PART 1 - The Early Days

The New Shooter 101 training project got its start as a result of necessity.  Our gun club was founded in 2011 by a group of experienced shooters who got together to rent open bays at local indoor ranges.  It soon become apparent that with increasing gun sales there was a growing demand for training beginners.  We listened to what people were asking for and decided to start providing defensive handgun training for new shooters. 

Right away we ran into a snag.  The ranges would not let us rent their classrooms because they considered us as competition for their own classes.  A typical gun range beginners class consists of a couple of hours in a classroom, then another couple of hours shooting.  Our solution was to divide these sessions into two training classes—the first as a dry-fire event, followed later by a second session at a range.  We started experimenting with this format in 2013.  The picture below is from one of our classes at Brooklake Church in Federal Way WA.

There were some parts of this approach that worked and some that did not.  We won't go into what didn't work in this post.  However what did work was that we got large turnouts for the dry-fire classes.  This affirmed there is a demand for this type of training.  One thing that helped is that a couple of our board members were friends with the local community newspaper editor, who ran articles on us and listed our classes in the print edition calendar.  Another is that our community is a high-crime area and there is local sympathy for the defensive use of guns.

In future posts we’ll be talking about how we eventually made this type of multi-session training work. 

From one of our early beginners training classes:

PART 2 - The Decision to Make Videos

By 2012 marketing reports from firearms trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation were showing increasing trends in firearms sales.  In particular people were buying handguns in large numbers for self-defense.  Many were first-time buyers.  Our gun club had already started experimenting with beginners classes in 2013.  You saw one of them in my last post.  The club decided to pursue this strategy more aggressively.  Two things were needed:  A curriculum for offering the classes, and trained instructors to present them.  Plus it made sense to incorporate videos into this program.

After deciding to retire from the software industry, I had started a video production business in 2012 .  The idea was to phase out of software and into another promising new technology.  YouTube was founded in 2005 and sold to Google in 2006.  By 2012 this was definitely the place to be.  The technology for posting videos was clunky and the content was dominated by cute cat videos.  But it was clear that YouTube was going to be THE dominant platform for videos.  So I attended an online film school and learned how to produce videos.

In 2014 we conducted a YouTube survey looking for firearms training videos, with not very promising results.  The idea was to find videos we could use in beginners training programs.  At that time there were not a lot of firearms videos on YouTube, and the majority of them had poor production values.  And in particular few were intended for beginning shooters.  This led to the decision to start producing videos for training new shooters.  The effort began with curriculum planning and script writing, plus some experimentation. 

In future posts we'll be talking about how we started ramping up our efforts to train beginners in defensive handgun shooting by using videos. 

An early experiment in making training videos:

PART 3 - Producing Our First Videos

By 2015 our gun club had decided to proceed with making firearms training videos for beginners.  The decision was based on a survey of YouTube that showed there was a lack of this type of video.  Plus we were actively presenting beginners classes and had developed a stable outline for the class.  In early 2015 we began the process of writing video scripts based on that outline, which included the following topics:  Gun safety rules;  How a handgun works;  How to load and unload a gun;  How to hold, aim and dry-fire a gun;  and How to draw from the holster.

For most of 2015 we focused on script writing for the first six videos.  The advantage of scripted videos vs "winging it" is the elimination of rambling and repetition.  That helps keep the videos short and to the point.  Among our goals were technical accuracy and uniform nomenclature throughout the series.  Three of us participated in the scripting process, which seem to go through a never-ending cycle of revisions.  Finally we said "enough" and proceeded into production filming.

The production process lasted about four months, from the end of 2015 through the first part of 2016.  We were very fortunate to have a talented cast and dedicated production crew that stuck with it for the duration.  Keep in mind these were gun club volunteers working on their days off, not paid personnel.  That says a lot for the quality and character of the folks we were working with.  Later on we fleshed out the beginners series for a total of ten videos.  But our first six formed the basis for what would eventually become the New Shooter 101 Beginners Workshop curriculum.

In future posts we'll be talking about the development of our beginners curriculum and training the trainers to present it. 

Our first New Shooter 101 training video:

PART 4 - The Original Strategy for Training Beginners Didn't Work

Our original strategy for training beginners was very much different from what we have today.  After the first six beginners training videos were completed in 2016, we envisioned that volunteer mentors would meet with trainees in the mentors' homes.  The concept was that the mentor would play the video, then work with the trainee to learn the concepts spelled out in the video.  Given that the video scripts had been tested at my own kitchen table using beginner volunteers, that seemed to be a good way to implement the program.  However this turned out to not be the case. 

