November 15, 2010:
First off I would like to say thank you to all the DSA instructors. Marshall, Lance, Jeremy, and Kai were all extremely helpful, friendly, outgoing and kind. You can tell what kind of person someone is within the first few seconds of speaking with them, and you can tell that the DSA instructors LOVE what they do, do it for a reason and it also helps that they are damn good at it!
I am a Police Officer here in Oklahoma. I have been an Officer for about 3 years and in those 3 years, I have been wanting to take this course. I want to be able to provide the absolute best public service to the community and to go home every night after my shift. I owe it to the people and to myself to know how to use my tools, and how to use them properly and effectively. A firearm is a tool that I may need to use to save the life of a victim from a maggot dirt-bag. I may also have to use it to save my life someday, because at the end of the day, I have a family to go home to.
Before taking this class I knew that I could go into this training blind and come out confident, due to all the prior student testimonials. I also knew because the founding DSA instructors were trained by the grandfather of Oklahoma instructors, one of the best instructors in the world, who is also one of DSA’s instructors, Vince O’Neil. To have a person of that stature and his firearms staff tell his 200+ cadets in my Police academy class that DSA will provide us with a lifetime tool to stay alive, how the hell do you NOT want to enroll?
I came in knowing that I had bad habits that needed to be broken. I have had prior training in the past after the academy, with lots of different instructors, but as Marshall says, don’t waste your training with training bad habits, and that’s exactly what I did. Prior instructors could not break my bad habits due to the way they taught. Marshall and his crew taught their curriculum with passion and made it easy to understand. They did not yell, curse, get angry or frustrated with us. They gave us all one on one, sometimes two or three on one training. They allowed us to shoot until we understood, they answered questions that we had and explained everything we were confused about. What helped the most is they SHOWED us how to do it, as other instructors I’ve had seemed to be afraid to “screw up” in front of us. Having the instructors show us the techniques first hand and even having Lance screw up(you were down 3 😀 ), shows us that they are human.
Marshall asked the more experience shooters to try to learn 3 new things. The whole class was a learning experience! I learned far more then 3 things. I learned how to properly SLACK OUT, proper trigger control, grip the pistol, follow through, transition from target to target, new reloading techniques, a new song, what kind of people the DSA instructors were, and A LOT more :). Because of these things I feel much more confident, that if I make that decision and need to take that shot, that I WILL make it and WILL go home that night.
DSA is simply THE BEST professional training I have EVER had. No exaggerations and I was not paid or forced to say this! LOL. I told Marshall before the class that I was a very hard person to please and impress. Well Marshall, you guys have pleased and impressed me and easily earned my respect.
Thank you, thank you for giving me these life skills. I hope to train with you and your crew in the future.
Eli Vang
