Honestly, I am not a firearms instructor, nor will I ever be, but in the "beginner" level classes I took NONE of them taught me to be a better shooter nor did they really promise to. They all pretty much covered safety and that was it. That isn't going to attract someone who knows it all already (thinks they do I mean). I think one angle is a class like "introduction to competition shooting" or the like. A lot of it is safety, but it is more likely to entice the gun owner with the hook that he is going to learn to compete. What gun owner who can shoot a 14" group at 10 yards isn't ready for competition!?! lol
I think there has to be a way to bring in firearm owners with a promise of more than "How to not shoot yourself or someone else accidentally". Maybe a hook could be used like, "Fundamentals of firearms safety and improving marksmanship". I am still surprised by this, but I have taken quite a few handgun classes for beginner to intermediate shooters and they never covered proper trigger control and working the reset OR proper focus on the front sight. I had to read a book to get a decent understanding of those two aspects, which improved my shooting more than any class I took. Almost all the classes covered grip, but I can still remember the day I FINALLY understood front sight focus and what it means. My groups instantly started to shrink.
I am sorry to hear this but IME this is not and should not be the standard. I have been to a number of classes and all that were not FOF or strictly tactics classes worked on making the students better shooters, with a big focus on the two things you mention. As an example, all Tom Givens classes strive to make you a better shooter, even his instructor classes. He actually thinks that an Instructor should be able to perform, not just teach.
Another example would be the last handgun class I taught. At the beginning of class I had the students shoot "the Test" (Vickers/Hackathorn 10-10-10 test), all of them failed. We shot it again at towards the end of class, 3 of the 6 passed and the others made big improvements. All of these students left with not only new information, but new ideas on how to make themselves better shooters IF they want to.
As I have stated before, I think handgun training should be mandatory for those who carry, but not Government mandated. The people carrying should be responsible enough and in such awe of the power of life and death that they are giving themselves every time that they strap that gun on that they should be compelled to seek out training. Of course I realize this is not how the world works.
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