Mentoring Shooters

By Dustin Salomon

Every year, over 16,000 people are injured or killed from gun accidents. These are not from intentional shootings, but from tragic mistakes, 100% of which can easily be prevented.

In this easy-to-read book, author Dustin Salomon provides critical but often misunderstood information on safely and properly handling a gun. He also presents research-backed methods to teach this knowledge to new and inexperienced shooters.

Drawing on the latest in neuroscience and his decades of experience as a trainer, Dustin provides detailed insight into gun safety, firearms skills, principles of teaching, and more.

This book will take any gun owner's safety and mentoring skills to the next level.

Who is this book for?

- Firearms trainers, range owners, armed professionals, and everyday enthusiasts who teach and train others to use and handle a gun.

- Beginners new to guns or long time owners who may not have received proper training.

- Parents wanting to learn the right way to introduce their child to guns or teach their child about gun safety.

- Even family members of gun owners or those not in favor of guns can benefit.

No matter where you fall in the above spectrum, safety is everyone's responsibility. Even the most experienced trainers and shooters may have gaps in their knowledge, especially when it comes to sharing their passion and skills. This book hopes to fill those gaps to make you, your family, and all of society safer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Innovative Services and Solutions LLC
• Release date: Apr 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952594007

Book preview

Preface

Building Shooters (the company) is dedicated to improving training and performance in the armed professions. Our mission is to deliver effective training solutions that improve performance while reducing cost. Most of our efforts are focused on developing products for professional instructors in law enforcement, military, and private security; however, I felt it was important to write this book to address what I personally believe is a real need in the shooting world: firearms mentorship.

The event that kick-started the development of this project was an e-mail I received in early 2016 from a former student, who is a lifelong gun owner and an avid shooter:

Hi Dusty,

Remember when you said there are only two things to which one must pay strict attention… muzzle awareness and trigger finger?

Well, one of my employees was cleaning his carry pistol after a day of shooting. When he was done, he reloaded it, racked the slide and shot himself in the hand.

We don’t know if he will lose a finger yet, but I am sorry I didn’t pass on your wisdom to him.

During my now more than twenty years of shooting, I’ve learned that law-abiding firearm owners represent the best of America. We are hardworking people with a deep sense of individual responsibility, and we care not only about ourselves but about our families, our communities, and our country. It is this desire to protect and improve our own lives and the lives of those around us that leads many of us to introduce our friends, family members, coworkers, and children to firearms and the shooting sports, not only for enjoyment but also for the purposes of self-defense, self-reliance, and personal responsibility.

There are many organizations, such as the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, that have entry-level firearms programs designed for beginners. But the fact is that most people are introduced to shooting and firearms through people they know, and most new shooters also look to people they know and trust to fill something of an informal mentorship role with respect to firearm ownership.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many resources out there to help people fill this role. There’s an awful lot of information about how to shoot, about tactics, and about developing what I’ll call Olympic-level performance; however, there are a lot of very important things that lead up to developing effective shooting skills, things that we (experienced gun owners) tend to take for granted or gloss over when we work with others—often to their detriment. Filling the role of either an informal mentor or a formal instructor, with respect to gun ownership and gun use, is an awesome responsibility. It’s an opportunity to make a huge difference in somebody’s life—a difference that has the potential to be either good or bad.

I wrote this book to provide experienced shooters with the skills and tools to effectively pass their knowledge on to others. In it, I’ve drawn on my own experience, as well as our company’s collective decades in the shooting world as gun owners, mentors, instructors, supervisors, law-enforcement officers, security providers, and so on, to lay out an approach to firearms mentorship that we have found to be very safe, very economical, and very effective at producing safe, responsible gun owners. The book is intended to empower you, the individual, to do what we as law-abiding gun owners do best: help make society a safer, better place.

Over the course of any project (this book included), one of the things that ultimately makes everything come together is the critical feedback received from others. While listing and crediting everyone who has contributed to the development of this project (some over decades) by name would probably double the length of the book, I want to thank my mentors and teammates from the Navy Combat Pistol Team, my family, and all those who believe in our mission and have provided support and encouragement for (and, in some cases, active participation in) Building Shooters since its inception.

A special thank-you also goes to both Brandon Oursler for his photography and to the beautiful and incredibly talented Brittany Bexton, an independent country music artist who is featured in many of the pictures within this book. If you’re a country music fan, checking out Brittany’s music is definitely worth your time. You can learn more about her at www.brittanybexton.com.

