BehindBlueI's
Grandmaster
- Oct 3, 2012
- 26,608
- 113
I agree with that, and it's precisely why I asked the question. How many "gun defense trainers" have the data to back up their craft to an "Eddie Futch" level? If the key word is "objectively," the likely answer is not many. For every Tom Givens who can back up his craft with objective data on students who met the elephant and survived...there's a whole passel of instructors of the "I really got a lot out of this class" variety. Which is who the OP seems to be sticking up for.
Agreed. Which is why most "defensive pistol" training is really just fundamentals training dressed up or is second-handing a proven instructor's criteria. Since SOP-9 was brought up, range scores didn't correlate to outcomes. I know I'll get push back, but shooting is often the easiest part you have any control over but shooting is the totality of so many "defensive shooting" courses with some prominent exceptions. MAG, Givens, Shivworks being traveling roadshows that come to mind.
As far as I know, nobody I taught went on to be in a shooting. So you can either believe in the product based on my resume or not. If that's objective or not, I suppose you can argue either way. Nothing in my resume gives me any credibility in teaching fundamentals, and when I do wander into that topic I'm second-handing better instructors then me. You should train with them for fundamentals. A second-hander may win on cost or availability, but probably not on quality.
But that's not the only training out there.
Lets look at legal use of force training. One could objectively measure via testing. Test on knowledge of student coming in, same test at the end of the class. Objective measurement of how well the instructor gave knowledge. Perhaps not any proof the knowledge is relevant, but again resume comes in there.
Fundamentals? There's a host of standardized shooting tests. Students leaving shoot a 20% higher score on average at the end then the beginning. Etc.