This is the latest from our correspondent, Greg Moats.
Few traditions are more quintessentially “American” than teaching your children to shoot. “I’ve been shooting all of my life,” is a cliche heard almost exclusively in the land of the free and home of the brave. Teaching America’s youth to shoot is generally considered a parental duty, however, while it reeks of hearth, home and apple pie, parental firearms instruction may not be the best protocol for ensuring a future for the 2nd Amendment and shooting in general. If America’s youth do not learn how to defend themselves nor learn to enjoy recreational shooting, the consequences are dire, both individually and corporately. Millions of dollars are spent every year on band camps and lessons to teach kids how to play basketball, volleyball, football, soccer, ad nauseam, while little is devoted to the shooting skills.
It’s said that any lawyer that would represent themself has a fool for a client. The more training that I’ve taken, the more convinced I am that anyone that takes shooting lessons from their parent has a fool for an instructor. Ok, that may be a little too strong, but the dynamics between a parent and child may be more of an impediment than a benefit to the development of professional-level gun handling and marksmanship skills. Professional-level skill development demands professional-level trainers, which most well-meaning parents are not.
Enter Gunsite Academy
Eight years ago, Gunsite Academy, known for professional-level training, added a Youth-250 pistol class to their agenda. The 250 pistol class is described in Gunsite’s literature as: “THE Gunsite Experience.” This was Colonel Cooper’s original class and, while revised has been conducted more or less intact since 1976; no product or service lasts that long if it’s ineffective. The inaugural Youth-250 class was organized primarily for the teenaged children and grandkids of Gunsite’s staff and their friends and numbered five participants. The prototype class went well enough that it was decided to offer the class publicly for 12–16-year-old youths and the second year’s class numbered 10. Realizing that they had a fledgling, marketable product on their hands, the Gunsite staff got innovative with altering the delivery of the program, without changing the curriculum.
For example, they noticed that for the first couple of days, the students didn’t bond or socialize with one another; they insulated themselves from other class members much more than the adult classes did until they had been together for a few days. Their creative solution was that at the inception of the next youth class they began the tradition of having the students pair off and form “battle buddies.” Each participant “interviews” their battle buddy, gives them a nick-name and then introduces them to the class. For the duration of the program, they ensure that their partner has loaded magazines and is drinking water; they function as a team. Additionally, every morning and afternoon session starts with two class members telling a joke. The intention is less for levity than for social bonding and they’ve found that the jokes combined with forming battle buddies results in camaraderie surging early in the class and sustaining itself for the duration.
Three years ago, when Gunsite’s Training Director Dave Hartman first told me of the youth class, I was anxious to enroll my grandson. Unfortunately, the specter of COVID caused us to put off the class for a year. My grandson was within a week of turning 14 when his class started. As it turned out, of the 21 participants in his class, 14 was probably the median age.
Hartman had assured me that the Youth-250 class covers everything that the standard 250 class covers. The techniques, drills, school exercises, night-shoot, house-clearing, donga-walk and man-against-man drills conducted in the adult class are replicated identically with some creative twists with the Youth-250 class. While it may be difficult to imagine a 16-year-old “pie-ing” a room corner in a house clearing exercise, a 14-year-old shooting from a kneeling position in a rocky ravine to gain cover from a steel-plate-adversary or a 12-year-old making head shots from the holster in 1 1/2 seconds, it all comes to fruition by the end of the week.
The Same and Different
Youth-250 class participants don’t have the years of shooting experience and resultant bad habits that a typical standard class participant possesses. This mandates little need to spend as much time explaining in depth the nuances of grip, stance, sight alignment, the flash sight picture and surprise compressed trigger break. They were explained verbally in comparatively quick order and the shooters were immediately put on the range to practice those elements under the close supervision of four instructors. At no time during the class was it suggested that the Weaver Stance was THE “correct” way to shoot. Instead, they had the students try shooting with their support-side foot slightly forward (like Weaver), then try shooting with their feet even (as with Isosceles) and even had them attempt to shoot with their strong-side foot forward (like Jerry Miculek). They told the shooters to use the method that felt most comfortable as long as it was a balanced fighting stance. If it resulted in poor shooting, THEN they would coach them into a different position. Of note, the Weaver Stance is still referenced by name and described in detail in the guidebook that every student receives, however, there is for the first time the addition of the “Modified Isosceles” stance also referenced in the guidebook!
