There's two flags in the solicitation, one that it's been put together by a former CIA employee. Being CIA is no qualifier as an arms expert - at all - many are forensic computer analysts, researchers, or simply people who got the job because they are fluent in a language.
Two, he wrote a lot for popular gun rags. Nothing else about civilian or military self defense experience, what weapons training they have, or, practical experience. In my experience a writer is exactly that, someone who distills other peoples experience guided by their input. Someone can write about assembling a nuclear weapon, it doesn't mean they ever did it or know where to employ it. You can have knowledge without practical experience, or vice versa, the person you want to have teach you should have both. Any instructor who won't touch on the aftermath of use and refer to Massad Ayoob's works for his teaching points is horribly underinforming his/her students, an instructor who fails to read thru or have had no experience in actual gun fights, the same.
We get a lot of one or the other. And we also get a lot of feedback here or other forums about how they conduct their class, and it's sometimes controversial. Some instructors handle proficiency at a range where they control who can handle a firearm when, others ask you to arrive cocked and locked which you do at all times on the range. Which will you be doing when you carry on the street?
One might be better for the new student, the other for experienced gun shooters long down the road with weapons handling. In my case MO had no mechanism to recognize the DD214 or my tour of duty as an MP, plus, I got my local PD Chief as instructor - it was "basic" training with a high degree of control. When I go shoot at a public range I carry cocked and locked, leave the rifles on the bench, fire the handguns from the holster by a draw, point and shoot.
Concealed being concealed you get looks walking down to the 7 yard line appearing not to carry a gun. Once fired it stays out of the holster - because in a CCW shooting you DON'T holster, you leave it out to place on the ground when things appear safe. And an instructor should be training that.
Constantly reholstering is a competition or LEO activity, not a self defense tactic. Goes to the instructor who had that in his curriculum and discovered it endangers appendix carriers. He now disallows it for his class purposes, but that doesn't mean appendix carry is any more dangerous than 4:00 - as those who suffer Glock leg syndrome can testify.
Especially with "experienced" shooters, who are the most prone due to being overly familiar with their lapses of trigger finger discipline or trusting their holster too much. Finding those in class makes for too much error with too little time to train for correction, they need to unload, go home, and practice a draw one hundred times a day with trigger finger placement only when the weapons barrel is horizontal. I'd like to market an attachment that triggers a Taser attached to their belt as an educational tool, a few good buzzes in the maximus gluteus would work wonders for trigger finger discipline. We see it in videos all the time but we dont really commit to excellence in that.
It has to be adopted from the first day and frankly those who complain about boys and toy guns in youth have a point - we DID learn a lot of things wrong. Goes to correcting them before we commit a serious error.
