I've had the privilege of working with these folks twice now, and I wanted to share my thoughts.
First, I want to to talk about -- in general -- how critically important I believe it is that we get more women familiar with firearms. As many of you gents have probably become (painfully in some cases?) aware, women are damned good shots, and many new women shooters are soon kicking hubby's ass all over the range.
Anyhow, I think it's important that more women become proficient with firearms not only for their own sake (protection, recreation, etc.) but also because women are a largely-untapped portion of the voting population from a firearms perspective.
As we all know, our gun rights are in grave danger throughout the country, and certainly in Washington state in particular. The more we can spread the good word, the better off we will be . . . and many women are ready and willing to help with the effort, we just need to introduce them to the sport.
There was an instructor, Amy Bozell, who taught women's handgun classes at the
Cascade range in Ravensdale. Amy was a phenomenal teacher by all accounts, but a few months back she announced that she was leaving the area and would be ending her classes. This left a big hole in the women's-only training in this area, which as I already explained is a big problem for ALL of us.
Some of you saw Rutilate's thread on WaGuns a while back, asking for input on the idea of starting up a class to replace Amy's. Many of us gave him input on instruction, guns, etc. -- and I'll be darned, but he went ahead and did it!
Curtis (Rutilate) started
Adventure Protection with his wife, daughter and son as co-instructors, and they are now teaching women's-only classes at Cascade.
The first 2/3 of the class is in the classroom, including lattes and lunch, and then they head to the range for a couple of hours of shooting. For the last two classes, I've joined them as an observer for some of the classroom time, and as the range safety officer for the shooting portion, so I've had good opportunities to see first-hand how the instruction works and how the students react.
Let me start with a couple of things that the pessimistic side of me
expected to see:
- I thought that the ladies (students) would react not-so-enthusiastically to having two male instructors, and not an all-female team like Amy had; and
- I thought that Curtis would be the "real" instructor and the other family members would just be there to go through the motions and fill in the numbers.
I'm happy to report that I was 100% wrong on both counts.
All four of them actively teach portions of the classroom section, and all four of them are instructing simultaneously out at the range . . . and all four of them know their stuff and are good instructors, and the students appreciate that!
The two classes that I've attended had 11 and 10 students each. At the range, right from the get-go all of the students were proficient with the .22 Ruger pistols that they start with, keeping all of their shots in well-defined groups. They have all been extremely safe right from the start, which makes my job as RSO pretty easy! Obviously the ladies are getting great instruction in the classroom, and they are paying attention and learning.
They start out with .22 Ruger pistols, as I mentioned, and shoot those for a while. Then, they move up to a host of other guns that the instructors have brought: Sig P238, P938, M&P 9mm, M&P .45, 1911 .45, .22 revolver, a larger .357 revolver, a small .38 revolver, and I'm probably forgetting a few. The small .38 revolver is mainly used to demonstrate how damn painful they can be to shoot, even if the guy at the gun store recommended that you buy one.
At the end of the class, the ladies are EXCITED and ENTHUSIASTIC, and ready to go handgun shopping! It is SO cool to see new shooters that excited!
If a lady in your life is interested in learning more about beginning handgun shooting, I would highly recommend that they check out the
Adventure Protection classes. The schedule is on the web page, and the next class with available spots is June 30th. I'll keep showing up as RSO as long as they'll have me.
You can also see some fun pics of previous classes on their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/adventureprotection/