NJ Firearms Academy Basic Pistol review

New member here.

My girlfriend and I have decided we want to own firearms. In my teeen years, I did a good deal of long arm shooting and even built a CVA black powder kit I put a lot of ammo through.

It has been years (20) since I shot firearms and I have no pistol experience to speak of.

I am a huge believer in training for any activity you are going to pursue. I have extensive training on motorcycles and scuba, for instance.

We live in Jersey City and decided on NJ Firearms academy, mostly due to proximity. My thought was that the NRA course would be fairly standard between instruction locations.

We paid full price, which included a membership to the range.

The class was held at the range, and the range is not overly impressive. Given the age and location, this was not unexpected.

The class itself was held with the students sitting on chairs in a small room off the range. No desks or tabes, which was kind of odd, but NBD.

The chief instructor, Letief (sp?) was clearly well versed and personable. The class progressed well and covered the materials in good detail.

When it came to range time, the structure broke down a bit. There was a good deal of waiting around and not doing anything. I am not speaking of a situation where some students were shooting and others waited, which was handled well by NJFA. They sent half the class to lunch while half shot, and then switched. I am referring to all students sitting in the class and instructors just kind of hanging out and BSing with us. Good talk, but not what I signed up for.

Like many people from the NYC area, patience is not one of my virtues. Given what we covered, the shooting, etc, I firmly believe the class could have been completed in 6 hours instead of the 8 it actually took.

We got to shoot 4 or 5 different hand guns of various calibers. At the end we had a shooting contest among the students for a prize pack.

Summary:

Good school, good instructors.

Price a bit high, but location trumps that for me.

Classroom left somethign to be desired, but given limited space, what can you do.

Class could be a lot shorter, or more shooting or cover more. We were learning and ate lunch in 6 hours. 2 hours of sitting around got to be a bit much. But it was good conversation during that time.

Overall I recomend them, but will be trying other facilities for some of the other courses I want to take, after I get my FID and PP. (3-4 weeks?)