So I wrote a "Quick Guide for New Shooters". Opinions?

Do you give basic training to people new to firearms before taking them to the range?

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All in all, not a bad read. Seems to be focused more for new handgun shooters than anything else an not for new shooters in general tho. While you mention other platforms you almost avoid them. Is that due to unfamiliarity? I have helped teach Hunter Safety to new shooters for 40 years, and around here most folks learn on rifles/shotguns and use them considerably more than handguns. Most examples you give are using a pistol or pistol ammo and while you dive heavily into proper stance, grip and how to deal with malfunctions with handgun, there is little to do with rifles and nuttin' at all with shotguns. The Learning a sight picture section is done with a three dot pistol sight only and no touching on optics or other irons at all. Majority of folks I teach start with a .22 rifle and prefer a scoped gun. Just my experience. You show a "dead on" sight picture in the first example, but them show a "6 O' Clock" hold in your second set of examples and don't differentiate. You focus on stance before grip.......kinda like putting the horse before the cart in my book. As for the Myths and the biased gun propaganda, not needed at all as non relates to gun safety or use. As for the Gun Range etiquette, no loose clothing? Really? But the dude in your pics is wearing loose fitting pants. While I like hot chicks with guns wearing tight fitting clothes, I can't see telling folks what apparel is appropriate to wear without telling them why. A chick with a tight fitting tank top is more at risk from hot flying brass as a chick with a loose fitting turtleneck sweater. And why the no open toed shoes? OSHA? Many of the women I teach to shoot handguns are wearing sandals at my personnel range, have yet to have one of them burn their toes with hot brass/drop a gun on them. Seems to be more info than neccessary in some areas and little or no in others that are also important to new shooters.

I'm not trying to be harsh, you asked for a legitimate response on what could be improved. While the article is good, it is not great. Lots of "new shooter" info available online that is similar. When I teach new shooters, I use the KISS system and do not try to overwhelm them with too much info at once. I hope they walk away from their first experience knowing that safe gun handling should be their biggest concern. Everything else will come with practice and experience.
 
buck460XVR said:
All in all, not a bad read. Seems to be focused more for new handgun shooters than anything else an not for new shooters in general tho.
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Yes, that's how I thought best to write it. I wrote it for myself, and when I take someone to the range it's mostly with semiautomatic handguns and at most a bit of close range rifle in an indoor range. With people new to guns I prefer mechanical targets with no periodic ceasefires. It's certainly biased to what serves me best for obvious reasons. I live in an urban setting so handguns are a lot more typical than longuns. Regarding rifles, that's conscious. I'd rather someone learn to shoot handguns well and briefly touch rifles so they can shoot them safely, since if I'm lucky they'll buy a handgun within a few months, but it will be years before they ever think of buying a rifle, if at all. Makes no sense to emphasize on rifles. Same goes for sights. I don't want anyone new touching the turrets on the scope, and using a scope's reticle is more intuitive than handgun sights. Regarding stance before grip or vice versa, the case could be made for either. Exactly, the loose clothes is because of hot brass (and if I didn't mention that I should have). Regarding pictures, if you feel like scouring the interwebs for hours on end for better pictures in the same or better quality, I'd be happy to replace them, but I'm satisfied with what I found given the limitations that exist. I've never been at a commercial range that allowed open toed shoes, and at the least guests are forced to use those aweful shoe cover booties. As in absolutely not optional. It must be great to have a private range (really, really great), but I'm surprised if you've never heard of that before. At this point I thought all ranges were that way.

All in all thanks for the input. I don't really think almost any of that is worth changing since just about all of it has a reasoning behind it. I'm sure 10 different people come up with 10 different, equally good versions. I just feel like those suggestions are more about making it better tailored for what you tend to use, then better suited in general. I personally wouldn't mind expanding it to include that, but then it would be way too long to qualify as brief. It's borderline as is. Sure, a lot of information is available online, but not in a single, well formatted document that can be read linearly. If there was either I never found it or there isn't (at least not for free, and not that I saw any sample from). Anyway another point of view is definitely nice to have so thanks.
 
Pruning and tuning is part of the improvement of any project. I try to get people in the target audience to read and comment on what I write professionally to avoid the "I know what I thought I said..." problems of the writer. Good that you're accepting this all as constructive to produce a better guide for others.
 
Vern Humphrey said:
It's better than one of those Brit books that say the grip safety horn on an M1911 is the "firing pin" and the gun is loaded with a "handle clip."
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Haha, never heard about that. I can't say I would like to learn from it, but I'm sure it would make for some great comedy. Same could be said about all the ridiculous things the antis say these days. After all, 93 million americans die from firearm violence every day. I don't know about you, but I'm behind my quota :rofl:
 
Just as a last note, I updated the document from link in the first post to the final updated version, including all the helpful tips and recommendations that everyone posted. I finally printed, binded, and put it away so at this point I don't want any more suggestions :D. I'm just writing this for anyone who downloaded the pdf file before, since I'd rather anyone that has it have the updated version.

Thanks for everyones help! I hope I'll have a chance to use it soon.
 

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Looks like a fine guide to me. Each subject was covered with reasonable brevity to keep things simple.

And yes, I won't take a new shooter to live fire until I spend quite a bit of one-on-one time with them away from the range and without ammo. Your guide would be a great reminder of each topic that needs discussion/demonstration.
 
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