CCW Training with Law Enforcement Instructors

Hi, I'm Jeff Mullenmeister with Minnesota Firearms Training Academy and I wanna talk to you about some advantages and disadvantages of training with a law enforcement officer if you're that concealed carry holder looking for that training, or maybe you're that law enforcement officer that's looking to get into the civilian side of training. I've been an officer for 18 years and I've been in the training aspect of it for probably 15 of those 18 years. So I do have a little bit of experience that I can fall back on, or at least my experience to give to you, so you can make that right decision. So if you're that concealed carry holder and you're searching out that officer to train with, some things you wanna keep in mind is looking to see, do they have any training that addresses the civilian side? There's many things that I'm gonna learn or an officer's going to learn in his skills academy that may not apply to that private citizen interaction in public. So we wanna be careful that we don't go into a class where they're gonna address a bunch of topics that maybe don't apply, or aren't gonna be a applicable to what you experience as a civilian. An example would be training around barricades. For an initial class, a concealed carry class, that's something probably that you don't need. It may not be the best investment of your time. But as a law enforcement officer, when I'm expected to go to where the danger's at now, from that perspective, it's pretty important that I have some sort of training on that because there is definitely a difference from what I, as a law enforcement officer have to do, and you as a private citizen, which should be getting out of whatever is going on instead of going towards the danger. So we have to be careful and take that into account that they may train you on stuff that may not apply to the civilian world. If you're that law enforcement officer and you're looking to get into that civilian side of training, we need to be careful. We may have learned things in the Academy, or skills program, that may not be of value to our students, or it may be a waste of their limited resources by coming to the class and learning something that they may never use. Going back to that cover example, as a law enforcement officer, yeah, it's probably important for me to train my partners on the use of that, 'cause we're going to the danger, wherever that problem's at, but a civilian, in most scenarios, they should be leaving. So now we might be training them to do things that they may never use, or it may not be appropriate given the scenario that they're involved in. So my recommendation's just be careful when you're selecting that law enforcement officer as a trainer, or if you're gonna get into that private sector training, that you're aware of the differences and you plan for it.