I have to agree. The whole video, I agree with it. I've only been to one range like he mentioned and it was in Massachusetts of all places. You COULD NOT have a loaded weapon in their parking lot, or behind their line. That included your personal carry weapon. Just...mind boggling.
I've never really watched James' videos. But this guy is on to something. I know his personality can be hard to swallow sometimes, but he seems like he's at least got his **** together.
James is squared away. I have been friends with him for around 15 years now and trained with TR several times. People bristle at his personality but I encourage people to have an open mind and THINK about what he says. Don't automatically dismiss it because it's different than how you think or how you were trained. I have known people that were extremely derogatory towards him for a long time. They finally went and trained with him and promptly admitted they were wrong about him. (Although I know some people that still hate him )
Watching some of his informational videos, like proper grip on a handgun, I realize it's exactly what I've been doing all along and I just kind of found it by trying different things and figuring out what works best. I really want to start getting into some training classes. I'm pretty self taught, other than the basic urban combat stuff I learned in the Army. There's a place about 45 minutes from me that charges $125 for 8 hour classes. I've been meaning to do some research on them because the price seems pretty damn reasonable.
If you can get to a TR course in Camden, do it. The lodging is free. You get to stay in James' house. He converted his basement into a team room with bunkbeds and all that. It's pretty cool. I know of no other instructors who open their homes to 15 well-armed people, some of whom are complete strangers.
The first term is dogma that we have all used. It was used in IPSC when I was doing it in the 80s and as an academy instructor. It will always be used in a training enviroment. I disagree. I think the student should be given his gun, if they do something stupid, fire them. Travel to and from the range with a hot gun, fine with me but it will never happen. The second video expresses a pet peeve. I chastised instructors for terms such as presentation to the target etc. The problem is while big minds love small words but...small minds love big words. I learned this while writing reports for 30 years. Inexperienced instructors boost thier ego with jargon. They are also impressed with such verbiage.
Thankfully, I have been to some training in the past few years where it is becoming more common. Any range I run, I require all the students to keep their weapon hot all the time unless there is a specific drill that needs to be set up a certain way, such as a reload drill or something. I will disagree with Yeager on one thing. Safety is not the most important thing. If safety were the absolute number one priority, we wouldn't be on a gun range shooting live rounds. It would be safer to sit around a table and talk about guns. So, although safety is very important, I believe that proper training is more important. It is inherently riskier to shoot firearms than to lie on your couch at home and watch TV. Even if you do everything 100% right by the 4 rules, there is a chance you can still have a factory loaded, overpressured round take your eye out, for example. That's why I just choose not to be around firearms any more...well, also because that terrible boating accident where I lost all of my guns. And my gold.