Lower Providence Rod & Gun Club?

[JLStorm]

JLStorm,
From the recent newsletter:

Basic Pistol, which is a two night course is offered in April, May and June while Personal Protection, which involves three evenings and a Saturday morning, is offered in August and September. Opening are still available in the June Basic Pistol course (June 18th and 21st) and in the September Personal Protection course (Sep 18th, 24th, 27th and 29th).

Hope this fits with your schedule.

No, I would have to take about 3 weeks off from work for this....If they require these courses they should really schedule them so that people who travel, have evening commitments like single parents, or work at night can participate, or they should let these individuals train elsewhere. Basic Pistol is a one day course, PP is a two day course which can be done on weekends most everywhere else, I dont understand why they are stretching it out?

Oh well it looks like I'll have to find another range, at least 30 mins from my house...now I dislike these people even more...not only do they want me to bow at their feet and take their courses...but their schedule is worse than most college course offerings from what I remember of college....

[Mikul]

If you think of the classes as an extended safety evaluation, it makes sense.

Do you guys really expect this club to have classes available to fit everyone's schedule? If they're like every other club, they're all volunteers who have lives of their own. You can't make everybody happy.

[dgg9]

If you think of the classes as an extended safety evaluation, it makes sense.

Except they're not an evaluation -- an evaluation implies quickly verifying that someone already has a certain skill level. This, however, is a forced re-do of the complete curriculum, spread out over a huge amount of time.

It's the difference between getting an equivalency test at school, and being forced to retake the whole class.

An evaluation would be fine. This isn't that.

[JLStorm]

If they are all volunteers how come they charge so damn much for the classes!

[Mikul]

You can't judge a person's concern for safety in a 15 minute evaluation. Some people are very good at putting on their best behavior when the teacher is watching and causing trouble when her back it turned.

As for the price: how much do they charge, JLStorm? What are the rates at other places?

It's been a while, but when I took the classes, LPRGC was 1/3 the cost of Classic Pistol and 1/2 the cost at the local night school (which didn't include range fees). When I did the math it was going to cost me $15 more per class after factoring in the club membership, but I got 1:1 instruction (vs 1:15) and had a place to shoot Action when I was finished as well as a general club membership. You also shot A LOT at LPRGC's classes. In most Basic Pistol classes, you shoot between 0 and 20 rounds, but I went through 150 at LPRGC. The NRA has NO RANGE TIME REQUIREMENT for Basic Pistol. You can pay the same money at Classic or a night school and still pay range fees and forget about shooting Action entirely. I thought their price was a steal.

[dgg9]

You can't judge a person's concern for safety in a 15 minute evaluation.

Sure you can. Heck, 5 minutes would do. The muzzle discipline and general gun handling of someone who has taken classes and is in general squared away is immediately obvious.

And a reasonable set of credentials should take you even less time.

Some people are very good at putting on their best behavior when the teacher is watching and causing trouble when her back it turned.

If so, how would forcing them through yet another class change their behaviour? You're conflating lack of firearms education with general irresponsibility.

[dgg9]

It's been a while, but when I took the classes, LPRGC was 1/3 the cost of Classic Pistol and 1/2 the cost at the local night school (which didn't include range fees). When I did the math it was going to cost me $15 more per class after factoring in the club membership, but I got 1:1 instruction (vs 1:15) and had a place to shoot Action when I was finished as well as a general club membership. You also shot A LOT at LPRGC's classes. In most Basic Pistol classes, you shoot between 0 and 20 rounds, but I went through 150 at LPRGC. The NRA has NO RANGE TIME REQUIREMENT for Basic Pistol. You can pay the same money at Classic or a night school and still pay range fees and forget about shooting Action entirely. I thought their price was a steal.

All of this may be true, and for someone who is a blank slate, maybe the LPRGC classes are an excellent way to go. The point people here keep making, though, is that they treat their classes as if they were the only valid form of firearm instruction available anywhere in the universe, whereas in reality, their classes are no better than equal to ANY decent weekend tactical pistol class out there (which all have round counts far exceeding 150).

What's missing is any sense of rational credentialism, or barring that, any reasonable equivalency test.

[Mikul]

Sure you can. Heck, 5 minutes would do. The muzzle discipline and general gun handling of someone who has taken classes and is in general squared away is immediately obvious.

I'm sure what you say makes sense to you because you're a reasonable person. Not everyone is like you. LPRGC puts everyone through a 1 hour orientation where they go over every single rule in the club. Then they make you qualify to shoot on their indoor range which takes 15-45 minutes. Then, a week later some new member will walk in the door and do things that defy half of the rule book. The club, rightly, jumps all over them when it happens. Now imagine letting these people who were nice and safe under supervision for 90 minutes literally run around the range and shoot. It gives me the heebee geebies. Even the people who try to be safe make little errors that can get someone killed. Without someone watching you, you won't even know that you're doing it. Friend or foe, they're just as dead.

If so, how would forcing them through yet another class change their behaviour?

You can't make a man do something he doesn't want to do, but you don't have to give him permission to do it either.

You're conflating lack of firearms education with general irresponsibility.

I'm not, it's just that their class serves to do both: educate and detect irresponsible behavior.

[Mikul]

The point people here keep making, though, is that they treat their classes as if they were the only valid form of firearm instruction available anywhere in the universe,

If you look at the classes independent of the Action shooting requirement, you are correct. Except they're not independent and nobody on this board is complaining that the classes are too difficult to take. They're complaining that they have to take the classes to shoot Action.

Now look at the classes as an opporinity for the club to get to know you as a shooter in a controlled environment so that they know you aren't the guy who likes to pick up his magazines while the person next to you is reloading their gun that's pointed at your head.

It seems a bit much, eh? The facilites dictate it to some extent. There are no partitions at LPRGC. So if you get forgetful, or make a mistake, you put the lives of other members at stake. A lot of other clubs have multiple bays to shoot from so even if you make a major mistake, you're probably only going to shoot the dirt... or yourself. Also remember where LPRGC is: perhaps the closest outdoor range to Philadelphia. You do a reload with your finger on the trigger and the muzzle in the air and Genuardi's catches your bullet. Don't think for a minute that the club wouldn't be sued out of existence because of it.

One of the things that taking LPRGC's classes did was open my eyes to WHY these rules exist. Looking from the outside, they seem to make no sense at all.

In the end, the club is responsbile for your behavior and they take that very seriously. So you're going to have to earn their trust in a very well-structured manner. They could make the whole process arbitrary or they could ban Action shooting entirely like every other club near Philly has done.

[dgg9]

I'm sure what you say makes sense to you because you're a reasonable person. Not everyone is like you.

It has nothing to do with me. It has to do with having a moderately trained eye for seeing disciplined gun handling vs not. People simply don't display disciplined, squared away gun handling, and have it become unglued 5 minutes later.

Then, a week later some new member will walk in the door and do things that defy half of the rule book.

So how does forcing everyone to wait 8 months and then go through THEIR class change any of that?

We're talking at cross purposes. You're talking about the need for verified training. I'm not disagreeing with that -- I'm disputing their notion that it has to be THEIR training.

As I said, and as I keep saying, their class is no better than the other weekend pistol classes out there. There is no defensible reason for them to insist on THEIR class, and not classes that are as good or better.