Don't even know how to title this...

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Some folks would be better off with wasp spray, a baseball bat, big dog, or some combo of various other things
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I agree 100%. competency test means just that. The thought of people like her having a loaded weapon scares me more than the criminals do.

Some people are just so used to relying on someone else to make their decisions for them that they can't make a move unless someone else in their authority tells them it's ok. If they have to call someone to ask where the safety is on a revolver and if it's loaded or not, they shouldn't have one to begin with, until they prove that they won't be a danger to everyone else around them.
I can understand why she called the OP if he is relation to her and he was her instructor but she apparently didn't learn anything from him or just figured because he's family, he'll be there for her.
If I were the OP and cared about her I would sit her down and have a heart to heart talk with her about what just happened, how she failed to do the right thing to start with by calling the police and letting them do their job, and whether she's serious about learning how to protect herself with a firearm.
A lot of honesty on her part would have to play in here.
A lot of good "Impartial Advise" from the instructor should also.
 
As an instructor, you now go look up 'vicarious liability', consider the number of folks you've trained over the years, and sink to a huddled mass in the corner...:)

I was a training officer for a small suburban police department, and I could tell you stories that would make you afraid to be in the same room with an armed police officer.

Larry
 
When Texas first got concealed carry I was totally against the cost and two days of classroom and shooting.

I didn't need the training, I could shoot better that about 95% of the LEO's on the street. (I actually passed the Texas concealed Carry shooting qualification with my eyes closed.)
I had been a Police Officer, I knew the law.
The cost was just money being thrown away I said.

We tend to look at things from our own prospective.


Now after seeing such as people not shooting at all in the years between renewing their concealed license and the ignorance of many armed people of all aspects of the law and their own guns, I would put some additional rules in place.
Such as a requirement that the person has done some, even informal, live fire shooting at least a couple times a year.

I am totally for the government staying out of our lives but if people are too lazy to do the right thing, sometimes they need a push.


And people ARE LAZY.
I don't know how many times people have expressed an interest in learning to shoot but are too lazy to drive the twenty minutes to my place.
Even though the lessons are free, the use of the guns is free and much of the time I even give them free ammunition, they still can't get off their butts.
 
A friend persuaded his wife of twenty five years to plink with us a bit one day. He 'worked' on her for over a half hour.
She does an ok job for a person with only a few exposures to guns (from Queens NY). She has lived in the semi-rural south over twenty five years.

The OP's topic made me wonder whether his former handgun student might have only Attended the CCW class because somebody talked her
into it, partly against her will?
 
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If government mandated training were the answer, no one would graduate high school with less than a straight "A", 4.0 grade. There would never be an auto accident, etc., etc.

Woody
 
Makes me recall one of my fellow “students” when I took my first CCW class. The passing live fire requirement was 4 out of five rounds in a 12” square on about a 2’x3’ target paper at 10’ and 20’. The pre-class instructions included to bring 50 rounds of ammo (To fire 10 rounds) for the test. I didn’t wait around to see the final results, but when I left, this one guy was headed out to the shop to buy another box of ammo and with a quick glance at his target, I could only see ‘maybe’ a half dozen holes in the paper.

I hate to say it, but some people are just better off with pepper spray.
 
tightgroup tiger said:
I agree 100%. competency test means just that. The thought of people like her having a loaded weapon scares me more than the criminals do.

Some people are just so used to relying on someone else to make their decisions for them that they can't make a move unless someone else in their authority tells them it's ok.
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Am I the only one that sees that the two above concepts don't go together?

Requiring a competency test just pushes the responsibility off on the test-giver or the State.

You can't fix personal irresponsibility with more government, folks. More requirements to get permission to exersise a fundamental right (that happens to be enumerated in COTUS) will not make the public safer, will not make panicked helpless incompetent people suddenly competent, and will not make people practice in a meaningful way on any regular basis.
 
ConstitutionCowboy said:
If government mandated training were the answer, no one would graduate high school with less than a straight "A", 4.0 grade. There would never be an auto accident, etc., etc.

Woody
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Well said. Personal responsibility seems to be lost on this person. Things aren't likely to turn around for her until it's found.
 
You can lead a horse to water ... etc., etc ...

I'm not surprised. As a firearms instructor, I'm sorta getting used to people who have forgotten how to use a pistol (with no control lever/manual safety), an M-4 carbine and an 870 shotgun since the last time we paid them to come out to the range and qualify ... (#@%&*! it's a flippin' part of your job, chuckleheads!)

So I can't see it any better for people who have to pay for their own guns, ammo and range time ... Yes, it still gnaws at me that people can be so not responsible when it comes to their own safety, their family's safety and the gun thing) ... but I worry more these days about the idiots who don't vote in elections, along with the idiots that the idiots elect to office.
 
In my state, South Carolina, a significant part of the training class is devoted to different types of weapons, how they function, how to use them and even how to clean them. I know that different states have different requirements, but I would think that in ny state the class would contain something about gun handling. If she didn't receive the basics, she shouldn't have been given her certificate for heer CCW.
 
Yoda,
The experience as described sounds like a good CCW class "Learn From This" lesson to me.
 
I have been around guns -- plinking, hunting, studying history -- all my life it seems as a major hobby interest.

