The Cornered Cat
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Instructor Ethics 101
April 4, 2013

When you step up to teach a self-defense class, you are literally asking students to bet their lives on the quality of the information you have and on your ability to teach it to them. This is no exaggeration, but just the simple truth. Students come to you looking for the knowledge and skill that can save their lives some dark night. If you fail to teach them well, if you teach them the wrong things, if you give them half an answer or a bad answer, they may pay for your failure with their heart’s blood. Understanding this – really understanding it – should scare you down to your toenails. It should force you to become better and better as a shooter, as a teacher, as a learner, as a student of self-defense. It should jar you out of complacency and drive you to do your best with every class you teach. People’s lives are in your hands.

Sometimes I fear that not all firearms instructors understand this. “I’m just teaching beginners,” I have heard some say – as if they have some private guarantee that none of their beginners will ever really need the things they teach. Or as if it doesn’t matter whether a beginner is started right. But even a beginner needs a solid foundation they can safely build upon, not some half-hearted construct cobbled together of cardboard and glue and hope.

I have even heard some handgun instructors deny that they are teaching self-defense. “It’s just a carry permit class,” they say — as if people carry guns for any other purpose. Or, “I’m just teaching them to use a handgun, that’s all.” But if your students think otherwise, if they come to you to learn skills they think they can use to protect themselves and their loved ones, you’re still on the hook. It’s so tempting to engage in these kinds of denials, and maybe that’s a more comfortable place for us to live as instructors, but it does our students no good.

There’s something related, scary, within the women’s side of the firearms world right now. Maybe it’s always been there, and I’m just becoming more attuned to it. But I keep running into this idea that we can give our students what they need without ever challenging them, without ever pushing their skills and without any risk of hurting their feelings. Everything must always be fun, fun, fun – sweetness and light and hallelujah! But … when we’re talking about self-defense, we’re actually talking about some very serious matters. We can and do have fun on the range, but it’s fun with a deadly serious purpose. And sometimes that purpose will drive us straight through the heart some very personal territory, which is the kind of journey you cannot take without risk.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a strong believer in encouraging words and positive attitudes. At the same time, those encouraging words should be true, and they should be appropriate. There are times when the most encouraging, appropriate thing to say to your student is, “You can do better than that.” It is good and right to celebrate success, but even better to celebrate earned success.

For me, I have always had a struggle with wanting my students to like me, to think I’m a nice person and fun to be around. Most of the time, there’s nothing wrong with that. But my students don’t come to me to be my pals. They come to me to learn. If my desire to be super nice and super sweet actually gets them killed someday, then I haven’t been nice to them at all.

In order to fulfill my most important responsibility to my students, I have to risk pushing them beyond their comfort levels. And I have to do it in a way that will cause them to work harder rather than to shut down. If I’m not willing to take that risk for the sake of my students’ lives, I have no right to call myself a self-defense instructor.

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Mom Voice
April 3, 2013

One of the most significant challenges I have faced as an instructor: making my voice work well enough for every student on the range to easily hear it. The problem – to the extent that it is a problem – is that I’m a girl, with a girl’s naturally-higher voice register. Male voices tend to cut right through ear muffs or plugs without much difficulty, but female voices have a harder time getting through. So I have had to learn a few tricks to help students hear my voice.

Fortunately, even the naturally soft-spoken 1 can learn to project their voices more effectively. Learning to project your voice certainly helps if you’re an instructor, but it’s also important for simple self defense. That whole thing about a soft answer turning away wrath is really, really important for people who need to de-escalate a schoolyard fight, a bar brawl, or any other social confrontation. However, those who face asocial threats, especially predatory violence – think strong-arm robberies or rapes – do much better to project a strong, forceful presence, because predators look for wimpy victims. A big part of creating that presence is using a strong, forceful voice to tell the would-be attacker to “BACK OFF!” or “STAY AWAY!”

I have been in classes where this skill was taught as Command Voice, a term which comes out of military use and has spread over into law enforcement circles. There’s nothing wrong with this term, but it doesn’t really resonate with me. I tend to think of it instead as Mom Voice.

