Blend Over

From WarOnGuns Correspondent Henry Bowman:

Just about a year ago, the propeller-heads at NRA Training rolled out a new "Blended Training" doctrine for their handgun course.  Instead of the standard NRA handgun courses they have been offering for decades, this new course would require all prospective students to log in online first, create a training account at the NRA, pay to take a CAI version of the classroom work, and receive a "chit" certificate.  They would then take the chit to a local instructor who would arrange the practical (range) portion of the training.

As is typical of anything done by Fairfax Training guys, this was all imposed top-down with no advance notice before it was carved in stone.  It was not based on any sort of instructors' feedback to the NRA saying "we need this."  It was never passed by instructors for comment before implementation.  It was never passed by instructors for testing before imposition.  The first we heard about it was when the NRA said it was going to happen on a given date, and we could sample the online offering for ourselves for free.

And, of course, the old front-to-back classroom NRA courses and written NRA training materials were now OBSOLETED, and we were forbidden to teach them past that date (as NRA courses, anyway).

The tubez lit up with objections.

NRA was charging $60 for the online portion of the course.  Now, there are a lot of instructors out here in distressed areas holding entire courses for $100-$150, and offering family discounts.  NRA didn't take $60 worth of load off these instructors, so they had just reduced demand for their courses by raising the price.  Plus, it entirely destroyed the efforts of nonprofit orgs holding these courses for FREE for victimized groups.

The initial classroom portion of the course was valuable to teachers to get a sense of the student's overall attitude towards accepting instruction, safety, and the like, before allowing them to handle guns, let along loaded guns.  NRA had just removed that evaluation period and replaced it with a paper certificate.

The change to Blended Training of necessity discontinued the First Steps courses entirely (in which a student learns all the relevant material as it applies to his gun and his gun only, and not every style of pistol and action).  Personally, these were all I ever taught anymore, given that most people just want to qualify for a CCW, the First Steps class can be done in one day, and the full class takes two to five days when done conscientiously.

The new doctrine complicated the student's transition from online to classroom — the student had to make sure that after taking the CAI portion, there would be a classroom near them scheduled to complete the second half of the course.  Conversely, instructors had to ensure they had enough students to run a course without any assurance that an adequate number were going to complete the CAI successfully by any given date.

Finally, senior students were likely to be flummoxed and discouraged by having to do any nontrivial portion of anything online.

Anyway, the Yahoogroup was pretty much flooded with instructors replying they couldn't continue to teach NRA courses within this framework, and that they were putting together their own offerings based on the previous model.  And, unlike the celebrities who threatened to emigrate after losing the election, these instructors carried through.

Last week, we received this communication:

On 12/9/2016 5:40 PM,  xxx [nrainstructors] wrote:

Great News!

My NRA Friends Field Rep told me they were informed by Wayne LaPierre at their annual meeting last week. That the NRA had made a huge mistake in rolling out the Blended Pistol training. And that it was being terminated and the original Instructor lead Basic Pistol course would be reinstated!

We should have an official notification soon.

Bottom line is that the NRA destroyed its own course offerings for the period of a year, and alienated scads of master instructors who may never come back.  

Wonder if anybody gets fired over this… or promoted?