My CHL will expire in July so I completed my renewal class today at The Shooting Gallery (the site has funky spacing in Firefox, just scroll down for page content).  Overall, it was a pretty good experience.  The only thing that I’d have done differently would have been to have reserved the range specifically for the group undergoing requalification.  We did our test on a live range with target shooters on either side of us.  This caused communications problems, since I couldn’t hear the range officer very well.  The other problem was that the I was the farthest left of the CHL group and there were two other shooters to my left, one of whom was firing some sort of hand cannon.  Every time he fired that damn thing I could feel it in my chest.  It also didn’t help that his shells kept flying over the divider and landing on my head.  Of course, par for the course, the bastard with the hand cannon packed up and left right after we finished.   

In trying to sign up for a renewal class, I came to the conclusion that a lot of gun people have missed the boat when it comes to being online.

I say this because I picked up several cards for instructors from a couple of different places.  All of them had websites and email addresses, so I thought I’d be able to contact them via email.  Of the ones I emailed, I got one bounce (mailbox full) and one response (unfortunately, they didn’t have a class soon enough).  The others never even acknowledged my email.  Eventually, I had to fall back on old-fashioned synchronous electronic remote vocal communication channels (i.e. the phone, which kind of defeats the purpose of having email in the first place).

Finally, I was a bit taken aback that there were people there who hadn’t fired a gun since their last range qualification.  Heck, one guy there hadn’t previously fired the gun he brought.