BSA Rifle Merit Badge Counselor

This page is based on a conversation held on a Internet mailing list and is pretty much my opinion ... Not the opinion of the NRA, BSA or anyone else. ;)

Well, there is some disagreement here. If you read the Rifle Shooting Merit Badge book or the G2SS, it says "All training and shooting activities must be supervised by a currently NRA-certified rifle instructor or coach who is 21 years of age or older." To ME (and my council), this means a rifle merit badge councilor needs to be an NRA Instructor (coach isn't mentioned in the merit badge book). Some have interpreted this to mean that anyone can be a MBC if they have a NRA Instructor "supervising" them (they either have a more lenient definition of supervising than I do or they only sign the book for the NRA person).

With that said, there are a couple of ways to get the necessary certifications. The BSA way is to attend the Shooting Sports section of National Camping School (NCS). This is a 7 day class that covers the BSA policies as well as the NRA Rifle and Shotgun (and probably a couple more) Instructor certs as well as the National Archery Association (NAA) Level 1 Instructor cert.

The NRA way to get the cert is to attend a NRA Rifle Instructor class offered by an NRA Training Counselor (TC). Some councils have TC's and are offering NRA classes to make it easier to get certified.

For more info, see the G2SS and the Shooting Sports section of the Camp Administration Manual has additional information.