To the reader, thank you for purchasing this book. I hope you find it both informative and enjoyable. I also hope you will come to share my objective of improving both the training and the culture within the firearms and shooting world. Please join me in working to make safety, professionalism, personal responsibility, and continuous improvement hallmarks of not only the gun industry but also gun culture down to the individual level. Working together, we can not only advance the cause of individual liberty but also make the world a safer place for all.

Chapter 1

Firearms Safety

Firearms safety is always the first priority in any training environment.

Safety Statistics

Safety is the most important aspect of firearms ownership, training, instruction, and mentorship—so it’s a natural place to start. We’ll begin by discussing some statistics regarding firearms safety. In this discussion, we are talking specifically about accidents, not intentional actions.

First, it’s important to recognize that firearms accidents account for a very small percentage of accidental injuries and deaths. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, in 2014, guns accounted for less than half a percent (0.4 percent or 0.004) of the overall number of accidental deaths in the United States. Based on data from the same study, guns accounted for just over one-half of one percent (0.06 percent or 0.0006) of nonfatal accidents that resulted in emergency-room treatment,¹ and they accounted for about two-tenths of a percent (0.2 percent or 0.002) of the total number of nonfatal injuries resulting in hospitalization.² All this being said, it’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t account for all firearms accidents, just the ones that resulted in injuries that sent people to the hospital. It’s also worth pointing out that while a lot of people own firearms, most don’t use them frequently.

I also want to be clear on this: virtually 100 percent of these accidents are easily preventable. Furthermore, although the percentages are small, the overall numbers of people injured are not insignificant. These same studies show that, in 2014, more than sixteen thousand people were accidentally injured or killed by firearms, including almost six hundred accidental deaths. These are not small numbers. Surely, we can do better.

Depending on the survey taken, estimates of the number of American households that own a gun ranges somewhere between 36 percent and 49 percent.³ In 2013 Gallup conducted a survey that showed that nearly 60 percent of armed households listed self-defense as one of their reasons for gun ownership.⁴ Whether these numbers accurately reflect the current number of gun owners isn’t all that important. What is important is to understand that most people who own guns do so because they want to be safer.

And it’s true: When guns are properly used, they can improve a person’s or family’s safety; however, they are also inherently dangerous tools. If they aren’t used properly, they can contribute to situations where people or families are less safe, becoming counterproductive. As we look at the concept of mentoring others with respect to firearms ownership, it’s important for you to remember that if we—the mentors—do it right, we can help make people safer. If we do it wrong, we can have the opposite effect.

Safety Case Study 1

I want to share a couple of relevant personal experiences here. The first goes all the way back to 1996, when I was a first-year midshipman at the Naval Academy and a new member of the Navy Combat Pistol Team. I wasn’t new to guns or shooting; however, this was my first opportunity to attain a professional level of skill with firearms.

The US Naval Academy Combat Pistol Team

One of our ranges was sort of a tunnel. In fact, that’s what we called it—the Tunnel. It had concrete walls on two sides; was fully baffled overhead; and, of course, had a bullet trap at the end. The range itself was wide enough for only one or two shooters at a time (depending on the drill), so we usually ran what is commonly called a hot range. This is a method of range management where shooters keep their guns loaded at all times, both on and off the firing line.

A Navy Combat Pistol Team member training in the Tunnel circa 1998

Before going on, I’m going to make an acknowledgment. The people who mentored us on that team were amazing. I can say without question (and I know virtually everybody else from that era agrees with me) that we learned more from them than from anybody else during our four years at the Naval Academy—and not just about shooting. They were truly a group of incredible individuals with amazing knowledge and experience.

One day another first year and I were cleaning up the range after practice when one of our mentors walked out on the range to clear his pistol. This particular mentor was a Navy SEAL sniper. He was an excellent shooter with a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience. Even now, more than twenty years later, I can say with certainty that he is one of the most skilled, competent, and professional people I’ve ever been fortunate enough to shoot or work with.

While my friend and I were cleaning up the range, this SEAL walked out and faced one of the concrete walls to clear his pistol. He drew it from the holster, racked the slide, saw a round come out, and then turned to point the gun downrange. My friend was standing a few feet downrange, just off to his left, when he pulled the trigger. To everyone’s surprise, the gun fired, and a round went into the backstop.