Picture this: You are in your front yard when you see your 5-year-old son on the other side of the street. Just as you look up, you see two things. First, you see a car coming down the street. Second, you see your son stepping into the street. He is about to run directly into the path of an oncoming car. You need to stop him NOW, without any hesitation whatsoever. You don’t have time for a lot of words. You must be forceful. You must be loud enough for him to hear you clearly. That means you are not going to whine or beg, scold or whisper or plead or explain. You will simply shout. “DON’T MOVE! STAY THERE!”

That’s Mom Voice.

The sound comes from deep in your belly, not from your voice box. Ideally, it places very little or no strain on your vocal chords. It won’t create a raspy feeling in your throat, because the volume comes from your diaphragm muscles. It uses a much lower pitch than any scream.

To make it work, you must use short, simple sounds. “DON’T MOVE!” works well. So does, “BACK OFF!” or “GET BACK!” These are all clear, brief commands. Each word can be expressed in one sharp breath. Each word should be sharp, separate, distinct. Words that start and end with bold, crisp consonants work better than ones that start with soft, sussurating sounds or mumbly murmurs.

Your words must be very decisive and clear. To achieve that clarity, you must know what you are going to say before you open your mouth.Yes, I know that sounds a little insane, but how often have you heard someone begin a sentence with, “Ummm…” or “Ohhh…”? Those throat-clearing sounds give you time to think of what you’ll say next. But they erase your power. They make it harder for your listeners to hear you, blurring your intent and confusing your audience. You must begin with absolute decisiveness and snap out the words as if you really mean them. You must know what you will say before you ever open your mouth.

To make that happen, as an instructor, you should have a set list of commands you use every time you run a range. It does not matter (too much) what the specific commands are – as long as you use the same ones every time, and as long as your students know what each command clearly means. For this reason, you should practice your commands, especially the ones related to safety (“CEASEFIRE!”), on a regular basis. If you are not teaching regularly, you can practice the commands in the privacy of your own car on your way to work. 2

As a private citizen, you should also have a ready-made list of things you might say to a potential attacker. You should practice words you might use during or after a criminal encounter. “STAY BACK!” is a good one. So is, “GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!” Remember, you want short words you can spit out in one breath, and phrases that fit together easily. Try these, too: “CALL THE POLICE!” or “CALL AN AMBULANCE!” Again, try practicing these words in the privacy of your car, where other people can’t hear you. 3

These little tricks help make your voice clear, distinct, and easy to understand. And they may one day save someone’s life… including the life of a little boy who didn’t run into the street because someone used Mom Voice to stop him.

Notes:

  1. My siblings will tell you I am not among them… ↩
  2. Yep. That’s what I meant. It’s admittedly a lot of fun to tell the other cars, “DON’T MOVE!” as you enter an intersection, or tell the car riding your bumper to “BACK OFF!” But the commands don’t have to be related to what you’re doing at the moment, and do make sure your windows are up so you don’t provoke unnecessary alarm in other drivers. ↩
  3. Did I mention? Roll the windows up first! ↩
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Are we clear?
April 2, 2013

To “clear” a gun means to check to see if it is unloaded, and (if necessary) to unload it. It is always polite to clear the gun immediately before you hand it to someone else. It is equally polite — and expected! — to clear the gun yourself as soon as someone hands it to you, even if they did the right thing and cleared it before they handed it to you.

The actual procedure looks like this:

Gun Owner #1: “Hey, check out my new pistol!”

Gun Owner #2: “Love to see it. Whatcha got?”

As this conversation is going on, GO#1 drops the magazine, locks the slide open, looks in the chamber and the magazine well, and feels both chamber and magazine well to be sure they are really empty. Leaving the slide locked open, GO#1 hands the gun to GO#2.

As the gun is handed over, GO#2 looks in the chamber and down the magazine well, then pokes a finger in each spot to be sure they are really empty.

Only after doing these checks does GO#2 close the slide or do anything else with the gun.

GO#2: “May I dry fire?” 1

GO#1: “Go right ahead. It’s got a sweet trigger!”

GO#2, of course, always keeps the muzzle pointed in a safe direction, and still does not put her finger on the trigger without first choosing a deliberate aimpoint with a solid backstop. After choosing her safe direction, she tests the trigger and agrees that it is, indeed, very sweet.

