I'd really like to give West Coast Armory North a 5-star review, but after reading the review below that was left by Trista H. and having a different experience, I'd like to offer an alternate perspective of John and Martha's training program.
The classroom portion of the training was good for beginners, particularly the portion where students practiced with the orange dummy guns. John, the range owner, is a good trainer, though he spent some time to impress upon the class how much experience he's had training secret government agencies and special forces (i.e., Delta Force, FBI special response unit, "DOD covert operation agencies without names," etc..) It's possible, but doubtful. John is an outstanding shot, and doubtless knows his stuff, but his seemingly self-aggrandizing introduction concerned me a bit (over-confidence can be a very bad thing.)
John's wife, Martha, is very nice and I have no doubt that she is a competent shooter. She does, however, tend to lean in without warning during live-fire exercises to correct students, and that has the potential to be dangerously distracting for new shooters.
At this point, I'd like to cover a major concern about a recent incident that happened during an intermediate handgun safety class I took at West Coast Armory North. Having taken classes from other organizations, including the NRA and Insights, one of the things that all instructors have made a point of emphasizing early on is not to overreact if a hot spent casing goes down your shirt. Hot brass from another shooter's pistol went down another shooter's shirt shortly after the live fire training began and that shooter kept his muzzle pointed downrange and put the gun down before pulling out the hot brass. This would have been a good time for John to emphasize the importance of not overreacting to hot brass while holding a loaded weapon. He did not do this.
A few minutes later, the same thing happened to a woman who was taking the class and she flipped out, waving the gun around at everyone in the class with her finger on the trigger while desperately reaching down her shirt with her free hand. Frankly, it was an "oh shit" moment for everyone in the room. John managed to pull the weapon to the ground and out of her hand within 10 seconds, and thankfully, no one was hurt. That stated, it could have turned out very different.
After this happened, John stopped the class to discuss what to do if you were hit with hot ejected casings. The woman, who had left the room for several minutes after lashing out at Martha, was allowed to continue the class despite breaking every one of the four safety rules that John had pounded into our heads earlier in the class. I did not feel safe around the woman, since she showed no common sense or self control. Still, she was allowed to continue shooting alongside a dozen other mostly beginning shooters in an open room with no protective barriers. Frankly, I was amazed that she was allowed to continue participating in the shooting portion of the class, since her nerves were so frayed after her flip-out.
At the end of the class, John announced that her gun was out of ammo and all was well, but... well, who knows? There were a lot of "what ifs" that could have gone down with her in the room. There should be a policy that if you break one of the four rules, you get a warning, break two and you have to stop shooting while Martha re-instructs you on the four rules. Break all four and the class should be halted and the person should be required to leave the range for the remainder of the class. This class was intended for people who had some familiarity with handguns, yet this woman clearly needed remedial, basic training and should not have been allowed to continue shooting in a wide-open crowded room.
That being said, most of the class was very useful, but the few very avoidable mistakes that happened that evening could have resulted in a much more tragic outcome. I hope John makes a concerted point of explaining hot brass from this point forward in all of his safety courses. Better still, he should limit the number of students on 100-level courses to six per class, since having a dozen people in the room, with six behind the firing line without any form of protection, was a clear risk in this situation. read more
