I should have joined in on this many posts ago. Thought about it, wanted to see what the "experts" had to say about the topic.
I'm an NRA-certified pistol instructor. Basic. Also firearms safety in the home and personal protection. RSO too.
Grew up shooting BB guns mostly, .22 LR occasionally, rarely a pistol. First shot a full-size pistol (M1911 .45 acp) in basic training as I was assigned to help the post's officer's requalify and clean their guns afterwards and there was a lot of ammo left over. Ditto later as a medic in Germany, we'd go out to the range once a year to qualify and I'd help the RSO shoot up all the leftovers at the end of the day. Most of the doctors and nurses in the unit didn't even "like guns" so they'd shoot the minimum to qualify and walk away. Even the enlisted medics didn't "like" shooting. More for us. Rock and roll!
Got formal pistol training in Officer's basic, advanced course, and then again at the 25th ID (L) when I was a flight surgeon. Smoked that last course, some pistol combat course with and without a gas mask and real-world distractions.
Bought a Glock 17, Ruger SP101, Beretta 92FS and a handful of other guns from the mid 80s to around 1994. Would go to the range maybe once a month just to keep up basic skills. Doing my best to keep up with the one gun a month law.
I HAD been taking some shooting courses, more like informal training by NSA spooks and other agency guys at Ft. Meade's Rifle & Pistol Club off and on in the late 1990s. This was a LOT of action-reaction and confrontational shoot-don't shoot scenarios. RSO would line us up on target and scream out things like "I'm going to KILL you m*therf*cker," or "I'm going to KISS you" and we'd all laugh when a few guys would shoot. A lot of cops in that group. Had my first close-call with a negligent discharge when a Baltimore cop shot while clearing her weapon from the holster and shot a round DOWN the line just in front of me. Scary. I also shot with a local cop several times at a steel range (Monocacy Pistol Club) and not only did he tell me he didn't get the kind of training we were doing (back then we could move tables, barrels, bring torsos in closer for ATM, carjacking, home invasion scenarios until the old low-T board members and the club lawyer decided there was too much risk of someone getting an ow-ie), we gave him a lot of insight into how well civilians were trained compared to police, that police had no idea what they might be facing in the community at large. He only shot about 50 rounds a year for qualification. For a while there I was going through at least a thousand rounds a month if not more (this was even before owning a couple machine guns and surplus components were so widely available I could roll my own 9mm for 7 cents and .45 acp for about 15 cents a round - never thought I'd look at the Clinton years with any level of nostalgia), not that I'm a crack shot by any means, but I'm comfortable handling, carrying, shooting, and knowing when to use guns.
Took the NRA cert. course the weekend of labor day in 1999. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Had some loose plans with my brother-in-law to buy a range in WV (Westlance was for sale at the time, Mark Ewing told me to make an offer), but it was my brother-in-law. He's an a**hole. Plan fizzled out. Have since trained over a hundred people, most one-on-one (I was even teaching some Aussie and German and English friends until the NRA recently asked us NOT to do this due to, well, f*cking lawyers), and have run several classes for women (largest group was 17) mainly because I find they're easier to teach than men. Every American male seems to be a firearms expert and they get defensive as hell when you try and correct, well, just about anything. Grip, stance, target acquisition, not covering you with the muzzle, etc. Also, I shot a home invader when I was in High School. Turned out to be a former inmate just out of prison on a rape charge. He broke into the house where my mom was, I heard her scream and I grabbed a pistol, charged into the laundry room and shot him several times. He ran out of the house, I called the cops, he showed up in an ER and went back to prison. Lesson learned: use a larger caliber gun (I kept a Colt pocket auto, .25acp in my nightstand for a while back then, my older brother's, St. Pete PD didn't even take it for ballistics or anything else). I figure a woman is better defended with a projectile weapon than a simple scream.
I've taken combat pistol and carbine lessons locally in recent years, learned some point shooting and a few other tricks. Somewhere along the way someone mentioned shooting pistol prone. A very useful technique. Not for day one. Taking advantage of cover and concealment is something I mention but don't practice/train in the NRA basic course. Nor do I get into the legal issues. I leave that for the lawyers. I tell people they should search out the laws on when it's appropriate to shoot, what's legal, what to tell the cops. I teach to the manual, no less, sometimes more depending on experience and ability/receptiveness. I often refer people to Ayoobs and Quigley's books on shooting and self-defense. I'm not some ueber-macho SF/SEAL trying to teach someone to be on "the teams." I figure my role, what I'm comfortable with, is introducing beginning shooters to the sport, instilling a basic level of confidence, getting them comfortable with weapon handling and SAFETY, equipping them with the proper KSAs for shooting, and, I hope, getting them hooked on it and politically aware and active.
She has cover (engine block), he has partial concealment, very little, if any, cover.