Look at you—vetting your instructor candidates.  Great job!

You are more clever and resourceful today than I was back in 2000, when I bought my first handgun.  I simply signed up for the first class I saw advertised, paid my tuition, kept a chair warm for eight hours, fired a few rounds toward a target of some sort, and obtained my concealed weapons license.  I did it again in 2015 after Idaho added the Enhanced CWL.

For nearly twenty years, I trusted that those two classes had prepared me to protect my son and myself.  I was wrong.  In fact, I was under-trained and over-confident.  In other words, I was oblivious and dangerous.

For someone in that predicament, the only safe way to identify deficient training is through an encounter with excellent training.  For me, that occurred at Front Sight in 2019, where I learned all kinds of critical ideas and skills that those previous classes had not even hinted at.  The four-day experience proved transformational, and at the end I sat in my chair and wept quietly because finally—FINALLY!—someone had given me some tools that would help me actually protect my son!

Subsequently, in 2020 to be precise, I created Ministry of Defense to elevate the level of self-defense training available to upstanding armed citizens here in southwest Idaho.

Alas, Front Sight is gone now.  But the most important lesson from that experience sticks with me: never stop learning!  So, ever the student, I now seek out the best instructors in the world and travel as far as necessary for the opportunity to learn from them.  (Here’s my training resume.)  These days, almost like a bonus, I get double the satisfaction from training because I get to study as both shooter and instructor.  Like any conscientious teacher or coach, I frequently update my class content and delivery methods to bring you the world’s finest wisdom on protection of innocent lives.

You and your loved ones are WORTH PROTECTING!  I will always do my best to show you how.

Bryan Berg

Founder & Lead Instructor—Ministry of Defense