We began by recruiting gun club volunteers to act as mentors.  Then at our monthly meetings we promoted the idea of trainees meeting one-on-one with mentors.  This concept sounded appealing, and we signed up some new gun owners and assigned them to mentors.  The initial meetings were scheduled and seemed to work well.  However the process quickly broke down after that, for two reasons:  First, people's schedules were so busy that it became difficult to schedule additional meetings to finish the training series.  The other big difficulty was keeping track of who had learned what so far.  It became an administrative burden nobody wanted to take on.

As a result the New Shooter 101 mentor program languished.  Both mentors and trainees felt it was too time-consuming, and gun club leadership thought it was overly complicated.  However the positive benefit of this experiment was to identify another need:  Motivating the trainees to continue with the training.  We needed to provide them with clear-cut benefits.

That's what we'll talk about in our next post – motivating the trainees. 

A mentor training beginners in her home:

PART 5 - Shooter Certifications Help Motivate Trainees

The most beneficial take-away from our 2016 experiment in one-on-one beginners training was the need to provide clear-cut benefits to the trainees.  This became a hot topic for discussion that quickly expanded to a broader range of gun club issues including recruiting new members, encouraging them to join the club, and giving them reasons to keep renewing their memberships. 

The solution was called the "Safe Shooter Certification" program, introduced in 2017.  Here's how it works.  In order to get certified the new shooter attends gun club training events and gets signed off on a list of skills, for example safely loading and unloading a gun.  They need to attend multiple events to get them all signed off.  After becoming gun club members they are awarded a certificate.  Achieving Safe Shooter status also qualifies them to attend gun club live-fire events.  This process provides strong motivation to join the club and get trained.  It also assures they have gained mastery of the skills, rather than just attending classes for a certain number of hours.

Once our new gun club members start attending live-fire events, they can begin working on their "Defensive Shooter Certification".  Our Safe Shooter checklist includes skills where the shooter is standing still.  Defensive Shooter skills include those that are done on the move.  The combination of these two certifications serve to promote the new shooter from beginner to "intermediate" level.  After that is up to the shooters to continue building their skills by regularly attending gun club events and by taking training classes from other organizations.  We encouraged our members to become Defensive Shooters by creating special events that required DS Certification to attend.  This also benefited our instructors who could then present more interesting scenarios requiring greater skill levels.

After implementing the certification programs our attention turned back to attracting more attendees to our beginners classes.  That's what we'll talk about in our next post. 

Rack card handout used to promote the certification program:

PART 6 - Marketing to Beginners Using Facebook Advertising

Our certification programs introduced in 2017 were successful in motivating new recruits to join our gun club and continue their defensive shooter training.  By having something to work toward—namely their Safe Shooter and Defensive Shooter Certifications—our trainees were also motivated to renew their memberships.  This of course benefited the club by producing a steady flow of membership fee income.

In 2018 we began to run Facebook ads focused on increasing attendance in our beginners classes.  We had been experimenting with Facebook advertising for the previous couple of years, learning what worked and what did not.  After running numerous tests with different photos in the ads, we settled on the photo shown below as the best.  How did we define "best"?  The measure we used is called the "Click Through Ratio" or CTR.  Suppose the ad is shown 10,000 times and receives 100 clicks.  Then the CTR = 1%.  Simply put, we chose the photo that produced the best CTR. 

The ad shown below regularly draws 1.5-2.5% Click Through Rates to our event schedule, along with above average engagement rate ranking.  Criticisms of this ad focus on how they are holding their guns.  Our response is that they are beginners.  That is the appeal of the ad.  It shows both male and female beginners in our gun club’s primary age demographic who are not sure of what they are doing.  And yet there they are learning to shoot with a group of like-minded people! 

Once we were able to get a steady flow of new recruits attending our beginners classes, our attention turned back to improving the entire beginners training program.  That's what we'll talk about in our next post. 

Our most successful Facebook ad:

PART 7 - Fun Shoots: A New Strategy for Turning Beginners into Shooters

After introducing the Safe Shooter and Defensive Shooter certifications in 2017, our attention turned back to finding more effective ways of training beginners.  As previously discussed in this history, our local gun ranges would not allow us to rent their classrooms.  They considered us to be competition.  This meant we could not provide classes combining both classroom and live-fire training.  Thus we were limited to training beginners in dry-fire-only events.

Fortunately we had a lot of experience running dry-fire beginners classes, and continued to offer them.  However we had not yet figured out a consistent way to turn the dry-fire beginners into live-fire shooters.  The solution was to introduce a new event called the "Fun Shoot" that takes place in the shooting range target lanes.  At these events shooters of all skill levels—including beginners—gather to shoot in target lanes, exchange ideas, and try out each other's guns.  We kept these events open both to gun club members and the public alike.  This way people could come to them and find out what our club was all about.

