Frankie and Johnny: "Jerry Told Me That!"

You can't make this stuff up.

This month in my "Introduction to USPSA" class, I ran into a couple of situations which were unique in their sheer repetitiveness.   In order to protect the students from public embarrassment, I'll just refer to them as "Frankie" and "Johnnie".

First, you need to know that when I start a class with new students, I issue a "Get Out Of Hell Free" card (see one here, and thanks to Randy Cassingham of "This Is True" who keeps me supplied).

When a student violates a firearms safety rule, I make a mark on the card rather than disqualify him/her from further participation in the class.  Everybody can make a mistake, and IPSC-style competition is dramatically different from actual competition.  So this "card marking" is done in the presence of the rest of the class.  It's a form of 'shaming', and is usually very effective.



Frankie:
Helluva nice guy, but he had this one fatal flaw.
Frankie couldn't keep his finger off the trigger.

So the first time he had his finger on the trigger when he was doing the "UNLOAD AND SHOW CLEAR", I pointed his safety error out to him (after I had stopped him) and then took his card away from him, wrote the date and "finger on trigger" and made a mark after it.

He did that three more times, which earned him a total of four marks under "finger on the trigger".  Eventually, he got the idea and was more diligent in keeping his finger off the trigger except when actually engaging (shooting at) a target.

Yes, it was rough justice, but it worked.

That was an easy one.

Johnny was .. a different story.

JOHNNY:
This guy had his stuff all together, and he was doing a fine job about focusing his attention on gun safety while we were going through the exercises.  He was ALL about Gun Safety.

But halfway through the class, in an exercise which involved engaging several targets, he ran out of ammunition before he should have and had to make a Standing Reload.

Which he did, and was both safe and efficient.   The problem was, he apparently started the exercise without a full 8-round magazine in his single-stack 1911.

So after he had finished, and he had unloaded and shown clear, and I had announced "The Range Is Safe" ... I asked him why he had to do that reload; why did he have a magazine which wasn't fully loaded.

His response surprised me so much that I forgot to yell STOP!

Also, I kind of wanted to see just how far down the DQ-tube he would go before he realized he was being unsafe.

When I asked him about this reload, he actually drew his pistol!  Note that I had not given him any kind of range command which would have provided permission to do so.  But since we were ON the range, and he was under 'the direct supervision of the Range Officer', I guess he figured it was okay.

(Note: when folks don't have any experience in competition, they fall back on their normal practice of 'being on the range with your buddys' and do the most bizarre things.  This is one of them.)

So Johnny thought that he needed to use his pistol to explain why he had to do a reload in the middle of an exercise; and since I knew the pistol was unloaded (I had just cleared him) and he was keeping it pointed downrange, I let him get away with that.  For the moment.

Back to the dialogue:

Johnny was holding his pistol and talking about why he had to make an unscheduled reload, and unfortunately he's one of those people who have to gesture a lot.   He did manage to keep the pistol pointed safely downrange for the 30 seconds when he offered his explanation (which made no sense to me at all), but when he finally ran out of words I asked him:

"Do you realize you have just swept yourself seven times?"

Huh?

He looked down at his strong hand, holding a gun, and I think he might have begun at this point to realize that he had just Been Very Wrong In So Many Ways.

"Johnny" I said, "all this time you have been talking you have been holding your pistol ... which you have not been given permission to draw on the firing line ... and you have been gesturing.  Every time you gestured with your free hand, you waved that hand in front of the muzzle of your gun.  You do remember the section on "SWEEPING" that we discussed during the classroom portion of the class, don't you?"

(I'm pretty sure that was a verbatim quote; I was pretty focused by that point.)

He said:  "Huh?"

At which point I directed him to point his pistol downrange, unload and show clear.  Again.

And we had a little chat about that, as well.

Here's the lesson:

When training 'casual shooters' to work within the framework of formal range-safety rules, new students often seem to divide their range time into two segments: "formal instruction" and "just us guys on the range".

Even when they are advised that 'from this point on, we will be working under the same range-safety rules as you will be obliged to observe during an IPSC match", that doesn't always sink in.  It isn't until the Instructor changes from the amiable teacher guy who asks you to call him by his first name changes to the INSTRUCTOR WHO KICKS YOUR ASS WHEN YOU VIOLATE A SAFETY RULE that the lesson begins to sink in.

Range Safety Rules Are Always In Effect .. even among 'friends'.

I don't know, I go for many classes where everyone seems to 'get it', and then I have a class where I am apparently too 'Buddy-Buddy' with my New Best Friends, and they seem surprised when I invoke safety rules to their detriment and embarrassment.   But that's the way of training; you can't be a martinet, or people will be too intimidated to take the class; and you can't be too friendly, or the message that 'THE RULES WILL ALWAYS BE ENFORCED gets lost.

For over six years I've been teaching the class, and once in a while I get a note from someone to the effect that 'I'm teaching this kind of class, what hints can you give me?"

What can I say?  "Be strict, but fair"?   "Teach The Rules"   I've taken classes in 'training for trainers' and this is what they all say.

What keeps me going is when I attend a match, and one of my ex-students is DQ'd.

And they say:

"Aw, heck; Jerry Told Me That!"