This is a topic I have been thinking about for a long time, yet upon which I have not really spoken to anyone except for a few close friends.

I have heard (and read) back and forth discussions about whether it is better to pay for training from a former military or law enforcement shooter – say, someone who spent a long time in a special operations unit of some kind – or from a shooter who has won multiple national titles in something like NRA Action Pistol/Steel Challenge/USPSA/IDPA/IPSC etc. Of course, I can only offer my opinion, and the truth may lie elsewhere – but here goes.

When you pay to take a shooting course, you are primarily paying for someone to teach you how to shoot a pistol (rifle, shotgun, slingshot, whatever), and not much more than that. Some of the most important skills that relate to surviving armed confrontations are not sexy and most people would never actually pay to learn them. They’re gained through experience and are much harder to learn in a two day course…but I digress.

The best competition shooters – like Rob Leatham and Dave SevignyÂ – are highly sought after by military special operations units, the personnel of which want to learn how the best and fastest shooters in the world do what they do. They aren’t asking Dave Sevigny to teach them how to locate and close with the bad guys – they need to get better at the part where they destroy the enemy. And so the military values very highly the time of these men.

Some folks have told me that they will only ever train with instructors that have been in combat or have “seen the elephant” – I’m pretty sure that Rob Leatham has been to the zoo at least once in his life. The problem with this “combat or nothing” mindset is that some people who have been in combat might not be a good enough instructor to teach you much of what they learned, or they might be interested in talking more about combat and gunfights than actually teaching you important things, or they might tangentially mention combat situations in order to impress you when they really haven’t been there and done that.

I was high pistol shooter in a class (In fact, I’m pretty sure that I outshot the instructor too)Â taught by a guy who spent a lot of time telling war stories and claimed to have been shot numerous times in multiple shootouts, including once in the face. My first thought was that if he kept getting shot in gunfights, like half a dozen times, he must not be very good at gunfighting, or maybe he was a slow learner. My second thought was that he hadn’t actually been shot in the face, as far as I could tell with my limited medical knowledge, which has involved looking at people who got shot in the face.

Although not in the same vein, I really don’t like what is said at 1:45ish of this videoÂ – I’m not going to a shooting class to hear about how to “step over my dead buddy’s body.” I’m there to learn how to be a better shooter, plain and simple. Whether that instructor has actually stepped over any dead buddies is almost irrelevant – it’s just not something a class full of civilians needs to hear about for any reason other than to impress them.

Military units have turned out people – who have been in combat – capable of teaching other people how to shoot very well, and so has the pressure of competition shooting. You’re free to spend your money however you want, but don’t discard an instructor just because he or she hasn’t actually been in combat. Similarly, I wouldn’t ignore someone just because he spent his peak physical years jumping out of airplanes and strangling bad guys with their own intestines instead of winning trophies and sponsorships.

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After writing this article, I asked Mike Pannone for his thoughts. Here is what he had to say: