Welcome to CFI’s New Shooter Blog
Disclaimer #1. I’m learning this as I go. Firearms are my forté, not computers. Please stick with me and have some patience as I’m learning on the fly how to build this website, blog, and more. Enjoy!
You might say I don’t have enough time for my students.
You would be wrong, and you would be right.
Let me explain.
My passion is in bringing the totally new handgun shooter into the fold of this incredible sport. It is in finding a way to cut through all of the bad advice and the industry jargon to find the most effective and accessible form of instruction that will take a complete novice and turn them into an effective shooter, marksman, protector, and more.
The fact of the matter is: no matter how crystalized the teachings, no matter how efficient the explanations and drills, when your work is to take someone with no gun knowledge and walk them step-by-step from ignorance to proficiency with a deadly weapon, there are going to be questions.
Questions that will need answering outside of your 90 minutes on the range.
My body of students is growing. My instruction needs to travel with new shooters. It needs to be there at home, on the way to work, and in the middle of the day when a question pops into their head.
Gone are the days when a Google search would give you a good, concise answer. The internet is saturated with every type of opinion and argument ranging from incredible, to uninformed, to downright dangerous if followed.
Short of spending my entire waking life glued to my cell phone helping my students individually, this is the best way I can help.
I am using this Blog and the videos herein to distill all the noise down to the information a new shooter really needs. I’m doing it in a way that they can understand, and I’m not wasting time on things they don’t need to know. This started as a labor of love for my students, and has grown to something I hope new shooters all over can come to see as their “one-stop-shop” for information.
From training, to questions every new shooter has, to safety, to gear (not just another product-review page, but the real explanations why new shooters may need one kind of gear or another.) If you need it as you begin your journey as a shooter, I will make it so you can find it here. Thank you for reading, share it with anyone you think needs it, and enjoy.
Once more, welcome to CFI’s New Shooter Blog.
Let me get this out of the way REAL FAST. If you’re here looking to learn how to do backflips out of a moving car while shooting a target at 75 yards with a pistol, you’re in the wrong place. I don’t teach hyper-“tactical” nonsense that you’ll never use (Unless you’re a stunt double on the next John Wick movie.) I teach new shooters and real people how to use a handgun the RIGHT way. Whether that is for personal protection and self defense, keeping in the home, or general range use; at CFI you’re taught the core principals of handgun shooting with no frills, no BS, and a focus on practical fundamentals, skills, and information that will build great shooters.
My name is Chris Murphy, owner and creator of Cobalt Firearm Instruction (CFI). I’m an NRA Certified Pistol Instructor and a Range Safety Officer. I’ve shot for fun, trained for defense, shot competitively, and taught countless others to do the same. To me, shooting is about more than hitting a bullseye on a piece of paper. I didn’t build CFI to cater to the professional target shooter looking to hone their skills.
My passion lies in bringing the right way to handle a firearm to ANYONE looking to know. A person well versed in the use of a firearm can :
- Protect the ones they love
- Have fun shooting on the weekends
- Concealed carry confidently
- Pit their skills against professionals in competition
- and so much more.
The key to learning a skill like this this does not come from just one place. It is not a single area of focus, but many. From trigger press, to mindset, to grip, to physical health, to countless other things. When teaching someone to shoot it’s about a lot more than showing them which end of the gun the bullet comes out of.
The “How”
If you want to learn the RIGHT way to paint a house, you don’t take some class on ancient Japanese pottery painting and then try to figure it out from there. You apprentice with a professional contractor and learn all aspects of what they do. The way he stores his paint, the brushes he uses, the order in which he tackles a room, all cultivated over years of doing the job day-in and day-out.
Likewise, when you want to bring the right way to shoot to new students, bringing them from complete novices to having the “Confidence to Carry”, you don’t go for the theoretical. You go to the practical source.
This is exactly what I did; combining my decades of shooting experience with input & experience from former US Army Special Forces and Covert Operations personnel to develop CFI’s training.
Succinct, understandable, expertly crafted, and completely tailored to the new shooter.
Why a Blog?
I needed a way to disseminate this information quickly, so I decided on a Blog. Better than writing a book that would need to be published and sold; taking time and money and limiting my audience. Better than only making a training video (which we are making many of) and spending a boatload on marketing to make sure people get to see it. Better than sticking solely with in-person training, which would limit the reach of this information to the Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland area.
The great thing about believing -Truly Believing– in what you bring to people, is that you don’t feel the need to limit the number of people who have access to it. We chose a blog (with videos) to make sure we can reach as many people with the knowledge and training we have as possible. All shooters should benefit from what I’ve gathered, not just those within driving distance of where I teach classes and run courses. I am not selfish with this information because I’m not selling the next big way to make a million dollars, I’m teaching you a skill I consider to be life-changing and potentially life-saving.
The Content
My blog begins right where the new shooter begins, with the thought “I might want to buy a gun… or at least try out shooting once”. I walk you through the process of going from being curious about firearms to being a gun owner to developing practical proficiency with that firearm step-by-step, and week-by-week.
- “What do I wear to the range?”
- “What gun should I buy?”
- “How do I test out guns to see if I like them”
- “Why does it feel like I have to learn a new language to understand my gun friends when I ask them questions?”
- “So, what do I need to bring to the range?”
- “What makes this gun so different from those?”
- “How do I learn to shoot really well?”
I will keep all of this archived so any future new shooter can come back and reference the information whenever they need. I’m working with my newest students constantly to find out what it is that they need to know about shooting. What are your biggest concerns? What were you so embarrassed to ask about, you’ve yet to find out 2 years after you bought your first gun?
Conclusion
I love what I do and do it well. Give this to whoever you believe can benefit from it. I truly think the information here will be helpful to as many people as it can reach. The decision to start down this path was not made lightly. Free-time doesn’t grow on trees, but I see day in and day out how necessary this information is. Even in this age of technology and connectedness, this information has yet to reach so many people who need it very, very badly.
Tell me what you want to know and how I can help. That goes for our new guests and (of course) my current students (but you all already know that.)
As always; stay smart, stay safe, and never stop improving.