I have made a deliberate effort to donate a significant amount of money to those who make it their business to offer the general public opportunities to prepare themselves as capable of being their own first responders. I’ve spent over a decade taking classes and devoting what I truly believed was adequate or at least responsible amounts of time to attempting to ensure my skills and abilities with the firearms I owned were responsible and continuously improving and never degrading. But to be honest, although I was competent, I was almost NEVER the best shot or the best student in any class. Despite the decade plus of time and the 35 plus formal courses of firearms and medical training classes I have enrolled in and completed, after completing WHO ARE YOU WITH A GUN, I realized the presence of a undeniably gargantuan gap in my training between things like classes, flat range drills and dry fire to having the ability to appropriately and accurately handle a real life situation that could or does merit the use of lethal (or non-lethal) force. This is my conclusion in regards to those of us who see ourselves as our own first responders and likely carry some form of ability to use lethal force should it ever be necessary to ensure we or those we love her to celebrate our next birthday: if you are involved in and appropriately navigate some type of actual or perceived lethal force situation without having been enrolled in this or a similar class, consider yourself possibly the luckiest person on earth. NO amount of flat range training will EVER prepare you to know how to recognize, address and utilize the processing (thinking/decision making) skills required of you in one of these situations. Although I didn’t believe I needed it, I took the class on the advice and input from friends and instructors who have my absolute respect. I walked away a changed man. This is not a shooting class, although you will pull a trigger at times. What you will be doing is experiencing situations you would likely say you could handle…until you’re trying and realize it’s wholly overwhelming. This is absolutely a thinking and decision making class. The atmosphere and culture of the class is NOT about angles and problem solving for a shot. It’s about matching your inner voice with an appropriate response to safely extricate yourself from situations your pray never to encounter except on the news or in works of fiction. Deft or “John Wick” shooting skills and knowledge or NOT required. Being an aggressive or “gun solution” oriented person is also not required. You are promoted, encouraged and presented with the opportunity to navigate these scenarios according to your own personal chosen response level and shown the pros and cons of those responses. As I discovered quickly, a one response level mentality is apt to backfire on you at some point. This class will help you discover who you are in any real world conflict and confrontation. The scenarios used in class were 100% realistic…sometimes to the point it was challenging to not momentarily forget it was training. If you carry a weapon and you don’t take this class or something similar, you are leaving a gap in you’re preparedness that’s bigger then the gap between carrying a weapon and not carrying a weapon. If you wear a seatbelt, have auto insurance, lock your car doors, or carry a weapon, you have a desire to be prepared for things you hope won’t happen to you. So expose yourself to the rest of the equation and get yourself in this class or a class like it or you are more likely to be part of the problem than you are the correct solution to a high stress conflict.