In this specific instance, the incident happened on a shooting range. The round hit the backstop, and nobody was hurt; however, for me, it was an eyeopening experience. I learned not only just how fast things can go wrong but also that nobody, no matter who they are, no matter how skilled they are, is immune from making a mistake with firearms. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are or how much you know. You—and here I’m specifically talking to you, the experienced and knowledgeable person reading this book—can still make a mistake. And that mistake can kill somebody. We all know it, but it’s worth stating anyway. When it comes to firearms, mistakes can be deadly and unforgiving. You can’t call back a bullet, no matter how much you might wish you could.

Safety Case Study 2

I want to share another experience related to firearms safety. This is a little less specific, but the experience is important and highly relevant to mentoring others in firearms skills. In 2001, about six months after the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen but prior to the 9/11 attacks, I checked in as the gunnery officer for a warship in Mayport, Florida. Within a few weeks of my checking in to the command, we received orders from the Big Navy. These mandated that, as of a certain date, all weapons carried on security watches were required to be loaded.

Understand that, over the course of several decades (since the end of the Cold War), the navy had entirely lost both its corporate knowledge and its cultural awareness with respect to small arms. The idea that small arms and their related skills were important just wasn’t something anybody took that seriously. After all, we really didn’t have any enemies—at least not on the water—right? The attack on the Cole changed all that.

The navy’s official training and qualification standards at that time were comparable to what a civilian might do in a permit-to-carry class today. While what actually happened was usually somewhat less than the official requirements, if the training was done per the Navy’s regulations, you might get a lecture, then go out and shoot the qualification course in a very structured environment. If you needed help with the gun (such as loading or unloading), one of the gunner’s mates would help you with it.

The entire focus of the official training and standards was on actually shooting the gun, on a range, and passing a qualification course. There was almost no focus on handling the firearm administratively, such as loading, unloading, or safely handing a weapon to another person during watch turnover.

I recall a conversation I had with the ship’s executive officer on one occasion, shortly after I had presented a proposal to implement a relatively robust (and at the time unheard of) firearms-training program for the crew. He told me that, when I gave the proposal, he thought I was crazy—a certifiable gun nut. I’m a senior combat officer, and I’ve been shooting these weapons for years. I know how to shoot just fine. We don’t need all this, he said initially (though I’ve paraphrased here, of course).

But then he thought about what I was really saying. When he did, he realized—to his shock—that he had never actually loaded or unloaded a firearm over his entire career. He went on to tell me, I’m not sure I could even do it.i

Well, as one would expect, the implementation of the navy’s directive to load our guns on duty was something short of ideal. For a while, the surface navy was averaging close to one negligent discharge per day, if not more. I remember hearing gunshots go off more than once while I walked down the pier in the morning on my way to work.

What’s important about this experience is that the way the navy handled its training and qualifications at that time, in many respects, mirrors the way we still approach introducing people with firearms today. This is especially true with respect to handgun-carry-permit classes. We focus on getting people to shoot the gun and pass a paper qualification. Why? Because that’s what is required by the state. Unfortunately, when we do this, we sometimes forget about the other skills—skills that are actually more important.

Shooting is something you need to do only as a measure of last resort. Safely handling the gun, to include loading and unloading? That’s something every gun owner needs to do every single day, or at least every time they touch a firearm. Please don’t misunderstand. The shooting aspect is extremely important; however, I would argue that it’s not more important than safety and the administrative handling skills needed all the time.

The Path to Safety: Gun Owners and Gun Culture

There is an awful lot of hype in the media and in politics these days about guns and gun safety. If you’re reading this book, you’re probably in favor of gun ownership. If you’re not, don’t worry; I’m glad you’re reading. I hope you learn some things you didn’t know before, and I hope they’ll help make you, your family, and all of society safer—even if you just learn the fundamental concepts of gun safety and operation. This isn’t a political product, and I’m not going to get on a political soapbox. What I am going to get on a soapbox about is gun safety. No matter where a person falls on the political spectrum, and no matter what he or she believes about gun-control laws, gun safety is something all of us can agree is tremendously important.

I firmly believe gun safety starts with gun owners themselves. We are the people with access. We are the people who not only have the hardware but also know the people around us who either have or want access to the hardware. If somebody steals or buys a gun to commit a crime, he or she either steals or buys it from a gun owner. (Even if the owner is a dealer, somebody owns it.)

If somebody with psychological problems wants to access a gun, he or she is going to get that gun from a gun owner. If a gun owner suffers some sort of psychological injury or illness, chances are that other gun owners know about it.