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by CJ Songer
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Dillon's Blue Press -- May 2005
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“M is for the many things you taught me…”
“If I were playing third base and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her. Oh, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, ‘Sorry, Mom,’ but nobody beats me.” -- Leo Durocher
Happy Mother’s Day, Mrs. Durocher! I’m sure Leo was a fine boy, a prince (with obvious good manners), but maybe you’d like to consider a self-defense class? Check out the “Ladies-Only Pistol and Self-Defense Awareness” course that’s being offered by Firearms Training Associates (FTA) in sunny Orange County in Southern California.
“It’s about you,” Bill Murphy says, “it’s not about us,” which are nice words coming from a guy who’s spent twenty-six years as a cop in Huntington Beach. He’s a SWAT sergeant there, as well as Surefire’s lead instructor these days for firearms and force-on-force training. Bill founded FTA a number of years ago with his wife, Cheryl Murphy, who, besides being a mom in her own right, has been a patrol officer in Anaheim for twenty-seven years, and has also spent a fair amount of her time as a firearms instructor. Together, they’re a formidable team.
What exactly does “It’s about you” mean? Primarily, it means that FTA’s instructors aren’t there to dictate a particular type of handgun, or even the use of a handgun at all. Would you prefer pepper spray? Edged weapons? Taser? Elbows and knees? Bill and Cheryl simply want to ensure that all of the women go home from the class with a better understanding of their available choices, and that they end up with a greater skill-set for managing defense problems in whatever way makes each woman feel most secure.
Not everyone in the class I attended was a mother, of course, although Betty is. Her husband encouraged her to sign up. Dina’s a single mom these days. She wanted to feel better prepared herself so that she could pass along the safety habits she learned to her kids. Heather’s a paralegal who was there for the gun training. Beth was concerned about being home alone at night while her boyfriend works. Michell has an occasionally dangerous job, and was interested in increasing her firearms skill. Elaine works late hours as a nurse, while Amanda, also a nurse, was thinking that this would help her feel more confident about ways to spot and avoid or handle risky situations. Amy’s in the process of becoming an LAPD officer, and wanted to get her feet wet, handgun-wise, before she reports for training. Christie was there because her mom had arranged it, while Frances has an adult son who’d enrolled her because he feels that her neighborhood isn‘t as safe as it used to be.
The emphasis the first day was on handgun and range safety, but the FTA crew made certain over the two-day class that, beyond the fundamentals of firearms handling, the women came to understand “situational awareness,” that they started thinking tactically and defensively, and that they learned how to practice “what if?” scenarios so as to be able to further their own training as they went about their daily lives. “What if that delivery man coming towards me attacks me?“ “What if my car’s bumped into in an unknown part of town?“
A feature that everyone really liked were the hours spent on the line Sunday morning. We’d taken the bulk of Saturday’s time for people to get familiar with their gear and guns out on the range, to be taught the line commands and the safety procedures of firearms manipulation. The ladies had learned how to reload magazines and firearms, how to shoot the paper targets, how to tape up those targets as | ||||||||||||