A similar technique was used when teaching the students to shoot with the strong-hand only. They had them practice with the handgun canted slightly inboard and had them practice with the handgun held perpendicular. Students shot multiple rounds from each position while standing with their strong-side foot forward, then with their feet even and then with their support-side foot forward for a total of six different combinations. They then asked each student to tell them which combination was the most comfortable and with which they shot the best. Shooting one handed with the support-side foot forward was the perfect segue into teaching the Harries flashlight technique which was the next subject on the agenda and the perfect prelude to the “night shoot.”
The biggest training hurdles to teaching adults are their past experiences, including former training, and their egos. With teenagers the greatest hurdle is usually rudimentary attention deficit; they can get bored easily. Gary Smith, a full time Gunsite staff member and Rangemaster for all of the Youth classes said that when the instructors detect a decline in the class’s attentiveness, they take a break. They have the green-light to alter their schedule if the students have “hit the wall” attention-wise, something that only happened once during the 5-day course that I observed. In fairness to the class, it was 3:30 in the afternoon with the temperature hovering at 109, my attention was deficient also.
To keep an otherwise mundane drill interesting, instead of targeting a small dot or bullseye as they would in the standard 250, the Youth-250 class shot their accuracy drills at Tootsie Pops attached to their target frame at 3 yards. The sensory effect of a fragmenting target was visually appealing but also added peer pressure as the entire class watched each individual shoot the drill. Also, a reactive target has a tendency to cause the shooter to shift their focus off of the front sight and onto the target. It’s surprisingly easy to miss a Tootsie Pop at 3 yards if you’re not focused on your front sight and/or don’t have a smooth trigger press.
On the final day of the class, all students (standard and youth) shoot the “School Drill” * and the “El Presidente” for score. Both of these exercises are aggressive tests, especially for neophytes new to the defensive handgun, regardless of age. Smith said that the youth’s scores were consistently better than the average adult students.
A concession made to the Youth-250 class is that after scoring the targets, the students are told that they can keep their original score or shoot it a second time. The caveat is that the second score will be the one that counts even if it’s lower than their original score. This provides a life lesson; decisions are frequently difficult to make and they often have consequences that are permanent. A surprising number of the students opted for re-shoots; some scores went up, some went down. Smith said he likes seeing their two scores within a couple of points of each other; that demonstrates consistency and gives an accurate assessment of the shooter’s skill. If a shooter performs with consistency, then there’s a basis for efficient practice and subsequent skill development.
The culminating event for all 250 classes is a “man-against-man” shoot off. Of the 21 class members, 10 were young ladies comprising many of the top performers in the class. At the conclusion, a 16-year-old young lady named Anna impressively won the contest by going undefeated in every bout!
The magnitude of the transformation of the students from Monday to Friday was difficult to grasp. On Monday, they were a gaggle of typical teenagers. During the shoot off on Friday, they were an assembly of young men and women that shot well, handled their guns well and had a focused mindset which is the personification of Cooper’s “Combat Triad.”
This year’s class was the 9th iteration of the Youth-250 program. Dave Hartman and Gary Smith have “imagineered” (to borrow a Disney term) a winning curriculum. They’ve applied that same creativity in developing a Youth-350, Youth-499 (advanced pistol) classes and a Youth-270 (rifle) class. Their modus operandi in teaching and motivating young shooters works.
The staff at Gunsite may not like the comparison, however, someone once told me that Gunsite was like Disneyland for shooters. When observing the creativity that they applied in conducting the Youth-250 class, it was very much in keeping with a quote from Disney, himself: “We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We’re always exploring and experimenting. We call Imagineering the blending of creative imagination with technical know-how.” That describes Gunsite and their youth programs perfectly.
For information, contact: https://www.gunsite.com
*School Drill:
-1 head shot at 3 yards in 1 1/2 seconds (x2).
-2 upper chest shots at 3 yards in 1 1/2 seconds.
-2 upper chest shots at 7 yards in 1.5 seconds.
-2 upper chest shots at 10 yards in 2 seconds.
-2 upper chest shots at 15 yards standing or kneeling in 3.5 seconds.
All strings start with the pistol holstered.
Greg Moats was one of the original IPSC Section Coordinators appointed by Jeff Cooper shortly after its inception at the Columbia Conference. In the early 1980’s, he worked briefly for Bianchi Gunleather and wrote for American Handgunner and GUNS. He served as a reserve police officer in a firearms training role and was a Marine Corps Infantry Officer in the mid-1970’s. He claims neither snake-eater nor Serpico status but is a self-proclaimed “training junkie.”