Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors

[mec]

This year's round of instructor re-certifications took place at the new Department of Public Safety range near Florence, TX. This might be some incentive for interested Texans to call 1 800 224 5744 and check out becomming an instructor. You no longer have to drive into Austin, Texas and risk spending several hours in a trafic jam to get it done.

The Training course takes up a full day, cost $100 and is extremely interesting the first time. Subsequent recertifications provide interesting updates and the repetitious stuff is at least bareable.

Instructors have to qualify with a score of 90% with both a revolver and a Semi- Auto. This is not at all difficult. Semi autos that showed up at this session included a lot of Glocks then S&Ws , a Beretta that jammed, a couple of sigs and relatively few 1911 variants.

almost all of the instructors had S&W revolvers in 38/357.

 

[DigMe]

A friend of mine that is an older man was a little concerned because he heard that the indoor qualifying range in the new place is poorly lit. Is this true?

brad cook

 

[SoDFW Jason]

My recert. is September 15th. Is the classroom part still held at the same place?

 

[BB93YJ]

That's a whole lot nicer looking than the range downtown at the Academy.

 

[mec]

didnt see an indoor range although there may be one. We shot outdoors with enough shooter stations to do away with the two relay system used up until now. the berms are extremely high and wrap three sides. The down town facility was arcing the occasional bullet out into the city.

Their is a laQuinta Motel on the west side of I 35 in Georgetown. They used the meeting room there and you never got closer than 30 miles to Austin. The consequence of this is that you never become a part of the morning and after noone traffic jam that streatches from Round Rock to San Antonio.

Riddle is still there but the other two are new - Ripp and Butts. Interstingly, Dan Walker was back as a student getting his CHL Instructor Certificate. He retired last year and is now a bigtime security director somewhere.

 

[Wakal]

The training (initial) is 28 hours for professional instructors and 40 hours for everyone else. Recerts are one day and done every two years after the initial. I thought the use-of-force was decent enough, but the rest of the class was a waste on a scale only seen by government agencies.

The 28-hour crowd (last week) used mostly 1911's, as might have been expected, with a fair mix of revolvers.




Alex

 

[DigMe]

Oh that's my bad...I was kind of in a hurry when I asked about indoor range and I didn't see that you had posted a picture of the range, thus I didn't realize it was outdoors.

brad cook

 

[mec]

was the camp chair down near the left end of the range? I thought a non-fat guy had that one. You ar right about the initial course being 28/40. Geeezz! I forgot. It was Summer 1995 as I remember.

The legal stuff/use of force is interesting, even when you've had it before. I'm glad we didnt have to sit through " I'm Ok, You're Ok" again this time. You mention government agencies. this program has now been around long enough to take on a fair load of bureau-dumbness and I'm afraid things like lead time on the licenses will just get worse -particularly if the state manages to raid the CHL budget. Somebody told me they dodged the budget cuts this time but I'm not sure.

In the beginning, I took the 40 hr course and the additional time was mainly on didactic techiniques such as how to use overhead projectors and such. Saw a lot more 1911s then than now.

We attempted to get up some momentum for extending the instructor recerts to every 4 years and were pretty well laughted at .

I was the dude what shot the revolver segment with a 2.25" Ruger sp101

 

[Wakal]

Stud!

I debating bringing a 629 with a 3" ported barrel, but decided to run the 4" 625 instead. I'm such a wimp.

Maybe in two years I'll run the D. Eagle and the ported '29 with some hot .44 Mag. I'm not fat, I'm big-boned



Alex

 

[mec]

your earlier discription of yourself resembled about 92 out of 100 people I saw there. the rest were women.

I used a mountain gun one year but with .44 special loads. Usually take the 4" GP but the 2.25 sp was out right at the moment and didn't take up much room in the case. I only awfulled one round into the 4 ring, so I guess it was ok.