Previously our only live-fire shooting events were in the open bays.  This type of event can be very intimidating for a new shooter.  Moving them directly from dry-fire into open-bay live-fire shooting was too big a transition.  Fun Shoots turned out be very appealing to beginners, offering them a safe and controlled way to start shooting real guns.  Our beginners typically began by shooting .22 handguns, then moved up to 9mm at their own speed. 

After getting the Fun Shoots going, our attention turned back to the beginners training classes.  We needed a better approach.  That's what we'll talk about in our next post. 

An online event posting for a Fun Shoot:

PART 8 - Beginners Workshops Provide In-Depth Training for New Shooters

By the time 2020 rolled around our gun club had two programs in place that were producing a steady flow of new shooters.  The first was a Facebook advertising campaign that was helping to fill up our dry-fire beginners classes.  And after taking the beginners classes, the trainees followed up by attending our Fun Shoots in the target lanes.  This combination was successful in turning our beginners into shooters.  Given that our goal was to train more new shooters—which in turn created more new gun club members—we began thinking about scheduling more beginners classes.

In 2020 we had new board leadership with a strong interest in increasing membership.  The strategy adopted for attaining this goal was twofold:  First, standardize the beginners class curriculum so that more instructors could be trained to present the classes;  and second, offer more classes.

We wanted the updated beginners classes to include basically the same content that had worked in the past.  This meant organizing them around our existing beginners training videos that included:  Gun safety rules;  How a handgun works;  How to load and unload a gun;  How to hold, aim and dry-fire a gun;  and How to draw from the holster.  We also wanted them to be entertaining and capture the imagination of the trainees by introducing them to some basic shooting line exercises. 

We began by experimenting with 2-hour and 4-hour versions of what is now called our "Beginners Workshop".  The 2-hour classes were popular because they could be scheduled in weekday evening hours.  However the drawback of the shorter class was the inability to include all the necessary topics without rushing through them.  The 4-hour classes—scheduled on weekends—worked much better and consequently were adopted as our only offering. 

Then came the Covid lockdowns which threatened to put an end to our classroom training.  However we were fortunate to have both courageous gun club leadership and a venue that was willing to look the other way when it came to enforcing restrictions.  Even though many potential new shooters were reluctant to attend in-person classes, we were still able to get large turnouts for our Beginners Workshops.  Despite Covid, the net result was a record-breaking year for new memberships in our gun club.  This served to solidify our view that these classes were the most effective way we had for recruiting new gun club members.

We made an interesting discovery when presenting the Beginners Workshops.  We had a number of attendees show up who were more interested in intermediate-level training.  To address this need we spun off a new type of event called "Dry-Fire Workshops". That's what we'll talk about in our next post. 

Gun club instructors coaching new shooters at a Beginners Workshop:

PART 9 - Dry-Fire Workshops: Rounding Out Our Beginners Training Strategy

The new Beginners Workshops introduced in 2020 provided some interesting insights into what our gun club members wanted in terms of training.  We had a number of intermediate-level shooters show up for our first beginners events just to get in some more practice time.  They told us they wanted the dry-fire training but at a more advanced level.  So a couple of instructors including this writer took them into another room and provided impromptu instruction in such basics as drawing from the holster and shooting from behind cover. 

This quickly evolved into a new scheduled event – the Dry-Fire Workshop.  After some experimentation we settled on the following structure for the event:  Start with instruction in a few basic skills, then lead the attendees in a dry-fire exercise that makes use of these skills.  This was typically done in the form of a shooting line for multiple shooters, or as a carousel for single-shooter exercises.  Trainees could either use their own guns—which had been cleared by RSO's—or use SIRT laser training pistols provided by our gun club.  The idea was to provide them with an experience similar to what they would encounter in our Live-Fire Tactical events.  This way our trainees could practice the skills needed for future live-fire shooting in the open bay, but with less pressure and more time for individual coaching.

By introducing Dry-Fire Workshops our gun club now had a well-rounded program for training beginners:  Start with dry-fire training at a Beginners Workshop – Attend Fun Shoots to gain live-fire shooting experience in a very safe and low-pressure environment –  Attend Dry-Fire Workshops to learn the skills needed to get one's Safe Shooter Certification – Graduate to shooting in the gun club's Live-Fire Tactical shooting events in the shooting range open bays – Continue attending Live-Fire Tactical shoots until you earn your Defensive Shooter Certification.  This provides a complete pathway from never having fired a gun to being an intermediate-level shooter capable of defending yourself and your loved ones against home invasions and other deadly threats.

