Ottawa Firearms Safety Education places emphasis on creating a classroom that is safe, comfortable, accepting, and relaxed to enhance your learning experience. We also place a lot of emphasis on the classroom space, the equipment that we use for training and the condition of the equipment.
All firearms and other training equipment conform to all of the latest FSESO Policies and Procedures for both the CFSC and CRFSC courses. All the equipment is well maintained and replaced on a regular basis. This guarantees that the classroom has the safest environment possible and that the equipment contributes to the learning process rather than hindering the process. All the firearms in the classroom have been disabled by a firearms expert, rendering them impossible to fire. All the training ammunition provided in class is inert dummy ammunition, which is easily identified and impossible to fire.
Ottawa Firearms Safety offers the best selection of newly purchased disabled modern firearms in excellent working condition and takes pride in the equipment offered for training. An old “clunker” is a worn out and/or outdated firearm that has no place in a safety education environment, and no old “clunkers” will be found in our classes. We demonstrate our pride in our equipment by offering one-to-one firearm-to-student ratios on all our courses. The benefit of keeping this ratio is that it maximizes the student’s firearm handling time during the course hours to ensure that each student is comfortable with each type of firearm by the end of the course – no matter what previous experience level the students bring to the class. The results of this philosophy are evident in the very high practical firearms-handling exam scores of students taking courses with Ottawa Firearm Safety.
DISABLED TRAINING FIREARMS
The firearms used in the Canadian Firearms Safety Course and the Canadian Restricted Firearms Safety Course are the equipment that are most central to the delivery of the course. Each firearm is a dedicated training firearm that has been properly disabled to prevent capability of firing, but still retains enough function to permit practicing the ACTS and PROVE procedures – as well as the loading and unloading procedures.
Ottawa Firearm Safety recognizes the importance of having only firearms that are in excellent condition on these firearm safety courses to ensure that students are not distracted from the learning process. The last thing any student wants to experience is to be unfairly hindered on their practical handling exams by malfunctions or rough operation, caused by worn, old, or poor condition firearms.
Providing a wide selection of current models of firearms from a variety of quality manufacturers also provides students with an opportunity to try out different firearm makes and models. Students get an idea of what purchases they may be interested in making once they obtain their firearms licence.
DUMMY AMMUNITION
All centre-fire dummy ammunition cartridges can be identified by holes drilled around the circumference of the case and by the blue plastic primer replacement located in the base of the cartridge.
A wide array of correct and incorrect ammunition is provided so that the students have the opportunity to practice selecting the correct ammunition every time they load a firearm.
All ammunition used during the Canadian Firearm Safety Course is “inert” and clearly identifiable as such. There is no propellant or explosive primer component present in each cartridge.
Ottawa Firearm Safety also ensures that all the “dummies” used during training have legible cartridge information (“head-stamp”) markings . This allows the students to select the correct ammunition during loading on the practical handling practice and exams by properly matching the “data stamp” on the firearm barrel with the cartridge “head stamp” markings. As the cartridge (“head-stamp”) information markings becomes obliterated from use during class, they are replaced with fresh legible cartridges.
Only commercially manufactured shotgun shell dummy cartridges are used. All dummy shotgun shells can be identified by rubber primer replacement in the base of the hull, or by the lack of a primer pocket in the base and/or markings on the side of the hull. Some dummy shot shells have a translucent hull for observing the interior of the shell.
Only commercially manufactured rimfire dummy cartridges are used. All the rim-fire dummies used in the courses can be identified by the small hole drilled through the cartridge base and the blue-anodized colouring and monolithic (one-piece) aluminum construction.
Ottawa Firearm Safety recognizes the importance of having dummy ammunition that is in good condition, so that students are not distracted from the learning process by malfunctions, or difficult to read cartridge head-stamp information caused by old or poor condition dummy cartridges.