[This was originally posted yesterday by a fellow firearms instructor to update the instructor community. Bob is a highly seasoned shooter, top tier training professional with Gunsite and the LEO and Spec Ops communities. Shared with permission.] Bob writes,
"First, I must say it was a real honor to be in the classroom and on the range with true American heroes. I’ve had the privilege to train many members of our Special Operation Community and found them to be very good students.
Our class of eleven students had six instructors. We were told that this was not going to be the norm. The NRA CG Denver Class was the second class scheduled this year. There will be fewer instructors in future classes. The lead instructor, Jeff Houston, is getting all his instructor cadre up to speed with the curriculum. Jeff’s a great guy and excellent instructor. He’s a former Army Special Forces soldier and has been teaching in the civilian world since 2009. I’ve known him since 2013 where he was the firearms training coordinator at a range close to my house. I taught a class for him at this range.
Overall, I will give the class an 8 out of 10. The classroom presentations were not as polished as I would have expected. Our instructors have tons of operational experience but their lack of teaching experience was evident in the classroom. The range management and live fire exercises were outstanding. Safety was never compromised. They asked me to manipulate my pistol differently than what I’ve done my entire 40 years of shooting, but I did what they asked me to do. I always try and be a good student. If instructors ask me to try what they are teaching, I will always give it a try. If you come to my class, I would ask you to try things my way and decide if what I taught you is better than what you’ve been doing. After class I went back to my note book of 35 pages and saw I could have manipulated my pistol the way I normally do, but they seemed to like their way better.
On day three, we were tested on our shooting skills. I felt the NRA CG Qualification Course was not as difficult as what we present at GUNSITE. But the NRA CG class is only a couple days on the range and a GUNSITE class is 5 days. So, I’m guessing their Qualification Course is realistic for the amount time of live fire training we received.
A big plus with the NRA CG class is the Airsoft Scenario Training. You should always go to a class where you can participate in scenario based training.
The biggest downer was at the end of class. I was expecting a cool looking Certificate of Training but all I got was a t-shirt. I suspect this is because the NRA CG class has a strong military foundation and they normally don’t give Training Certificates. So, I really don’t have documentation I attended the training.
After class I emailed Jeff to ask about the NRA CG Instructor Program and this was the response I got back from him:
“Right now we have a small group of instructors that we know or were connected with. In the future we will have a larger instructor recruitment process, but for now we are getting things off the ground in a very controlled manner. It's still early, so things like that are getting worked out.”
[Final Note] I don’t see the NRA CG Instructor Program being offered to us anytime soon."