TexasCHLforum.com

TexasTornado wrote:

aero10 wrote:When I took my class 4 years ago I was amazed at the number of people that needed to borrow a gun. My wife took the class with me and didn't have a pistol, so we shared my pistol and shot in different rounds. To this day, she has yet to carry even once. You really should already have a pistol before getting your LTC; how else are you going to practice before carrying?

It also really amazed that the guy standing next to me passed. When we were shooting the longer ranges, I would see two flashes when he shot. One was the muzzle flash and the other was the bullet striking the concrete on the ground at the end of the course. He passed because they scored by assuming a perfect score and then deducting points from there; well, if you completely miss the target you can't deduct points because you don't know it missed at the end.

When I got my LTC I had to rent a weapon. I rented a glock 19 which was the weapon I learned with and the weapon my mom was requalifying with right beside me. My dad was beside her with his glock .357 sig. Our instructor required us to each have our own individual weapons and at the time the only other handgun we owned was a .22. It was about 3 months after that when I purchased my P238.

My wife also rented a Glock 19 to do her range qualification, the reason being that her only gun at the time was a 5 shot S&W 642 .....not the ideal gun to qualify with. The very next day, she bought herself a Glock 19.

As to the topic of this thread, and being prepared in advance to demonstrate proficiency during the qualifying, my wife had first received some instruction from my son and me previously, but was still not confident about it. It was the familiar trap of a spouse being taught by the other spouse, and there being some performance anxiety involved. So we enrolled her in a basic handgun class, where she was taught by a neutral party, and she enjoyed it tremendously and was fully ready to take the CHL class. But here's the deal....... My wife is a very responsible person, and she knew without having to be told by anyone that it would not be a responsible thing for her to do, to get a license to carry a deadly weapon with which she had almost no familiarity, confidence, or competence. Confidence alone does not equal competence, which is why we have an aphorism that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread". When someone conflates confidence with competence in a range qualification, we get the "special" students who endanger everyone around them.

Charles reinforced my point about falsifying scores. And his point about instructor legal liability is exactly why I limited my previous comment about liability to the "moral liability" (and not legal liability) of churning out students who are not properly educated and who are not safety-qualified on the range. I realize that "moral liability" is not a legal standard, but a society free of dysfunction requires it as a standard of human interaction. A moral people don't need to be forced to take a basic pistol class before taking the LTC class......and here, I'm talking about the sort of general terms of morality that even the morally challenged can agree are acceptable general standards of adult behavior. Don't lie, cheat or steal — stuff like that is sort of foundational to any society. Even in those societies where the standards are ignored in the breech, they at least pay lip service to it. That kind of morality is not necessarily restricted to people of religious conviction. Most atheists would agree with most religious folk that one should be truthful, not cheat, and not take what isn't yours. All three of those standards are violated when an instructor breaks the law by passing a student who still fails the class even after the chances for do-overs that are consistent with the law. The instructor is a liar; both the instructor and student have cheated the system; and the student has taken what he has not earned (the license).

Putting additional barriers between a citizen and the free exercise of his/her rights by passing additional laws are not the solution. Busting dishonest instructors is the solution. If it's a felony charge.....well, that's on them. They knew the law — better than most — before they broke it. They are in the same category of bad characters as crooked cops and corrupt politicians.

Liberty wrote:

zmcgooga wrote: I just think that maybe there should be a prerequisite class of basic firearm safety, that stresses the safety and proper handling of a firearm.

I disagree .. We don't need more red tape. Lots of us know how to shoot, and do so safely before we ever took a formal course. I had was hunting as a 15 year old, shot recreationaly, and served in the army long before I applied for my CHL. Although I have taken a few gun courses and safety courses since receiving my CHL. My point is that the courses can help those who are unfamiliar with guns, there are many of us have achieved proficiency and learned safety with out a formal certifiable course.
I think the problem we are seeing mostly here lies with the instructors. Many are running classes that are way too big. The instructors mentioned here with the "special" students are being extremely negligent in letting these students continue, and fraudulent for letting students pass with only 15 hits on the target. Most instructors have a prerequisite. of a Basic Safety course. but they will bypass this requirement if the potential student has explained their proficiency and and experiance. I think it used to be that most of the older old school instructors became instructors because they believed in the CHL program, and wanted to make it work. It seems to me that a lot of the newer instructors are into it because its a living and not as highly motivated about the program itself.

