Tips for New Gun Owners

Hi, my name is Jerah Hutchins. I'm a PDN network instructor. And today I wanted to talk a little bit to the newer shooters that are coming into the industry, into the gun world, and I wanted to expound on some things that can be confusing to you. So a lot of people come in, and they don't understand how to train, what to train on, and things that they're not thinking about. So the first thing I wanna talk about is how to train. We have to look at this as kind of a university or academy. We can't just necessarily pick and choose classes that we want to take. We have to start somewhere, and we have to get that nomenclature, and then we have to move forward. So the order in which I typically like to do things is we start with introduction handgun, right? So you're gonna get some nomenclature on anatomy of a firearm. You're going to get the basics on grip, stance, sight picture, trigger pull, et cetera. And then we can graduate, depending on what state you're in, into your CCW or LTC classes, right? Your concealed carry, or your license to carry classes. Now that particular class is mostly gonna focus on laws, right. So the laws that surround your ability to carry a firearm in whatever state that you're in. Then we wanna talk maybe a little bit more about this draw from holster situation. Now this can be a little more difficult, because there are a lot of ranges across the United States that don't necessarily allow you to do draw from holster, but we've got some work-arounds to that, right? So we can do dry fire practices at home, among other things, to kind of get us used to what kind of gear we need to get, and where we wanna carry, et cetera, et cetera. Not necessarily- And then what I would do is, I would graduate from that into an intuitive defensive shooting class. This was one of the greatest classes that I ever took. It incorporated all of your intro to handgun stuff, your marksmanship, and accuracy. It also talks about something that's really important that we don't always touch on, which is the neuroscience behind what your body is actually gonna do if you're stressed out, and if you have stimulus, if you're fearful, and you need to understand those seven natural reactions, in order to be able to work through them, and have a general basic understanding of what your body is actually doing in those particular situations. This was one of the greatest educational perspectives that I ever got. And then once you're outside of that, we can look at maintenance programs, right? So what kind of drills do I need to be doing in order to keep this muscle memory consistent, or keep this perishable skill intact, right? So that's where you need to move from there. Now we also need to talk about things that we're not thinking of. And one of the things that we touched on today was ballistics. So a lot of people don't go out and get a ballistics education, and this correlates to the number one question that instructors typically get, which is, "What's the best gun for my home defense?" Or, "What's the best gun for my defense in general?" And that's really correlated to a ton of variables. Where do you live? How close are your neighbors? Do you live in an apartment? Do you live in a house? You know, there's tons of things that go into making that particular decision, and you're not gonna be able to make an informed decision until you've had a little bit of education under your belt. So today, we wanna focus on where is the actual nucleus of where I should start training? Okay. And that's always gonna be introduction to handgun. If you don't understand how the anatomy of a firearm works, you're not gonna be able to work through the future classes that you're gonna need to take. Okay. Don't forget your situational awareness classes. Those are super, super, super important, because everybody thinks that they're aware, but you don't really understand the small nuances that you need to look for, as far as nefarious and unusual behavior, okay? So what I would do is, I would get with an instructor in your area, preferably a PDN instructor, and have them put you on what I like to call a pathway to training. Okay. So that's where you start, where you're considered an experienced shooter, and then your maintenance programs after that.