Sunday, May 23, 2004
CWP Training in SC
After carrying concealed in North Carolina for 3+ years, I moved to SC last December. Recently had a spare $75 to spend on the training for CWP (Concealed Weapon Permit, as it is called here... it was Concealed Carry - Handgun in NC) and went to the 8-hour training last Sunday.
This was a more-thorough day of instruction than the 4-hour course in NC, but I was mystified by a lot of it. One thing that got me... the instructor pointed out that he'd put a lot of work into the instruction manual and would we please not pass it on to people who hadn't been through his course. Sure, but why on earth are the instructors having to write their own manuals? I earn part of my living editing process documentation ("How to" manuals, basically) and I can tell you that most people can't write such documents... it is a different skill than the skill it takes to actually do the job at hand. I found many outright errors and even more just plain confusing and misleading language in his little book. I think that SC should write up a standardized manual that all of the instructors can use; it would help to avoid "instruction drift," and increase the data integrity a LOT.
I felt that the day's instruction could have been finished in 4 hours, but that it was padded to stretch it out to meet the state's "8-hour" requirement.
The instructor's take on instruction was to keep it a bit light and keep people's attention, and IMHO he did a good job of that. I didn't see anyone nodding off, and he had a very humane angle on things; made it clear that carrying a weapon can be an awesome responsibility; talked about his own experiences dealing with the emotional aftermath of being in an armed self-defense situation... I saw people looking a lot more sober afterwards; I think that he really got people's attention.
Sadly, there may have been just a little too much of the "folksy" quality to the day; part of it was like an extended session at a country gun store, with the usual range of opinion taking the place of fact... For instance, he consistently referred to the extractor on a semi-auto as the ejector... I had to point out to him that the two are quite a bit different; he didn't know where the actual ejector was! He also said that if you had a drink with dinner at your house, you'd better hope that you didn't need to defend yourself later that night, because you would be breaking the law to defend yourself with alcohol in your blood... That is just plain not true... I have the SC Law Enforcement Documentation to prove it. It went on an on that way. The main point of what he taught was correct; the details were all over the landscape.
Now, on to the "skills demonstration." I had done spectacularly well (for me) on my NC skills test, keeping all rounds within a six-inch circle on the target, but a combination of no shooting practice for 10 months and some test-jitters lead to me having a less-than stellar day. Out of 50 rounds, shooting at a distance that varied from 3 feet to 30 feet, I kept about 40 rounds inside an 8-inch circle, with the rest wobbling out to the lower right, including one nasty flyer about 18 inches down; I must have been yanking on the trigger something terrible.
On the good side, I passed both the written test and the skills test, and the day was made more comfortable by the instructor and his family being good hosts. The training was held in a heavy equipment barn that was clean and cool; they fed us and did the fingerprinting and paperwork for us. Now, I need to save up another $50 for the actual application fee and send in my paperwork to the SLED and hope that my NC permit wasn't the result of a fluke... ;-)
With some luck, I should have my SC CWP by mid September.
This was a more-thorough day of instruction than the 4-hour course in NC, but I was mystified by a lot of it. One thing that got me... the instructor pointed out that he'd put a lot of work into the instruction manual and would we please not pass it on to people who hadn't been through his course. Sure, but why on earth are the instructors having to write their own manuals? I earn part of my living editing process documentation ("How to" manuals, basically) and I can tell you that most people can't write such documents... it is a different skill than the skill it takes to actually do the job at hand. I found many outright errors and even more just plain confusing and misleading language in his little book. I think that SC should write up a standardized manual that all of the instructors can use; it would help to avoid "instruction drift," and increase the data integrity a LOT.
I felt that the day's instruction could have been finished in 4 hours, but that it was padded to stretch it out to meet the state's "8-hour" requirement.
The instructor's take on instruction was to keep it a bit light and keep people's attention, and IMHO he did a good job of that. I didn't see anyone nodding off, and he had a very humane angle on things; made it clear that carrying a weapon can be an awesome responsibility; talked about his own experiences dealing with the emotional aftermath of being in an armed self-defense situation... I saw people looking a lot more sober afterwards; I think that he really got people's attention.
Sadly, there may have been just a little too much of the "folksy" quality to the day; part of it was like an extended session at a country gun store, with the usual range of opinion taking the place of fact... For instance, he consistently referred to the extractor on a semi-auto as the ejector... I had to point out to him that the two are quite a bit different; he didn't know where the actual ejector was! He also said that if you had a drink with dinner at your house, you'd better hope that you didn't need to defend yourself later that night, because you would be breaking the law to defend yourself with alcohol in your blood... That is just plain not true... I have the SC Law Enforcement Documentation to prove it. It went on an on that way. The main point of what he taught was correct; the details were all over the landscape.
Now, on to the "skills demonstration." I had done spectacularly well (for me) on my NC skills test, keeping all rounds within a six-inch circle on the target, but a combination of no shooting practice for 10 months and some test-jitters lead to me having a less-than stellar day. Out of 50 rounds, shooting at a distance that varied from 3 feet to 30 feet, I kept about 40 rounds inside an 8-inch circle, with the rest wobbling out to the lower right, including one nasty flyer about 18 inches down; I must have been yanking on the trigger something terrible.
On the good side, I passed both the written test and the skills test, and the day was made more comfortable by the instructor and his family being good hosts. The training was held in a heavy equipment barn that was clean and cool; they fed us and did the fingerprinting and paperwork for us. Now, I need to save up another $50 for the actual application fee and send in my paperwork to the SLED and hope that my NC permit wasn't the result of a fluke... ;-)
With some luck, I should have my SC CWP by mid September.