When GO#2 is done exploring the gun, she locks the slide open again, visually and manually checks the gun, and hands it back to GO#1. GO#1 checks everything again before putting the gun away.

Notes:

  1. It’s always polite to ask for permission before dry firing someone else’s gun. If it is a modern, quality centerfire gun, you really can’t hurt it by dry firing it. But some people haven’t gotten that memo, and get really weird about it. So always ask, and don’t pout if they say no. ↩
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Money
April 1, 2013

On a firearms discussion board I frequent, there was recently some discussion about firearms training. One of the participants made a snarky comment about professional firearms trainers making money with what they do.

Of course I make a living at this! I am a professional firearms trainer. That’s the very definition of “professional”: someone who earns a living in a given field. I earn my grocery money by offering self-defense information and training to people who seek it out, and that makes me a professional, by definition. However, I have not always done so. The reason I got into this field in the first place wasn’t to make money. I started as a volunteer, and I still donate a lot of time to various not-making-money ways to get information and training to people who need it. This blog and the website that surrounds it, for instance: you’ll notice there are no ads anywhere on the Cornered Cat website. It’s a labor of love that includes some of my best written material, and it’s all free. So for me, even though I do have to make a living, it’s not about the money. It’s about getting the message out to the people who need it.

Part of that message is the importance of training. Real training. Dedicated, professional, serious training that comes from someone who knows what they’re talking about. Not, “I learned something from Joe down at the range,” but seeking out a well-qualified trainer and then doing the honest-to-God work it takes to master the defensive handgun. This isn’t something that comes easily for everyone, 1 but it’s work that needs to be done.

Notes:

  1. It was darn near impossible for me. My childhood nickname was, “Grace,” because my parents are sarcastic people. ↩
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Joyful journeys
March 30, 2013

When I first began thinking about getting a gun to protect myself and my family, one of my friends told me she was concerned about me. “That just seems so negative,” she told me. “Like you’re just looking for bad things to happen all the time.” She went on to say that she believed negative thoughts attract negative events, and that she would never carry a gun because she didn’t want to invite that kind of negativity into her life.

I understood what my friend meant. Who wants to live with ugly, unpleasant thoughts? Why wouldn’t you want to think the best of other people, and cherish positive expectations about future events? We’ve all met the crotchety, nasty old guy who seems to thrive on ugly thoughts and unpleasant emotions. You ask him how he is, and he immediately launches into a dreary litany of how awful the world is, how terribly his children have treated him, how obnoxious his ex-wife was and how the country is going to hades in handwoven basket. I don’t want to be That Guy, and neither do you.

Events over the past few months give an ugly twist to that thought. Do you suppose the victims of heinous crimes somehow attracted that evil to themselves? I don’t. For example, I think most of the people at the Clackamas mall in Oregon were simply shopping for Christmas, as cheerfully or as grumpily as any other people in any other mall in the nation, and it seems unlikely to me that any one of them were thinking about getting shot that day. The children at Sandy Hook … it would hurt my heart to think that any of those small, innocent, beloved children were somehow guilty of bringing negative energy into their lives. They were just living, doing what small children do. And yet evil came to them anyway.

For me, being prepared to cope with trouble adds a certain relaxed joy to my life. It does not mean I expect trouble or welcome it. It simply means I can relax and focus on the good things in my life. If trouble comes to me despite my positive outlook, I am prepared to keep myself and my loved ones safe.

Getting the skills and carrying the tools you might need in order to defend yourself sometime in your life is a lot like checking the oil, looking at your tire wear, and making sure your spare tire is good before going on a long car trip. When you do those things, it just means you’re prepared to cope with trouble if it comes to you. It does not mean you expect trouble or will attract trouble. It simply means that when you slide into the driver’s seat, you can enjoy the journey rather than obsessing about everything that could go wrong along the way.

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Training required?
March 29, 2013

Since I am such a huge advocate of excellent firearms training, someone asked me if I support state-required training classes — either to buy or to carry a firearm. Absolutely not!

