The Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pa., annually brings together outdoor enthusiasts and vendors from all over the country. Part of the mission of the National Rifle Association has always been the advancement of education on firearms. The 2024 show schedule had a whole host of seminars planned and one caught my eye while I was planning my trip to the show. Acclaimed firearm instructor, Klint Macro, from the Trigger Pressers Union, delivered a seminar called “How To Train to Be Your Own Family First Responder,” and it was fantastic.

Macro took his years of experience as both a student and instructor of the gun and melded them into an hour-long class for showgoers to sit in on. There was no registration required, you’d just show up, and the seminar was free to any ticket holders at the show.

From the get-go, Macro commanded the attention of those sitting in. I had the pleasure to be sitting in the front row, and admittedly, I was slightly tardy, showing up when he was on his third slide. Macro did not waver from his material and was not distracted by the small contingent of us who poured in late.

The number one thing that I think is worth noting about sitting in on Macro’s seminar is there’s a level of integrity. Anytime Macro “borrowed” or repackaged a concept, he cited the who, what, or where the information came from. With posted “Curriculum theft alerts,” Macro would highlight specifically where he got the information and those sitting in could get the same, or a more in-depth look at a given concept.

Macro’s seminar was advertised as follows:

Whether you are a seasoned defender of your family or if you have recently decided to exercise your 2A rights, this seminar will offer information and present options that can help you to train to be a more confident and efficient family first responder. Topics include:

- Discipline yourself to be more aware (Awareness)
- The most likely scenario (Plausibility Principle)
- The body’s most likely reactions under stress/duress (Fight or Flight and the Body’s Natural Reactions)
- Training for the worst-case scenario (Identifying Contextually Appropriate Training for You)
- It ain’t all about the “gun” (Defensive Mindset and “Non-Gun” Defensive Options)
- What’s next? (Setting Goals to Facilitate Daily Training)

The hour-long seminar was made up of 58 slides that Macro only leaned on as a visual cue. This was not a long drawn-out presentation where the instructor read from slides…Macro has full command of the material he covers and only used the slide deck as a notecard of sorts. Full disclosure, Macro went over in his class by about 15 minutes, which was not problematic, and when I chatted with him, he said he had done the same in subsequent presentations that last weekend of the show.

The slides included were informative. Many times throughout the class participants would take an opportunity to take pictures of certain ideas, book references, or other citations, and this practice was encouraged by Macro.

When I walked away from the seminar, I felt I had learned a decent pile of new stuff, as well as was given several paths to go down on my own during self-study.

Elements that were covered that I took a particular interest in revolved around the physiological and corporeal facets of dealing with a potentially deadly encounter.

Macro gave great coverage on the “Tueller” drill, a concept that I was first turned on to while attending an NRA Personal Protection Inside the Home instructor development class. One of the things about being familiar with this drill and ideal is how it relates to defending one’s decision in use of force escalation. Macro later explained an adage he took from the great Massad Ayoob, that we should all CYA. Not cover your @$$, but rather Macro evokes Ayoob asking students “Can They Articulate?” Knowing what the Tueller drill is and what that means aids in the articulation of potential actions a self-defender might take.

What occurs during an adrenaline dump while involved in an encounter and those physiological effects were covered in detail. Macro drew from examples of people describing deadly force scenarios, and how people described them in debriefing. One of Macro’s slides asks about and explains a common thread all humans share:

What do housewives, police officers, gang bangers, secret agents, soccer dads, steelworkers, baseball players, and most mammals have in common?

We all react very similarly to surprise stimulus.

When part of the brain called the “Amygdala” trips the circuit breaker for the “flight or fight” we all generally do similar things.

Let us call them the “external” and “internal” body’s natural REACTIONS.

The “How To Train to Be Your Own Family First Responder” seminar by Klint Macro at the 2024 NRA Great American Outdoors Show was an hour (+) well spent. The good news is that Macro informed me that he’s been invited to do a longer, two-hour, version of the class at the 2024 NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas this upcoming May. If you’d like to take a gander at a recording of one of the seminar sessions Macro gave during the GAOS, you can do so HERE or check it out in the embed below.

I think the NRA more than delivered on their mission to educate by bringing in such a high-quality instructor. If you’d like to learn more about Macro and his work, you can visit him at his homepage.