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A student showed up to her first range session last month with a brand-new Glock still in the factory box, a hundred rounds of ball ammo, and no idea she needed hearing protection rated for indoor use. She’d watched a few YouTube videos and figured that covered it. It didn’t, and by the time we […]

A student in one of my classes last year asked a question I still think about: “Why do I have to choose between a gun I can hide and a gun that holds enough ammo?” She’d been carrying a single-stack micro-compact and felt undergunned. That’s the exact gap the Sig Sauer P365-XMACRO was built to

The first question almost every new student asks me before we ever talk about grip or stance is what to bring to the gun range for their first training session. I had one guy show up to a Wellington indoor range last spring in flip-flops and a tank top, cash in hand, gun still in

A student in one of my classes texted me a headline last week: “80% lowers are legal again.” He wanted to know if he could finally finish that receiver blank sitting in his closet without worrying about a federal case. That’s the wrong question, and it’s the question a lot of people are asking right

Every few weeks a student sets a Glock 48 and a Glock 43X on my range table side by side and asks me which one they should buy. Half the time they’ve already read three online comparisons and gotten three different answers, because most of those articles bury the one number that actually matters under

A student showed up to a recent class with a pistol I hadn’t handled before: a Canik Mete MC9, bought because it was three hundred dollars cheaper than the Springfield Hellcat he’d been eyeing. He wanted to know if he’d made a mistake. That question is worth answering in public, because most Canik Mete MC9

A student showed up to a recent basics class with her husband’s Glock 19 stuffed in her range bag, and by the second magazine, her hand hurt from racking the slide. That’s not unusual. It’s the single most common physical barrier I see with new shooters, especially women with smaller hands or anyone dealing with

A student showed up to my beginner class in Boynton Beach carrying her husband’s 1911 in .45 ACP, a gun she’d never fired, because he figured “bigger is better.” She flinched on round three, missed the berm on round five, and by round fifteen she was gripping the pistol like it might bite her. We

A student showed up to my last Protector Level 1 class with a 15-ounce single-stack .380 she’d bought because it fit her purse. Good carry gun, eventually. Terrible first gun to actually learn on. She flinched through her first fifty rounds, blamed herself for a bad grip, and almost quit shooting altogether before we swapped

Published August 23, 2026. Last updated: August 23, 2026. This post reflects the status of the NFA suppressor case as of that date. Firearm law is moving fast right now, and stays, appeals, and effective dates can change on short notice. This is education, not legal advice — talk to a Florida firearms attorney about