Questionable CHL Students...

[TXCHL7474]

Hey instructors! Got a question for ya...

I've been seriously considering becoming an instructor and was wondering what circumstances you've encountered where you've had serious concerns about a particular student and how you handled the situation.

For example, when I took my CHL class there was a character who REALLY concerned me with respect to his maturity/understanding of the responsibility involved in carrying a concealed firearm. He seemed to fixate on "fearing for your life" as a loophole to getting out of shooting someone (as if it were a convenient defense he was going to invoke anytime he felt the need to shoot one of the "punks" that lived down the street from him...he openly shared plenty of stories about these "punks"). Several of the other students jokingly made bets about how long it would be before we saw him on the evening news.

I expressed my conerns to the instructor but, from what I could tell, it was never addressed with the student.

My questions are...what similar circumstances have you encountered and how did you handle it? Also, how often does this happen??

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences and your wisdom!

[TexasGal]

This subject is part of the training for new instructors. If someone is disrupting a class or handling his/her firearm unsafely, then we can eject them from the class and range and document why we did so. We don't have the power to decide a person's right to a CHL. However, the DPS does want to know if someone behaves in a manner that raises concerns they are mentally unstable or may be dangerous, has admitted to lying on the application, etc. Instructors are encouraged to contact the DPS in that case and they will investigate that person's application much more closely. The sort of character you describe is probably far more mouth than action.
If you do take the instructor's class, you will enjoy it. They put together a good class and the way the range is run is impressive.