way?
It won't happen to me is a powerful thought for the trainer to overcome.
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