Level of training???

Explain, please.

 

Ian,
As much as I respect your reasons for the paper, I would like to suggest an alternative approach. Polling forum members can be quite arbitrary and give misleading results since you may not hear from everyone who attends recurrent training. An option, or even a parallel path for comparison may be to poll area training facilities and individuals who perform training. I believe you can achieve a much more accurate result with regard to people trained with this approach. Some facilities may not wish to divulge specifics such as women attendees, LEO training, initial membership training required by gun clubs, Oregon or Utah CHL, or defensive handgun training, etc. Even without specifics, you can probably get a more accurate count.

I believe that some of us on the forum would be interested in your results and may even be willing to use your poll, with your permission, when we write to our legislators.

Good luck with your paper.

 

You poll will be inconclusive with the way you have it set up. You are going to be drawing some pretty broad strokes, that will give you very little in empirical data to formulate any kind of a basis for your paper.

Levels of training can be very abstract, and to use those questions to indicate what level of training goes on in your poll group will be statistically misleading at best.

I have professional level training and go to refresher courses about 3 times per year. We have a group that gathers about 5 times a year for tactical training. And I shoot on a weekly basis. Where do I fall in that poll parameters ?

 

I can tell you now that "average" (meaning the simple majority) of gun owners have zero FORMAL training.

Training takes many forms. If Dad or Grandpa or a friend taught you the 4 rules and how to store guns and ammo, you got mostly the equivalent of NRA "Home Firearms Safety" if not more. Davey Crockett and Wyatt Earp never had any "formal" training and as far as I know managed not to shoot themselves or anyone else on accident.

 

If you were looking for accurate numbers, you might try calling all the trainers that you can find in your state. If they are willing to release how many people took classes last year, then perhaps an interesting comparison would be to how many background checks were run last year. Obviously there are anomalies like multiple firearm purchases, etc., but it would still be stronger data to use...

And in case you choose to continue this path, I attend at least on or two professional training classes per year. I also shoot several times a month with a friend who is a professional firearms instructor. Hope that helps...

 

I am a matrix ninja when it comes to firearms and tactics. I am such a good shot I can use the gravitational pull of objects to "bend" (as we like to say) the projectile around corners. It's like pool without using the bumpers. I load my sniper rounds so hot that they don't even disturb glass when the penetrate. The glass actually turnes into a more viscus liquid when my projectile passes through. If by chance I do miss, it's almost as if I can stop time. Run up to where the projectile is. Change it's course with my fingers and run back to my shooting position and make contact with the enemy. Yes I have excelent training. Your graph doesn't have an option high enough for me to click. I make bad (backsides) look like newborns learning to nurse. I know you wish you all were matrix ninja's like me but... There's only so much room at the top.

 

Hey Ian,
I think that you will find more and more untrained folks currently. Reason, this blitz of panic buyers. A lot of the people who are firearms owners now never ever thought of buying a gun until the latest war on the 2nd Adm. came out. 4 month ago, most on here were prior military/LE or grown ups with a rich background of firearms in their past. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry is looking to buy a gun. In turn, we have a lot of people who are going to bruise the reputation of us that are responible gun owners. Neg. discharges are on the rise, next will be kids having access to guns with no formal training from the parent. Its a down hill slide and the bad thing is, this has been induced by our government and the media.