Now that our gun club had a well-developed structure for training new shooters, our interests turned back to curriculum development.  To this end we embarked on a new series of training videos and lesson plans for the intermediate-level skills taught in Dry-Fire Workshops and put into practice at Live-Fire Tactical events.  That's the topic for our next post. 

An experienced shooter training at a Dry-Fire Workshop event:

PART 10 - A Defensive Shooter Curriculum for Intermediate-level Shooters

After the introduction of our gun club's Dry-Fire Workshops, we embarked on the production of a new series of training videos and lesson plans for the intermediate-level skills taught in these events.  Called the Defensive Shooter training series, this curriculum was intended to provide a uniformity for our intermediate-level training efforts and also provide an easy way to train new mentors and instructors in teaching these skills.

Here's our primary motivation for wanting to develop this series.  It's based on observations made during years of watching shooters in our open bay live-fire events.  In these events our instructors would put together scenarios that required a certain combination of skills, for example tactical reloads or clearing malfunctions.  It was often the case that there was a trainee in the shooting line who clearly did not know how to make these moves.  This meant the instructor had to make the choice between letting it go, or taking the time to train them on the spot, thereby wasting everybody else's time.  More often than not the best choice was to just move forward.

Incorporating this needed intermediate-level skill training into the Dry-Fire Workshops seemed to make a lot of sense.  A beneficial side-effect would be having attendees with a greater range of skill levels at the Live-Fire Tactical shoots. 

The question of which skills to include in the curriculum was also based on years of observations—which skills did the trainees most often lack?  Another consideration was incorporating the skills required for completing our Defensive Shooter Certification.  And then more subjectively, which other skills did the instructors working on this curriculum think should be included?  It is reasonable think that any given firearms instructor might look at our list and disagree with some of our choices and wonder why we didn't include others.  In the end we settled on 21 basic skills, which you can find listed elsewhere on our website.

Now that we had a curriculum suitable for training our shooters in intermediate-level skills, we needed to develop a group of mentors and instructors who could teach these skills.  That's the subject of our next post. 

One of our Defensive Shooter training videos:

PART 11 - Developing Formal Training for New Trainers

By 2021 we had developed a curriculum suitable for training our shooters in 21 intermediate-level skills, and had begun to use it in our new Dry-Fire Workshops.  Now we wanted to expand our gun club's group of mentors and instructors who could teach these skills. 

One of the silver linings of the Covid lockdown was the discovery of Zoom video meetings.  These were quickly adopted across a wide range of organizations, including ours.  More and more people who did not consider themselves "computer literate" had to learn how to participate in this technology.  We took advantage of this and used Zoom meetings to host what we called our "Mentor Academy".  Its purpose was to train gun club members who wanted to learn how to instruct others in basic firearms defensive skills.  This was not intended to provide instructor training per se, but rather to help would-be mentors to learn basic public speaking techniques and practice presenting our lesson plans in front of a friendly group of like-minded people.

Your author is a firm believer that being a mentor or instructor is a "performance art".  This means getting up in front of groups of people and sounding like you know what you're talking about.  There is nothing mysterious about this.  Think back to your favorite teachers or newscasters who learned to inflect their voices and pace their deliveries in such a way to sound authoritative.  If you took music or dance lessons as a child, then think back to the fearful moments when you had to perform at a recital for parents.  The point is that with practice you get used to it.  You lose your stage fright, your voice becomes stronger, and your performances become more credible to your audiences.

Each Mentor Academy training meeting followed the following format:  Begin with a presentation about basic speaking skills – tonal inflection, grouping of words, and pace of presentation.  Next watch a video clip that demonstrates good speaking skills.  After that each attendee would repeat the video dialog while attempting to reproduce the same inflection and pace.  Now our attendees would take turns presenting one of the lesson plans to the rest of the group, while applying the speaking techniques they just practiced.  Finally, our instructors in attendance would critique their presentations and make suggestions for improvement. 

As quickly as they were ready we began putting our mentor trainees "on stage" at our Dry-Fire Workshops.  This benefited the club in that we had more presenters to share the load of putting on these events.  It also benefited the our mentors by providing an opportunity for practical experience.  All this resulted in a number of Mentor Academy graduates who went on to become gun club instructors—an accomplishment that involved passing our gun club's training requirements, plus serving an apprenticeship by presenting both dry-fire and live-fire exercises.  It was a win-win for all parties involved.

It is our belief that we've developed a beginners training curriculum that could be of benefit for mentors or instructors in gun clubs everywhere.  Our next and final post will discuss the methods we're using to take this knowledge to a wider audience.