I don't think the state ought to require a basic firearms class in order to take an LTC class. (Actually.....I think that firearms safety and shooting skills should be taught in the public schools, but that's a whole different argument.) But nobody in their right mind should take the class to learn how to handle a firearm and shoot one, and no instructor in his/her right mind should pass a student who is demonstrably dangerous (to the innocent) with a firearm in their hands. The curriculum as written by the state was not designed to teach that. Philosophically, I would rather there be no licensing requirement at all. In my perfect world, we'd have Constitutional Carry. But also in my perfect world, people would have had an opportunity somewhere along the line to satisfactorily demonstrate to themselves and others the most basic proficiency with the manual of arms for the weapon they choose to carry. But we don't live in my perfect world, and the reality is that we have LTC law which we have to contend with.

The LTC class range requirements exist expressly for the purpose of a student demonstrating to the instructor his or her proficiency with that particular gun, and the requirements DO NOT EXIST for the purpose of the instructor teaching the student that proficiency. Anybody who argues otherwise is plainly mis-stating the legislative intent of the law. You are required to take the written test to prove that you understand the things your were taught in the classroom, and you are required to take the range test to prove that you can safely handle the pistol, and shoot it with enough skill to score a minimum amount of points on a B27 target. The B27 target is chosen very specifically for it's silhouette, and there is a reason for that. Otherwise, it would be perfectly OK to use any old bullseye target you wanted to use. But the idea is to keep the bullets inside a human-shaped silhouette. The degree to which you can do that is the degree to which you prove to your instructor a minimal level of competence at not shooting unintended victims. And it ought to be made plain to the student that every single bullet that failed to land inside that silhouette is a bullet that cannot be recalled, and that might well have hit an innocent bystander.

If you cannot pass the written test, you fail the class—and you should not be issued the LTC under the guidelines of the law. The teacher cannot answer the questions for you. You either have to know the answers, or know where to find them, or to at least make educated guesses based on what you remember from the class. But you HAVE TO PASS based on your score. If an instructor passes you anyway by falsifying your score, that instructor is breaking the law. The same standards apply for the range qualification. There is a REASON we call it a "qualification". To qualify, you have to shoot a minimum score, and you have to demonstrate safe gun-handling. If you can do neither, or even if you can do one but not the other, YOU DO NOT QUALIFY. Both are necessary to passing. If you do not qualify, you should not pass. If the instructor passes you anyway by falsifying your shooting score, the instructor has broken the law. If the instructor passes you anyway by OK'ing your demonstrably negligent gun handling, then he or she has at least violated the spirit of the law, if not the actual letter of it.

As a libertarian leaning person, I believe that a truly free society is not without risks, and I totally get that. But as long as the law exists, we cannot call ourselves law-abiding people if we treat the process with a wink-wink nudge-nudge and fudge the requirements. People who cannot pass either portion of the class - the written test, and the range qualification - should be failed. I don't want the state to give its official imprimatur to people who are demonstrably not qualified, so long as the state demands qualification. If the state doesn't demand qualification, then neither the state or the instructors can be blamed for passing and licensing people who seriously have no business carrying a firearm. But as long as the state DOES demand qualifications, then the state and the instructors assume at least the moral liability whenever they churn out license holders who probably shouldn't ever handle, let alone carry a firearm.

In other words, this is a fish or cut bait issue. If the state insists on the controls, then it must enforce the controls; and that means busting instructors who cheat the system. If the state doesn't want to enforce the controls and bust the instructors, then it should remove the controls entirely. Otherwise, it's just another example of a law kept on the books for the purposes of harassing and controlling people only when it is convenient to the state. We have enough of that crap already.