On Wednesday, September 27 2017 in a training event near Jacksonville, something stupid happened. Again. During a training exercise, one of the trainers playing the role of a bad guy was disarmed by one of the students and shot with his own gun that was loaded with conventional blanks. When oh when will trainers learn that blanks can kill you. The trainer, in this instance, got lucky. So did the person that grabbed the gun.
The Dunning Kruger effect is a psychological concept that discusses the concept of Illusory Superiority, where people of low ability overestimate their abilities to the extent that they are over confident. Dunning-Kruger call this effect “living on the peak of mount stupid”, and it is often just a matter of time before they come crashing down.
Given the recent event in Punta Gorda where Mary Knowlton was killed by officer Lee Coel in another “training” exercise where Coel believed he was using blanks (a very bad idea in such a training exercise) but was actually using wad cutter .38’s (a fatal idea in this particular training exercise), it appears that it will be a very long time before the training community chooses to come down from the peak of mount stupid and begin the slow ascent up the slope of enlightenment.
Too many trainers don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to experiential training to the point where the training community is STILL killing two people a year in such training exercises.
This latest example of stupidity in training serves to illustrate that consequences really aren’t making the point that this type of training should only be undertaken by highly trained individuals. Until this shift occurs, we can continue to expect more of the same.
And it REALLY pisses me off.