Intro to the Association of Defensive Shooting Instructors

Here comes another important tip from the Personal Defense Network. I want to talk to you today about the Association of Defensive Shooting Instructors. Now this is an organization that's been started to help with professional development and continuing education for the entire community of those who would teach people how to use firearms to defend themselves or others when they need to. Now defensive shooting is definitely a very different thing from just target shooting. Obviously it's different from trap shooting, it's different from precision rifle shooting, defensive shooting is its own body of work and in fact, that's one of the first things that we talk about when we talk about the Association of Defensive Shooting Instructors. This is an organization that's purely interested in helping people to defend themselves with firearms more efficiently in the context that makes sense for them. Now that doesn't just limit itself to concealed carry or home defense, that also includes armed professionals. This includes law enforcement instructors, military instructors, or those in the private sector security agencies area that are armed and that also need these defensive shooting skills, or to shoot in defense of others at any given time. The association is comprised of members who are at all levels of the instructing community. Some of the people that actually helped found the private sector training community, like Robbie Barrkman, John Farnam, are supporters and in fact, contributors and charter members of the association. Also you've got a whole bunch of new instructors, people that may not have had their hundredth student yet and some people who aren't even instructing yet but someday hope to be active, participating members of the training community who also have become members of the association. The association provides instructor development, professional development, continuing education, marketing assistance, as well as a good community for comparing notes, comparing techniques, and getting to understand each others methodology better. The association is not doctrinal, in other words we're not telling people how they need to teach or exactly what they need to teach in terms of technique, we're trying to help the community evolve by opening up a discussion about different techniques, about different methods. We want instructors to feel comfortable coming into the community, we want instructors feeling comfortable talking about their own doctrine and their own techniques. The fact is if they haven't thought really hard about their techniques, they might get some insight from some other members that helped them understand why their ideas are awesome or maybe why their ideas could use some improvement or some evolution. I know that for me, one of the best ways for me to grow as an instructor is to understand my own material better based on the critiques, questions and challenges of other instructors, both my peers, my students who are also instructors who may not have as much experience and the people that have come before me and have a lot more teaching experience and a lot more experience understanding the body of work that is defensive shooting instruction. So the ADSI is something I encourage you to look into if you want to instruct or if you are currently instructing, and if you're not an instructor, you might also want to look for this logo or look for alliances with this logo, with our association when it comes time to choose who you're going to learn from. Someone who's a member of The Association of Defensive Shooting Instructors has already demonstrated an openness to learning, an openness to critiquing themselves and an openness to professional development and continuing education that's going to keep them at the cutting edge of the defensive shooting training community. Be sure to check out the Personal Defense Network for more important tips just like that one.