10 Commandments for a Firearms Trainer

This was posted yesterday by Instructor Zero on Facebook.  It is duplicated here in its entirety just in case Facebook deletes it, deletes him, or deletes me, for the purpose of saving the information.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS FOR A FIREARMS TRAINER

1) ENSURE SAFETY
The first duty of a trainer is to create, provide and always guarantee, everywhere and in any case, solid and essential safety standards in any technical point, drill or action.
Firearms training is carried out in facilities built for the safe use of firearms, but still requires the application of safety standards and rules by anyone handling a firearm.
There are no exceptions or compromises, safety is an absolute guarantee that a trainer must impose, manage and enforce.
Especially in civil courses, the technical level of the participants is always very heterogeneous, but we must remember that the safety and strength of a chain depends on its weakest ring and not on the strongest one. This must lead us not to push the technical level of the course on the most skilled and experienced elements, but on the most insecure and inexperienced ones, otherwise we would push the latter to do something out of their possibilities, exposing everyone to a risk.

2) ALWAYS APPLY LOGIC AND COMMON SENSE
This is the second fundamental step for a Trainer, that is to say to filter everything he teaches and shares through the simple and aseptic logic.
What we teach must have a clear logical application and need to correspond to the needs of the students.
If in order to understand a technical point, a student must be an "Special Force" and he is not,  this means he joined the wrong course.
Any principle or technique that will be explained must have its logic application in the context in which it will be applied.
If it is a "sport shooting course" for example, everything will have to make sense in the shooting range context.
If, on the other hand, we are talking about a subject who carries a firearm every day for defense or in his work, the logic application must find a sense in the real context.
Indeed if it made sense only inside the shooting range context (training environment) it would not be effective and useful for him.

3) ALWAYS EXPLAIN "WHY" OF THINGS
This is in my opinion an essential duty for a trainer, to explain the "why" of things, to explain the why of every single gesture, detail or technique is explained or shared. A trainer has the duty to simplify the matter and not make it even more complex. Normally, those who tend to complicate the matter by making it often incomprehensible is because are probably the first who don't know why of things.
A trainer must push his students to ask questions, to do so, he must create a comfortable and friendly didactic environment, he must not in any way inhibit his students from asking, asking and asking again until the point is understood.
The greatest failure for a Trainer is that students copy or imitate without understanding why they are doing that thing.

4) PROFESSIONALISM AND ETHICS
If a trainer speaks badly of another trainer in front of his students, without giving the other the right to reply, it is the most shameful and anti-professional thing that a trainer can do from an ethical point of view.
If this happens, no matter who the trainer is in front of you, know that he is a really bad trainer.

5) THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH
This is an extremely widespread pathology in this industry, many, too many believe they are the absolute possessors of the truth.
Unfortunately, there is no absolute truth or absolute standard and therefore there cannot even be an owner. The world is too vast, the environments are infinite and with them the variables contained, every truth is always relative and most of the time it depends on the context and on who we are, where we are and what we need to do.
Be wary of anyone who poses as the absolute possessor of the truth, because it means that little or nothing knows about the rest of the world.

6) THE DETAILS
The details and the level of technical depth are what make the difference between a professional and prepared Trainer and an improvised one. The technical level of the subject must always be deepened to the maximum of the technical detail required for the segment being taught.
Always expect from your trainers a high level of technical information, solid, in-depth and rich in details, do not be satisfied with fascinating war stories, tales of fantastic secret operations, those must not find space in a technical course, but eventually after the course in front of a beer.

7) THE BARTER
Many trainers trade the technical subject, the education and the discipline of the matter, for the "bang, bang, bang".
Shooting is certainly more fun than learning by listening to a Trainer who explains complex concepts that do not require the use of tactical cool equipment, but a simple correct use of pen and paper.
Usually shooting a lot or pushing students to do exercises with great tactical choreography but totally useless for educational purposes and sometimes even dangerous, makes a certain type of customers happier, because it makes them feel more operators, pushing them to buy more tickets for the "amusement tactical park ".
After many years as a trainer around the globe, I have come to the conclusion that people very often don't really want to learn, many times they just want to wear a costume for a few hours or a few days and experience inside a shooting range a projection of a job or a life they have chosen not to live and they will never live.
Learning very often is boring, but a professional trainer is not an animator, jester or entertainer and the fun is not included in the price of the course.
Remember that the more you shoot the less you learn, shooting takes time and if you have fired 1000 shots in a day, you will probably come home with your bags empty of knowledge, but for sure you had a lot of fun .

8 ) A TRAINER IS ALWAYS FIRST A STUDENT
The day a trainer stops being a student is the day he should stop working as a trainer.
The study, the update of the knowledge and the comparison should never run out.

9 ) TRUTH AND HONESTY
A trainer should always be honest with their students and should always tell them the truth. If a student has worked poorly, has made little effort, has particular difficulties in applying or is carrying out a training segment that is too advanced for him, the trainer has the duty to tell him.
A trainer should not give false pat on the shoulder to make the customer happy in the hope that he will come back to buy another course, he should say things as they are,  because the safety of the student is at stake.
There is nothing worse than a person who thinks he is prepared or capable of handling a firearm and is not.
If the Trainer is honest and tells them the truth,  when he gives them a pat on the shoulder telling them they did a good job, they will appreciate it more than anything and this will reward them for every effort and sacrifice made.

10) PUT YOUR EGO TO A SIDE
If you are a trainer or have a company that provides training, your duty is to offer the best service to your customers, but that does not include your ego.
If you aren't prepared enough or don't have enough experience to design a certain training segment or topic, don't sell your ego, but provide them with the best professional you can find for that segment or topic.
Push your students to attend other courses and other trainers, do not be jealous of them if you have given them 110% of yourself and you have done it with seriousness and competence, you have done everything you had to do.
If a trainer is jealous of his students or has a too big  ego or has mere commercial interests, whereby every student is simply a source of income, in both cases it is deeply wrong.
Be a trainer is not only a job, it’s a lifestyle!

Unpopular Opinion

Recently came across one of those "post your unpopular opinion" threads on social media. Some of these quotes will have been edited for clarity. 

These opinions mirror mine:
"Extremely overweight people are on the same level of drugs addict."

"Not everyone should be allowed to vote."

"Women should not be allowed to vote."

"Banks and governments should be held accountable for intentional market manipulation and systematic institutional poverty and depression."

"Donald Trump was far better than Joe Biden is as President."

"Patriarchy is the only way humanity will survive."

"Thanos wasn't wrong."

"When a woman sleeps around too much she struggles to pair bond later on in life. It messes with her psyche."

"Black people are more racist than white people."

"If your vaccine works, why do I need one? If your vaccine doesn’t work, why do I need one?"

"There is nothing virtuous of making yourself a victim and blaming trauma for all your ails in life. You actually do have agency in your life."

And some of these were funny, or thought provoking, though not necessarily in line with mine:

"The 'N-word' shouldn't be a racial epithet since black guys use it all the time when speaking to each other."

"Every other time the person renews they should also have to take a driving test. There should be a listing of all changes in driving laws that must be studied before each new exam and the exam should have questions about the new changes."

"Birthdays should be called birth day anniversary."

"Strangers should be allowed to discipline your child. The moment you bring them out the house, they're no longer just your problem."

"Some dog breeds should not exist."

And these here make me weep for society:

"Most pro-life people are not pro life at all. They only care about the child being born and not what happens afterwards. Several children either go hungry or are waiting to get adopted, which is also an expensive and sometimes political process."

"Karl Marx was right."