Hunter Education changes

[Bob33]

I would ask him to leave and return without a gun.

[ghosthunter]

Fail them if they are not a commissioned LEO.  Instant safety failure, not following instructions, etc.

Falls under attitude?

[rjn cajun]

I don`t disagree with you at all Brownarola. I think after some time and improvements or someone like you present on the range day observing should have the final say. On line classes in my opinion are like a college degree on line. The kids are more engaged with a professional teacher/instructor. I`m not at all knocking them because I haven`t looked into to them. Just feel more comfortable with an instructor.

[ghosthunter]

Nope,

I just wondered if and instructor did it should he/she be treated any differently?

[ghosthunter]

The point is most instructors would permanently remove any student from a class if he or she violated the no gun no ammo rule. During class.
How can instructors expect to be treated any differently?

I think it is a big difference between a teaching team that before class and before students arrive. Secures their classroom and checks all firearms. If they find something no arm no foul. Their protocols worked, they found a hazard.

opposed to

An  instructor who stands in front of a class opens a firearm and a live round pops out. That is a total failure not only of that instructor but of the whole team and a lack of safety protocols.

How can the state on one hand say we are serious about liabilities and safety breaches yet on the other hand allow that instructor to continue?

Your neighbor got a DUI and you know it. Do you let him drive your kids around?

One popular instructor grabbed a kid during a gun handling exercise somewhere, the dept. ends up pulling his card. Another brings a loaded gun to class and the dept. does nothing. Where is the standard. I know neither of these instructors. I am saying the Dept. seems to be reactive instead of proactive about liability. Instead of dealing with the real problem which is an instructor not following basic safety protocols they compound the problem and remove valuable teaching aids from all instructors.

Your finger is infected so cut off your arm.

[Special T]

 
Gotta agree with that GH... Very reactive and not very well thought out!

[Oldguy]

I noticed that the IHEA membership, $25 a year, provides a $1,000,000 liability coverage for instructors and am wondering why that couldn't be a factor in the WDFW fear of liability? There is already some kind of protection in place, but I don't know the limits.

[Special T]

In this state you can be assigned penalties in court that do not correlate with your degree of guilt. I think its no fault... So the way it works is whoever has the ability to pay  foots the bill, or at leas most of it. Lets just take a hypothetical. Say a HE instructor shoots a student with the display gun. It is determined that the instructor is 90% responsible, because he furnished a loaded weapon, and the state is 10% responsible, because they allowed it to happen. The instructor has insurance and or assets to cover a million bucks, but the judgement is 10mill... Well the state forks over 9 mill and the instructor forks over 1mill... That is one of the reasons the state is worried about liability... Never mind that this makes no common sense, it is the way it work sin this state.

[Brownarola]

Delaware has a "Release of Liability" that must be signed and notarized prior to attending the course. Not sure why this has not yet been implemented here if liability is an issue.

http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/fw/HunterEd/Documents/Waiver.pdf

[ghosthunter]

CAUTION INERT NON WORKING GUNS IN USE.

inert guns are not to be used at home or any outdoor activites. The use of ORANGE GUNS may cause the user and anyone nearby to be less trained in the operation of real guns due to the limited number of models.
Eye protection should always be used. Bright ORANGE GUNS have been know to cause orange eye spots in some users. Users should not confuse ORANGE GUNS with the real thing as the long term effect may be to dumb down the user.
USE ORANGE GUNS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

new sign for classes.

[danderson]

  A lot of attention has been spent on the non-firing guns in the classroom portion of the class, if that's all that was changing then it wouldn't be so bad, theres been alot of rumors going around and its not clear to me what the final changes might look like , since the DFW doest have the balls the interject there proposals on this public form but instead chooses to take the lazy approach and say nothing, the instructor news letter was apparently discontinued  for no apparent reason other than maybe they didn't want the instructors to have any input, after all what do we know, but  from what I have learned these changes wont take place statewide until 2013, my classes are going to be taught exactly the same way that we have in the past, with lots of good examples of different rifles and shotguns and muzzeloaders and pistols, and from what I have learned public outcry from teaching teams from accross the state, can and will influence the final outcome.
  One of the casualties of limiting exposure to different types of firearms in the hands on portion of classroom is that students wont get the opportunity to handle pistols, every year we get students that have never handled one, adults and youth, if we cant expose students to different working firearms  weather it be a semi automatic pistol or a lever action rifle, its called hunterEDUCATION not uneducated, I wonder if the nine year old boy that brought a loaded handgun to school that discharged and struck the little girl could have benefited from such a class on the proper way to treat someones  elses pistol, education is the key to life.

