My Beginner's Experience
My name is Dorothy, and my confession is I never thought I would get to handle firearms. And now I work at Range Arts, a firearms safety training company!
How did that come to be? Well that’s a boring story, so let’s skip to the part you’ll hopefully be interested in: what it was like for me, with zero firearms experience, to walk into my Canadian Firearms Safety Course at Range Arts.
Set aside your skepticism that I’m just paid to write nice things about Range Arts (which is sort of true!) and let me tell you the story of my firearms safety courses!
Like a lot of people, my knowledge of guns was limited to movies and tv shows before recently. When I signed up for the courses, I had a few silly ideas in my head. I thought the class would be a BIG, BORING lecture, with a really hard test, and maybe some target shooting.
As I arrived at the class I quickly realized I was wrong. The class size was small. There was no actual shooting – all the guns are deactivated because it’s in a classroom, not a shooting range. This was a day of comfortable and fun learning. Like a small masterclass.
We learned how to pick up the guns safely first, ensuring we didn’t muzzle sweep each other (another reason why the training guns don’t work). We were taught how to identify ammunition and load the right ammunition, so we don’t blow ourselves up later. And we learned to operate the safeties, to learn to eliminate any hazardous mistakes.
Something that really surprised me was the group of learners in the room. I had an expectation of who would want to learn about firearms. However, all kinds of people of different ages and backgrounds were present. Everyone had their own interesting reasons for being there. A few wanted to go hunting as a family while others were inheriting rifles. Another wanted to take up target shooting as hobby. There was someone who didn’t intend to ever go shooting but wanted to be licensed because their partner kept guns in their home.
Each person had their own strengths and difficulties learning to handle guns. Some were enthusiastic and prepared, while others, like me, were enthusiastic but UN-prepared! You can read the manual ahead of time!? Everyone got a chance to ask lots of questions. Jamesan was very good at teaching to all the varying levels of comfort in the room. The learning environment felt open, not suffocating. Everyone was making jokes and getting to know each other.
In the end I did better on the tests than I ever expected. Jamesan made sure we mastered the important concepts. Personally, I found it a little nerve-wracking thinking about the possibility of not passing… How would I take the RPAL the next day? It turns out we wouldn't let you book the RPAL the next day if there was a huge chance you wouldn’t be ready for it.
Recently I visited a shooting range for the first time. I can see now how important what we learned that day in class actually is. The only way we can keep everyone safe is through preventing mistakes — being meticulous with our safety. I tried a variety of guns at the range and felt like I had a very strong foundation upon which to learn and explore more. I especially like shotguns, even though I now need to go find one that fits me well!
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