They referred to the Arms Code booklet. I didn't notice them referring to a manual, but I won't say that they didn't have one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Koshogi
No video was played.
Yes, they really did contradict material in the Arms Code, but more importantly provided information that would cause a person to contravene legislative acts.
OK, those instructors did a poor job and need to be told to improve, smartly, and stick to the manual, etc. It’s a pity that they didn’t show the video, as that is a very useful teaching aid, but perhaps a suitable player was not available at the venue at that time.
However, the fact that the course was not to your liking is not justification for tearing the whole system apart from the top down. Furthermore, it is totally incorrect for you – and other posters who cheered you on - to blame your dissatisfaction totally on the N Z Mountain Safety Council.
The current system is still basically what was instituted after the passing of the Arms Act 1983. Prior to that, all firearms had to be registered, shooters were not licensed, vetting of first-time firearm owners was somewhat haphazard, and formal training of first-time firearms owners was limited. The ‘new’ system was – and still is - a big improvement on that.
A number of shooting organizations, including NZMSC, had input to the 1983 act. However, in the end it was the politicians, acting primarily on the advice of the police, who put the act into force, and it is they who you would have to try to convince to change things, not NZMSC.
A formal agreement was entered into whereby NZMSC would provide instructors (wherever possible) and the police would provide suitable venues, and the necessary equipment and materials for the instructors to conduct a short instruction course and administer the Arms Test. It was considered that a session of approximately three hours in total would be sufficient, and this how it has been for the last thirty years. While this system may not please everybody, it has been generally acceptable to the politicians, the police, and the public.
The course was never intended to do more than teach new license applicants the basic fundamentals of firearms safety and the legal obligations that go with being firearms owners. Experience has shown that about one hour must be allowed for applicants to sit the Arms Test and the instructor(s) to mark the papers and fill in the certificates for those who have passed. (some applicants take well over an hour just doing the test!) This leaves about two hours for talking, demonstrating various firearms, answering questions and showing an instructional video. There simply isn’t time to go into a lot of fine detail, and this is – or should be – explained to the applicants at the outset. The course is a basic introduction, not the complete and final word on hunting and shooting.
As I wrote in my previous post in this thread, applicants are expected to have studied the Arms Code before attending a course. (and I mean STUDIED, not just speed-read) The talking and demonstrating part of the course, and showing the video, is intended to supplement and clarify what they should have already read in the Arms Code, and to assist those who learn better by listening and seeing real life demonstrations than they do by reading. In other words, the course is more akin to putting some ‘meat’ on the ‘bones’ of the Arms Code.
A high level of teaching skills might be useful, but in my opinion, not totally essential. A good knowledge of the subject matter is far more important. The substance of the course is already laid out, and what has to be done by the instructors is fairly basic stuff. It’s not as though they are having to do something comparable to giving students a thorough understanding of the Theory of Relativity, or teaching them how to solve problems in spheroidal trigonometry.
Do you posters to this thread who are advocating sweeping changes to the licensing system REALLY want to take your demands for much more comprehensive training, etc, to the police and the politicians? Tell them that as it stands it is costing innocent people their lives?
The tiny but vociferous anti-gun lobby, which gest publicity out of all proportion to its real size, would just love you, and so would some politicians who might see an anti-gun stand as a possible vote-catcher. If you go this route, you had better be aware of ‘The Law of Unintended Consequences’.
Let’s start with those of you who have been pontificating on about putting all the present instructors ‘through the mill’, and telling those who don’t appear to have skills adequate for teaching to NZQA standards to either re-train or get out. Such assessments would pretty much HAVE to be done by an outside agency, and considering that there are a few hundred instructors spread from one end of the country to the other, it would be a lengthy and expensive process. SOMEBODY would have to pay for it, and neither the police nor NZMSC have unlimited funds available, so in one way or another, it would almost certainly end up being firearms licensees who would pay.
Suppose the assessors took a really strict line and told half the instructors to either retrain or quit. It’s a fairly safe bet that many instructors who have been giving their time and effort voluntarily and unpaid for years would, when told something like that, simply quit. The remaining instructors, who got a ‘pass mark’, would then have to put in maybe double the amount of work to make up for the losses, and a fair number of them might well quit, too. The larger centres could then be so badly under-manned that the system becomes unworkable, and a lot of the smaller centres might suddenly have no instructors at all.
The above is assuming that the course structure stays the same as at present. If some of the posters here got their way and the scope of the course was substantially increased, including practical, hands-on firearms training, the demands on the instructors’ time would increase many times over. More resignations would almost certainly occur. The present system would completely collapse, and then what do you think would take its place?
Some poster here – I can’t be bothered trawling back to find who - advanced the brilliant plan of kicking NZMSC out of the training, testing, and licensing procedure and having the police do it all. Do you, and anyone else who supported this idea, imagine that police arms officers, or the officers who handle firearms licensing as a second or third collateral duty, will be automatically be highly knowledgeable about firearms and will be highly skilled teachers? Dream on!
Furthermore, if the police had to do all the instruction work themselves, instead of having unpaid volunteers do it for them, you can be sure that they would want to recoup their costs with a substantial increase in fees. If they subsequently found that they simply did not have the necessary manpower resources ‘in house’ and had to engage professional ‘outside’ instructors (if they could find them!) then costs – and license fees – would rise even more.
How does a fee of $1000 to get your A Cat license sound? That is what could easily happen if applicants had to attend three, four, maybe even five training sessions, all taken by professional instructors being paid the ‘going rate’. That might not be the only increase, either – some bean-counter could well come up with the idea that RE-licensing fees should be kept in step with initial license fees, and so should be tripled or quadrupled. How would THAT grab you????
I could write a lot more, but this is already more than enough for one posting, so I’ll stop here.