Here are three core principles that inform my own choices in this area:

  • Self defense is a basic human right.
  • Humans are tool-users.
  • Everyone has a right to own the tools they believe they need in order to defend their lives. 1

Taken together, these principles mean I am not a fan of any type of legally-required training under any circumstances whatsoever. The one possible exception I might be willing to entertain would be requiring some type of firearms safety education before graduating high school. But not if that education is later used as a condition for permission to exercise the basic human right to protect your own life.

Now, with that said, guns actually do require some level of knowledge and skill in order to be used effectively for self defense.To quote John Farnam, “Just as cars that ‘drive themselves’ are currently unavailable, guns that are effective in the hands of the untrained and willfully incompetent exist only in the minds of the naive.” It’s really true! On a practical level, if you’re not going to learn how to use the tool, it does not do you much good to own one.

It is absolutely your right to own or carry the gun anyway, even without any training. I will support that right to my dying breath. But buying a gun you don’t know how to use effectively and safely is really a waste of money. It’s like spending $500 for a very fancy rabbit’s foot.

Notes:

  1. Exceptions for children, whose ownership and use of tools depends on their parents’ discretion; and for incarcerated criminals, who temporarily surrender some rights as a result of their previous choices. ↩
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Target’s last stand
March 28, 2013

I have a love/hate relationship with target stands. In fact, you might say it was a target stand that got me started down the road to the life I’m currently living. That’s because my first handgun buddy used to take my family and me out into the woods for a day of casual plinking. A contractor by trade, he hand-built the target stands we used. After the third or fourth trip, he told me that I’d better go take a class, because he was tired of me shooting his target stands instead of his targets. (Ouch!)

A few years later, I was working hard at passing the difficult Handgun Master test from the Firearms Academy of Seattle. This test requires the shooter to perform several necessary self-defense skills – shooting in low light, reloading, shooting moving targets, shooting accurately at distance, etc – all under time stress and all without missing a single shot. Because I wanted to pass the test before the year was out, I signed up for a late-fall class that covered those skills and several others. It turned out to be a cold and blustery weekend; sleet and hail slashed out of the sky, alternating with freezing bucketfuls of icy rain. My most vivid memory of the class involved a target stand. Picture a soggy, tired instructor trudging out into the downpour to re-set a target stand that had fallen over. Everything in his body language said he hated to leave the covered shooting area, but the job needed to be done so he manned up and did it. Just as he finally got the troublesome target back on its feet, there was a gust of wind and every single other target on the line fell over at the same time. Now that I’m an instructor myself, I feel a great deal more sympathy for the look on his face when he turned around and saw what had happened.

The first class I taught away from my home range happened on a blustery February weekend in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The wind was blowing so strong that we had trouble keeping the targets on their stands. The staples just wouldn’t hold. Finally, someone ran to the classroom and came back with a giant roll of Gorilla Tape. We were saved! Well, no, not quite. As soon as we’d solved the coming-off-the-stand problem, the wind picked up a little more and started blowing the stands over. I knew what to do about that one. Several students and I grabbed all the big, heavy rocks we could find. We used them to weight down the stands, so they absolutely could not blow over again.

And we all lived happily ever after… uh, no. Not quite.

Did I mention the wind was really blowing? We had fixed the coming-off-the-stand problem, and we had put heavy weights on the base of the stands so the stands could not possibly blow over again, so what else could possibly go wrong? You guessed it: the upright posts to the stands started snapping like matchsticks in the strong wind.

People, I’m here to tell you: I’m a good instructor, and a determined one. I can teach in hot, humid weather. I can teach when it’s raining or snowing or sleeting or hailing. I can teach in the sun and in the shade, indoors or out, in mud or muck or snow. When something goes wrong, I can shrug (or sometimes shiver), adjust and drive on. But it’s really hard to teach without targets. Especially the ones on their way to Mexico, waving adios with the remnants of dead target stands dangling in the wind behind them. 1

Notes:

  1. Nope, we did not cancel the class. We stepped into the classroom and did use-of-cover and moving-while-shooting footwork with empty hands until the wind died down. Adapt and overcome! ↩
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A few good men
March 27, 2013

Oi! So I’ve worked hard to convince people that there’s a value in women-only classes. Apparently, that’s a successful sell, because I’ve heard a lot of people talking about such classes recently. That’s wonderful!

