I agree entirely with what Driverman posted on 6 September.
My involvement as a firearms instructor parallels his, except that after forty-something years I am still actively involved. We have, for decades, had a manual for use in instruction courses for new firearms license applicants, the latest edition being issued in 2012. While the manual has never been intended to be a minute-by-minute, word-by-word prescription of how the course should be run, it has always been stated – and I would have thought, clearly understood by instructors - that all the fundamental material in it MUST be included in the lecture. We have also used videos for decades, showing people in real-life hunting and shooting situations demonstrating the fundamentals of firearms safety.
It has always been the presumption that applicants would have been issued with a copy of the Arms Code, and have studied it, before attending a course. Most do, but a few don’t – and they are often the ones who fail the test. Some people with well above average learning abilities might be able to come to a course with a base knowledge of almost zero and still pass the test at the finish of it, but most could not, regardless of how good the instructors might be. NZMSC have always been well aware that different people have different learning abilities. Some learn best by reading, some by listening, and others by seeing real life demonstrations, either in-person or on screen. The course is set up to (hopefully) cover all three, even though it does entail some degree of repetition.
Questions for the posters who are complaining about the course and/or the instructors:
Did the instructors refer to the manual at all?
Did they show the video?
Did the instructors REALLY stand up on their hind legs and tell you things that totally contradict the material in the Arms Code and in the video?
If that is what happened, then those instructors must be made to either improve their performance or quit.
Of course the existing system could be improved on – given more volunteers and more funding - but those people advocating tearing it apart and completely rebuilding it – to conform with their personal preferences – need to stop and think about the longer-term implications. They could be a WHOLE LOT worse than what we have now!!!!!
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