One of the students involved in this went up and took the blank gun … from the instructor’s [emphasis mine] waistband and placed that against the instructor’s back and fired
Not the student’s fault. No one is supposed to have weapons capable of causing injury at such an event.
Either the school’s training protocols are incorrect or the instructor didn’t follow them. Either way, this incident is on the cadre not the student. This is a Serious Mistake on the trainers’ side. There are reasons we have rules about how to conduct Force on Force. This is an example of why. Fortunately, it appears the injury wasn’t serious but the incident is an example of how Negative Outcomes occur.
Guns are deadly weapons. We can never relax our vigilance around them. Thinking that anyone is exempt from the rules is “cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
tacticalprofessor 
Reblogged this on .
This is why I do not like the use of real guns in any type of force on force training. I know of at least one facility that uses a barrel block to render guns “safe” for use in FOF training but I am not in support of it. There are too many training gun options available that are totally incapable of firing live ammo. The barrel blockers, in my opinion are useful when doing demo’s that still adhere to the 4 rules of gun safety and for an added level of safety when doing dry fire practice.
These are lessons we already know. And have known, since well before Ken Murray’s book (Training at the Speed of Life) came out.
But every generation seems to need to learn the lessons for themselves. Because what do dinosaurs know?
Unfortunately, the lessons are too often written in blood.
‘As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.’ — the Bible
A lesson from my agency:
http://www.odmp.org/officer/7977-sergeant-terry-glen-lawson