[ghosthunter]

  A lot of attention has been spent on the non-firing guns in the classroom portion of the class, if that's all that was changing then it wouldn't be so bad, theres been alot of rumors going around and its not clear to me what the final changes might look like , since the DFW doest have the balls the interject there proposals on this public form but instead chooses to take the lazy approach and say nothing, the instructor news letter was apparently discontinued  for no apparent reason other than maybe they didn't want the instructors to have any input, after all what do we know, but  from what I have learned these changes wont take place statewide until 2013, my classes are going to be taught exactly the same way that we have in the past, with lots of good examples of different rifles and shotguns and muzzeloaders and pistols, and from what I have learned public outcry from teaching teams from accross the state, can and will influence the final outcome.
  One of the casualties of limiting exposure to different types of firearms in the hands on portion of classroom is that students wont get the opportunity to handle pistols, every year we get students that have never handled one, adults and youth, if we cant expose students to different working firearms  weather it be a semi automatic pistol or a lever action rifle, its called hunterEDUCATION not uneducated, I wonder if the nine year old boy that brought a loaded handgun to school that discharged and struck the little girl could have benefited from such a class on the proper way to treat someones  elses pistol, education is the key to life.

 

I will have a better idea of the changes sunday night as I had a meeting scheduled with Dan noon Sunday. That meeting has now turned into a meeting with Dan, Carl Kline, and officer Jeff Lee. Feels like a full court press to me. And several members of my teaching team.
The changes will finalize July 2013 because that is the beginning of a new fiscal year.
Until I am ordered not to bring working guns to class I will continue to teach as usual.
I too have heard the rumors of the other changes. And no of those bother me yet. But Non working guns is the end for me.

[ghosthunter]

Today I met and talked for several hours with Carl Kline & Dan Boes along with my teaching team.

I have said many times here the issues for me where 1. I am not teaching with Orange guns.
                                                                             2. I am not teaching with guns which are not operational.

The issues for me were resolved in the following way by Carl & Dan. 1. We will not be required to use the orange guns. Provided the guns we do use in the classroom and for skills cannot be fired. The solution for me is a trigger lock on all firearms in the classroom. This way the student can train and handle the exact gun used for live fire and skills testing. We never let the students put their finger on the trigger any ways. This way they will not be able too.
This solves both my complaints. I will continue to use the same guns I have always used with trigger locks in place that I can take off when needed.
I still need to come up with a so loution for lever action firearms.


They brought a set of orange guns to the meeting and we all inspected them. Here's my observations.

The guns are butt ugly orange.
All of the guns are heavier than the state owned 20 GA. youth models.
Non of the firearms are Youth Models, they are all full size.
As expected all the actions are very stiff.

Another topic of discussion was Live Fire Range Days. They assured me those would not go away. But Range days are optional for the instructor and the student. What? The student may op out of live fire. So in my class we do skills one night and live fire on the weekend. If the student is allowed to op out of live fire than why should I have live fire? Why should I get up at  o dark 30 if only half my class shows up for live fire.

So for me I intend not to have live fire range as long as students are allowed to op out of Live fire. This is not how I interput ed live fire over the years. I saw live fire as optional for the instructor. If I had a range everyone was required to attend and shoot. That according to Dan & Carl in not policy. If a student does not want to shoot you cannot  require it.  So why have a range day?

Other changes are in the works, set max hours, age limit?, I did not discuss these changes with them because I am not concerned with them.

So that is what I know right now. More will be fleshedout at IST.

[Cascade_fisher]

Well I'm glad you are not leaving.

[ghosthunter]

In order to not have to duplicate information, I am going to post my findings from our meetings with Dan Boes and Sgt. Klein on this thread:
http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php?topic=92925.60

In short, all is not what it's been made out to be.

I have to say I did enjoy being able to talk to them in a smaller group. And I have no reason to not think they were being geniue.