June 1, 2020. Day 16 of lockdown. I'm stuck indoors, 3 miles from the White House.
That day, my fiancée was facing the chaos of a major hospital’s frontlines. All the while, the TV blared reports of a church burning in D.C. Outside my apartment, an army of angry protesters descended on every street and access point into the city. I couldn’t reach my fiancée; couldn’t shield her. I’d never felt so powerless—or so ashamed.
In that moment, my life replayed in my mind: every decision, every dollar wasted on frivolous tech and comfort instead of what mattered. "Why did I wait so long?" I wondered. "This isn’t the country I grew up in. This isn’t supposed to be happening. What am I supposed to do?" My childlike sense of safety was stripped away in an instant. Then, something inside me snapped. My soul cried out, "It’s time!" Time to do what I should have done 10 years ago.
Quietly, I planned it out. I budgeted for a firearm, ammunition, a safe, and a training tool. After researching, I chose a Beretta 92X, a simple safe, 80 rounds of 9mm Federal Hollow Points, 3 Mec-Gar magazines and a Mantis X3. Total cost: around $1,000. The Mantis X intrigued me most. It’s a device that attaches to your gun, tracks your movements, and gives real-time feedback on your shooting technique—all without live ammo. With ranges shut down, it was a lifeline. Little did I know how much of a cornerstone that little sensor would be for this new gun owner.
The day everything arrived, I felt a shift. A burden lifted, replaced by something solid, like armor settling over my shoulders. This was responsibility—to protect, to serve. I realized freedom isn’t a right; it’s a duty. Then my fiancée came home. I was in my chair, gun in hand, pointed at the sky, with music and a podcast blaring.
"Is that real?" she asked, her voice cutting through the noise.
"Yeah," I said with a grin.
Her eyes widened. "Is it loaded?"
"No, look." I dry-fired, making her flinch.
"Put it away! I don’t want to see it."
"Can I just show you—"
"No."
Deflated, I locked it up. But over the next hour, her resistance softened. She started asking questions: "How much did this cost?" "Are you taking a safety course?" Four months later, we got married, and four months after that, we moved to the middle of nowhere.
Life in the “Wild West” was a huge adjustment from the city, but a welcomed one. Finally, I took her to a public range: just an open field with a dirt mound for a backstop. She fired a few rounds, turned her head with a smile I had never seen before and said the magic words, “I want one.”
We signed up for an NRA Basic Pistol course. By this day, I’d only shot 100 live rounds through my Beretta but had logged over 1,000 dry fires with the Mantis X. To my surprise, I was the highest performer of the class of 10. My wife? She came in second with just 100 rounds total on a new gun she had never shot before. What a prodigy! The instructors noticed. "You two should teach," they said.
Soon after, I found myself in the Black Hills of South Dakota. There, I earned my Basic Pistol Instructor certificate. At that course, my shooting earned "Woah!"’s from the group. This was followed by even louder “WOAH!”s when they coaxed my wife to do a proficiency benchmark.
For three years, I’ve trained new shooters, focusing on safety and dry-fire practice with the Mantis X. My goal is always to give students the level of confidence I experienced taking my first class. The Mantis X is both a dry- and live-fire training system that analyzes your movement, trigger press, grip, follow-through, and recoil control. Then it provides feedback based on a diagnosis of a shooter’s weapon manipulation capability.
As an instructor, it’s my go-to assistant for spotting and fixing students’ mistakes. Nothing is more rewarding than hearing, "I feel like I can protect myself now." Today, I work at Mantis as a Customer Service agent and creative contributor. Want to step up your training? Reach out to us at Mantis. If you’re an NRA Instructor, mention it. And if you end up talking to me, tell me you read my story. Can’t wait to hear from you! For a stronger, safer, freer America, keep training.
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