Are You A Professional?

1) …professional [describes] people who do a particular thing to earn money rather than as a hobby. (Collins Cobuild Student's Dictionary, online edition)

2) professional: Having much experience and great skill. (Webster's Deluxe Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition)

3) Professional is often used to mean having the qualities that you connect with trained and skilled people. (Cambridge International Dictionary of English, online edition)

4) A professional piece of work is of a high standard. (Collins Cobuild Student's Dictionary, online edition)

The word professional gets used a lot in field. Writers such as myself refer to "gear that the professionals use", "professional behavior", just plain "professionals", and so on.

What does the word professional really mean? And what are we trying to convey when we use it?

Taking definition 1) above - professional in the sense that something is done for pay or to make one's living - it is readily apparent that this isn't what we mean... at least I sure don't. We all know full-time instructors whose jokes are racist. We have all been subjected to teachers whose minds are closed. We've all seen men and women who make their living with weapons and who put their pocketbooks above the soundness of the techniques they teach. No, just making your living with firearms doesn't make you a firearms professional, despite self-serving claims to the contrary.

Looking at definition 2) - identifying professionals by their level of skill - doesn't strike home either. This definition doesn't address the positive mental attributes and discerning behavior that come to mind when we think of a real professional. We've all watched as shooters of great skill become abusive of students or competition judges. We've all been embarrassed by highly skilled gun handlers as they gossip about or demean another shooter. We've all come across fast and accurate shooters with bad attitudes. And frighteningly, we've probably all seen patently unsafe gun handling on the part of otherwise highly skilled shooters. No, there's more to being a genuine professional than just a high level of skill.

Definitions 3) and 4) above come closest to what I - and I assume most others - mean when we use the word professional. We mean: knowledgeable, skilled, discrete, polite, humble, open-minded, caring. We mean someone whom you admire, to whom you look up to, someone that you want to emulate. Someone with a low-key - not a boastful or attention getting - disposition. Someone who's always seeking to learn; whose mind is always open. We mean a person who, when they teach, put the survival needs of their students above their own opinions or doctrine. We envision a person who is open, friendly, and sharing with their knowledge. We picture a person who is competent, knowledgeable and self-controlled. Yes, they should have some degree of skill, but it doesn't have to be world-class. This professional may or may not get paid for their work with firearms, but they always treat the work and the weapon seriously. It goes without saying they are always safe with their guns.

Certainly, not all gun owners meet this standard. These are the ignorant and unsafe hoi polloi. There are the idiots who "been shooting all ma' life - know all 'bout it." These are the fools who give illegal and downright stupid advice about the use of deadly force. These morons are usually identifiable by their distinctive gun fumbling and unsafe gun handling.

Sadly, neither do all firearms instructors meet this standard. There are "instructors" who are instructors only by virtue of their having held a class at some time or other. These are the macho dolts who don't understand why a female student sometimes can't shoot her husband's full-sized pistol well. There are the blockheads who continue to teach fine motor-skill techniques that simply can't work under stress. These are the imbeciles who confuse "I'm tellin' ya' how to do it" with training.