TTAG asked this question
here, and this was one of the great replies:
How many people opposed to gun right have I brought around to the pro-gun way of thinking?
I don’t have a hard number, but I know I’ve converted scores into the gun owner community over almost two decades of firearm instruction and I’ve relished every minute of it. It’s what keeps us going when we don’t make any money teaching (and trust me, as a new instructor, you have plenty of those classes as you get established).
There are some examples that stick out in my mind.
One women named Adrienne. She was scared of guns when her husband brought her to one of our two-day handgun classes.
Her husband, a big, burly guy but as nice as could be, brought her along because he wanted to get his Florida non-resident carry permit and he wanted his wife to have half-a-clue what to do if they had a problem at their rural home while he was at work. They have three cute daughters and his parental instincts are strong. Turns out hers were too.
Adrienne didn’t like guns. She barely tolerated her husband having them in the house. Barely.
She was nervous in class and literally trembling when we started dry firing exercises.
I thought she was going to cry when we were about to fire our first shots. One of our outstanding female instructors was on point, helping to assuage anxieties and worries, patiently helping her one-on-one. Several of our instructors gave her high praise and positive reinforcement as the day wore on, gently correcting any form issues. By the second day, she had transformed from a meek and mild housewife (and part-time teacher) into momma grizzly.
What sparked the change?
We were doing an exercise and one of the instructors told her to bark her commands to the “bad guys” down range before firing from cover. She wasn’t very convincing.
Our instructor told her that “Manny”, the target, was coming for her girls.
She snarled at Manny to “get back *&*#&#!” and then gave him a triple-tap in his upper chest. She growled after that. No hissing. She growled.
Not long after, she got her own semi-auto pistol, practiced regularly and has taken additional intermediate-level training with handguns and the whole family has been to a couple of Appleseeds now.
She and the entire family became a regular at Guns Save Life meetings. The next spring, she and her three daughters carried a Guns Save Life banner at the front of the Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day parade.
This same woman joined our training group as a staff member, helping students with registration and other non-gun-related needs at classes. She also pays it forward by helping some of the nervous ladies overcome their anxiety about learning how to handle something they’ve looked upon all their lives as “scary” and “dangerous”.
She’s taken to gun ownership and gun advocacy like a fish to water. This same Adrienne, present day about three or four years later, is slated to become the new Vice-President of Guns Save Life after elections next month. She’s running unopposed.
You think she was an aberration?
Hardly.
How about the elementary school principal from near Peoria. We thought she was joking when she said her husband promised her a trip to Hawaii if she accompanied him to our class.
It was no joke.
She left the firing line and cried through the live-fire exercises. Our instructors and staff (thank heavens we’ve got lots of good instructors) took turns trying to convince her to come shoot a little. She bawled her eyes out for almost three hours Saturday afternoon while the others were shooting down below on the ranges.
Sunday, per an arrangement with her favorite instructor, they came out an hour early and shot one-on-one. Jeff helped her overcome some of her fears in that hour. She went on to shoot many of the exercises Sunday.
She didn’t get an NRA certificate of completion as she didn’t complete some of the NRA-required aspects of the course, but she stuck with it and didn’t go home.
Now remember, this woman was a life-long professional educator, now administrator. She detested guns. Wouldn’t let her husband keep his guns in their home. He later told us she made him store them at a relative’s house.
Saw her husband six months later – at an early January gun show in Springfield. He was all smiles when he saw my wife and I at the GSL booth. Came up and thanked us. He was well-tanned from Hawaii, and said it was the second-best money he ever spent. The best money was tuition for GSL Defense Training. His wife let him bring his guns into their home and had since gone out and bought – on her own without hubby along – her own snub-nosed revolver.
Six months after that, I saw him again.
His wife had picked up a second pistol AND had taken two of her formerly anti-gun teachers out to a Women on Target shooting program at the Chillecothe shooting club.
Not only did we bring her over, she’s now recruiting and converting other fellow educators who *were* anti-gun.
It’s not just women either.
One dad came with his son. Son played lots of video games – those shoot-em-up games. Son turned 18 and wanted his own gun.
Dad thought he should get his some some training before even considering buying his kid a gun, much less letting him have a handgun.
“Guns are for killing, and nothing more,” he said during introductions. “I don’t like guns, but I know my son is going to be getting a gun soon, with or without me, and I think I should know a little bit about them too before we bring them into the house.”
After the two-day class, dad wrote on his evaluation (it’s on our wall at the website): “I came thinking guns were only for killing. I left having learned that guns were for living. I’ll be getting my own soon.”
That’s powerful stuff there.
Those are just some of my more memorable ones. There’s plenty more though.
John