Then I had relatives who attended estate auctions tell me about how it is common to find up for auction an old pistol, apparently new little used, with at most twenty rounds of ammo missing from the vintage box of ammo apparently bought with the gun by the deceased decades before. I surmise the gun was taken to range or out in the country, fired a few rounds for familiarization, then kept in a desk or bedside table drawer for protection only.

I began to realize there are a lot of people who are not gun buffs, with no experience with guns, who decide to buy a gun for protection only. For those lacking experience with knowledgable relatives or friends, I strongly urge formal training.
 
A number of years ago I recall hearing the results of a survey Colt sent out to the owners of their handguns. One question asked how many rounds they fired through the gun.


The average was 8.
 
BullfrogKen said:
A number of years ago I recall hearing the results of a survey Colt sent out to the owners of their handguns. One question asked how many rounds they fired through the gun.


The average was 8.
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Virtually once a week there is a thread about "Grandpa's Gun" or the "Widow next door husband's Gun" telling of getting a LNIB 50s era handgun with 44 of the original 50 cartridges bought with the gun. Both had spent 50 years or so in a sock drawer after being fired once. Used to be that was the norm with most civilians and handguns and not the exception.
 
Used to be?


It still is.


The interwebz have only made it appear like more people go out to shoot a lot. But that's only because people like us haunt these boards.

My father, FIL, uncles, cousins and such all own guns. Among them all I'm the only one who really, actually, honest-to-God shoots often. Most don't even shoot any of their guns once a year. Or once every 5 years. The ones who have several guns all own one (or more) they've never, ever shot. And in fact it wasn't until Obama, and some of the crazy new state laws (many Maryland relatives) that they even bothered to keep up with their collections at all.

Funny how the politics and new local laws forced them out of the woodwork. They've all bought guns and actually gone out shooting in the past few years. The President and the Maryland Governor did what I never could manage to do - get them interested and engaged.
 
The average was 8.
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Colt does make a lot of guns worth collecting. I'd like to think 90% of those surveyed didn't fire them at all, and the other 10% got at least a bit of experience with their gun.

But I know better.

As mentioned, personal responsibility is the key. Drunks, druggies, and even most eight year olds know how to put a key in the ignition & make it go.
Even though it's against the law.
 
Yoda- You should have quoted your namesake:

“In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.”-Yoda
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More seriously, everyone has already said what I would. This woman needs to take some personal responsibility and TRAIN.

I have been trying to get my father to the range for years now. The last time we went shooting, my grandmother was still alive, I was still in law school, I had not yet even met my wife, and I've moved three times since then.

It was about 5 years ago, when he had gotten his Ruger LCP and wanted to test it out. He put about 25-30 rounds through that gun that day, and I don't think he's even cleaned it since. He still carries it a handful of times per year too. Empty chamber…of course.
He says he will come shooting with me next month, but has been planning to go to the range for years already.

I love him dearly, but he has several guns with which he is COMPLETELY unfamiliar yet, upon which he relies for SD. Heaven help him.
 
I'm going to go against the grain here and say - "Darwinism" and I am not trying to be snarky here.

This may be a very cynical view, but people get robbed, assaulted, raped, or murdered everyday. Others die by stupidity at their own hands or someone else's, again, every single day. In this case, it is up to the owner of the weapon to get training, protect themselves, lock their doors, call 911 . . .etc. Calling their CCW instructor from years ago at 11 PM because the person thought someone was breaking into their home is utterly absurd. The first thought that came to my mind was that the caller was prime candidate for the Darwin Awards.

To those who say more training...etc...etc... A boss once said to me . . . "There are 2 things you absolutely can't make an employee do. First, you can't make them care. Second, you can't fix dumb." I think that applies to life in general.

The gist is that we can't save the world. Sometimes things just work themselves out...
 
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Onward Allusion said:
I'm going to go against the grain here and say - "Darwinism" and I am not trying to be snarky here.

This may be a very cynical view, but people get robbed, assaulted, raped, or murdered everyday. Others die by stupidity at their own hands or someone else's, again, every single day. In this case, it is up to the owner of the weapon to get training, protect themselves, lock their doors, call 911 . . .etc. Calling their CCW instructor from years ago at 11 PM because the person thought someone was breaking into their home is utterly absurd. The first thought that came to my mind was that the caller was prime candidate for the Darwin Awards.

To those who say more training...etc...etc... A boss once said to me . . . "There are 2 things you absolutely can't make an employee do. First, you can't make them care. Second, you can't fix dumb." I think that applies to life in general.

The gist is that we can't save the world. Sometimes things just work themselves out...
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Never stand in the way of the process of natural selection lest you become caught in its vortex.

Don't feel bad for the lack of common sense in her or anyone else's repertoire, Yoda.

Woody
 
Mike1234567 said:
Isn't that what folks do when they hunt coyotes to decrease predation of other species?:neener:
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Yup. Doesn't change the message, though. It wouldn't be the first time such antics have backfired. Reduce the population of certain predators and others move in to take their place and multiply even faster to keep up with the food supply.

Woody
 
rhinoh said:
A guy at work and his wife both got their CWPs a few months back...they used a borrowed gun to take the test.
He went out after getting the CWP and bought a brand new pistol to carry, that they apparently share.
They have never fired it, not even once!:what:
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They share it??
Like Barney Fife style? One gets the gun, one gets the boolits?
It's a gun, for pete's sake, not a ICBM launch code!!!!!
 
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