What isn’t so wonderful, however, is … well, I would not have gotten where I am without excellent instruction from male instructors teaching co-ed classes. Let me tell you about some of them.

The man who oversaw my first handgun shots was a family friend, who took my husband and me out for an afternoon of informal plinking in the woods. It wasn’t long before this became a regular event, and if it hadn’t been for his encouragement, it’s a sure bet I’d never have attended my first formal class or purchased my own handgun.

The first formal class I took was co-taught by Gila and Marty Hayes at the Firearms Academy of Seattle. If memory serves, Gila was the lead instructor and Marty her assistant,  though I admit the memory is fuzzy. I do know that Marty and many other male FAS staff members taught the next several classes I took as I worked my way through the school’s handgun courses. In my early classes, Marty was always kind, patient, and encouraging, but he never allowed even a hint of nonsense on his range… and there was never any doubt that it was his range when he ran a class. Marty modeled for me a kind of quiet professionalism I’ve grown to appreciate more and more as the years have passed. Marty taught me the value of earned respect; a bluff “well done!” from him could leave a student smiling for days, even after the class ended. His obsessive concern with safety taught me how to run a safe range of my own, and his insistence that the person in charge of the class take responsibility for everything that happened in that class laid a welcome but very heavy burden on my shoulders as I grew toward instructorhood.

Jim Cirillo, survivor of more than a dozen shootouts as a veteran of the NYPD Stakeout Squad, taught another class I took early on. Jim left an indelible mark on me as a student, as an instructor, and as a person. He affected me as a student because at 72 years of age, he was still tremendously excited and enthusiastic about learning new things. I know this because he made a point of sharing a few tips from the most recent class he’d taken, taught by Andy Stanford. That enthusiasm for learning made me vow to stay as young inside as he was. As an instructor, I decided to emulate his positive interactions with his students. He never put things in negative terms: “If you yank the trigger, you’ll miss the target.” That’s not the sort of thing Jim would say! He would say, “Press the trigger smoothly and you’re sure to hit the center every time.” Not only that, but when he went forward to read the targets to his students, he always had some encouraging word about what the student was doing right and how they should keep doing it. As a person, I found his upbeat outlook on life one of the most attractive traits a person could have. Again, that’s something I promised myself I would strive to imitate, though it’s not something that comes naturally to me. Jim’s time with the Stakeout Squad meant he had seen and done some ugly things in his life. But he did not dwell on those. He chose to think of the good, the positive, the uplifting. The world was a better place because Jim Cirillo walked through it.

I can’t remember if I met Massad Ayoob before or after I took my first class from Jim Cirillo. Like Marty, Mas modeled an obsessive concern with safety on his range, and the work ethic he brought to his classes struck me hard. Here was a man who called his class to order at 9 am, expected them to listen to lectures during lunch, sometimes didn’t let them off the range before 6 or 7 pm – and still expected them to study in the evening. A new student, I found the schedule grueling, and said so. He smiled at me with some concern, and said, “People work so hard to get to these classes and they should have full value for it. I want to be sure everyone gets more than they expected.” To this day, I’ve never met a student of his who would say they’d gotten anything less than that.

Another instructor who has had an impact on my shooting: Tom Givens. I’d heard Tom’s name for awhile, but really got to know him when I was editing Concealed Carry Magazine. When I was finally able to take a class from him – a three-day instructor development course – I found his heavy emphasis on quick accuracy was exactly what I needed at that point in my learning curve. Not only that, but Tom has a way of pressuring his students into giving their best. The tests at the end of his classes are real tests, with the possibility of failure. That means success in his class has that sweet tang that’s only possible when it’s not assured.

There are many, many other good men who are professional firearm trainers. Many of them have helped me grow, encouraged me to learn more, strive harder, do better. Some have become good friends, while others were just instructors. But in every case, I learned something from each one of these guys that I could not have learned from anyone else. It would please my heart to know I’d helped other  students find such good men to learn under, since they did so well for me.

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