Originally Posted By: chaosmagnet
Here I respectfully disagree. I'm not aware of any paperwork+fee programs to become certified instructors, generally there are some classes involved as well.

My wording was not very good there. My comment was based on an acquaintance that said "You fill out a little paperwork on yourself and learn how to fill out paperwork on students, and that's about it." That somewhat flippant comment may not actually reflect reality, and may have been half in jest, but I took it to be an accurate description. The question was asked and answered during my CCW class many years ago.

The class was really very good - at the range (outdoor) were were trained and fired on moving targets. They have a pretty cool apparatus of human shaped targets on wheels that they pulled around erratically for you to try and engage. And they had safety officers back with us students making sure we didn't get out of hand swinging our line of fire left and right ... something that you seldom get to do at a range. I had been shooting for decades before that, but had not gotten much experience shooting at moving targets. Mind you, this was not a required part of the CCW class - it was an extra, optional, paid addition.

That addition to the main class was certainly fun, and good practice. But it really wasn't teaching us new information. Just letting us practice. I guess I did learn one thing though - it's a lot harder to hit a fast moving target with a little snub nosed .38 than hitting a stationary target. I did not find that to be as much of a problem with a larger size semi though. Probably because I don't shoot a snubby revolver very often. They're actually quite snappy little buggers, especially with +P. But I was testing it against other firearms to decide which would be the best for CCW.