NRA Carry Guard training course

Hello all — last week my wife and I got back to MD from the first-ever NRA Carry Guard training course (three full days in the Texas heat woo!):

https://www.nracarryguard.com/training/in-person-firearms-training-courses/

The five-second review: it was very well organized and very well executed (what you would expect of something put on by the NRA). It’s not really a “how to carry” class … a better description would be a comprehensive introduction to the responsible protection of self & others. Comprehensive because it covers a *ton* of stuff (the video at the website above gives a decent idea of the wide range of topics), intro because it does a great job of making you know how much more there is to learn, and responsibility & safety are constantly being reinforced (one of the best aspects). It's three full days almost all on-range, run by ex-military guys at a 2:1 student:instructor ratio.

The students ranged from relative novice (e.g., me and a recent college grad) to fairly knowledgable (e.g., a woman who said she’s a part-time firearms instructor), and every student said they learned things they had never seen/done before (e.g., the instructor said she had never done low-light shooting).

I’d be happy to answer questions if anyone here is interested.

What's the total cost of the 3 day class?
Were meals furnished?
Was it worth it?

Total cost = $850 per person ... and you supply your own ammo, ~1500 rounds per person. So another $300 or so, assuming 9mm.

Meals not furnished, everyone breaks for lunch & goes into town for an hour.

My wife and I both think it was *totally* worth it ... partly because we have never experienced anything like it. Everything shown in the web video we did. We shot a heck of a lot, in 100-degree heat, all day long, so they really did a good job of making us tired, uncomfortable, and a little stressed (timed accuracy drills), while trying to develop muscle memory for important tasks. Basically putting you into the mental state you'll find yourself in an emergency. For instance, near the end of one day, they had us load magazines with random assortment of good rounds and spent brass, so that we would experience near-constant failures, making us *really* learn & internalize the "tap, rack" response when experiencing a failure to fire. My wife has always been a revolver girl her whole life because she didn't trust semi-automatics -- that drill made her confident and totally turned her attitude around; when she came home to MD, she replaced her decades-old home-defense revolver with our Sig P228. All three days were filled with little gems like that. I suspect experienced people will have seen many of these drills, but like I said above, even the experienced people in the class learned new things.

The instructor mantra was "perfect practice makes perfect" and they focused on making us do all the little/simple things right ... for instance, emphasis on safety, awareness, performing all tasks "in the workspace" (head up, elbow in, gun in front of face), careful & correct removal from holster & returning to holster, etc. Because we did so many different activities, we could see how everything built off each other, which you might not see otherwise (e.g., keeping the elbow in is useful when doing admin in the dark: you can hold your flashlight between elbow and body while reloading, etc.). When my children are old enough, I'm sending them to a class -- if for nothing more than to experience someone other than Dad hyper-focused on firearm safety (these particular someones being hardened special-ops guys, no less).

A piece of advice, if you choose to go: bring several guns, especially full-sized and service-sized, as opposed to subcompact. We brought two small guns, and one of them they would not let us use: a Beretta Tomcat-32. After going through the course, I see why it was completely inappropriate -- extremely small grip, doesn't have a slide lock, and after shooting it for a few hours, my hand gets weak and my trigger finger sometimes slips down over the trigger guard (and potentially into it) when slamming a new magazine in. Really dangerous; they recognized that potential right away and didn't even let us take it out of the case. One of the instructors let me use his P239 for the three days, and so I got a *ton* of instruction on how to deal with hammer-fired guns (double/single trigger action, explicit de-cocking, etc), and now I *significantly* prefer having an external hammer when returning the gun to its holster. Much, much safer.

Can't say enough good things about the course. Not an NRA spokesperson, just a satisfied student.