MTAC PREPARING TO MEET DANGER WITH TRAINING

Eric McBride started MTAC as Muncie Threat Assessment Center to train citizens and law enforcement in armed home defense and personal protection. As it expanded, its name changed to Midwest Threat Assessment Center, and is now MTAC Muncie as the organization prepares to launch franchises.

“We want to turn Indiana into a Mecca for training,” says McBride. “Most people either want personal protection or home defense, or both. Each one of those missions has very specific training that goes behind it. We have designed courses to help progress people in each one of those categories, or both.”

MTAC offers 35 classes to take students from A to Z in handling firearms. According to McBride, most of the time when civilians are faced with the need to use a weapon, the stress of the situation prevents them from being effective or accurate. MTAC focuses on “stress inoculation” by incrementally adding time pressures or other stressors to their students’ training regime, to build up their ability to handle their weapon under pressure.

“We need to get students to the point where weapon manipulation becomes second nature,” says McBride.

According to him, the most important training tool for preparing for violent situations is “opposed training,” which pits students against training officers or experienced volunteers to gain an experience as close to a real gun fight as possible. This allows students to undergo a simulation of combat, and train their reactions to not become overwhelmed by the stress. It was an ambitious plan to start such a training range here in Muncie, a range referred to by McBride as a “shoot house.”

“At the time we started, there were only six in the country,” McBride says. “The purpose behind it is to validate your training, to expose yourself as much as you can to that failure so that you start succeeding.”

McBride is a reserve for the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office and has been in law enforcement for 16 years. “I realized there was an opportunity to train armed citizens in the same manner that law enforcement and military are trained,” he says.

The instructors who work for MTAC are typically either law enforcement training officers or ex-military, if not both.

Unfortunately it can be difficult getting gun owners to take action to consistently train with their weapon.

“What we find is that less than 2% of [gun owners] train with their gun,” says McBride. “It’s interesting to me that people will have something that can actually take a life on them, and they don’t want to practice with it.”

MTAC also offers critical training on use of force and rules of engagement. “I think the biggest thing that people need to hear is that they don’t understand use of force when they can use that gun legally,” says McBride. “When people ask me a hypothetical question about it, most of the time they have a wrong understanding of it.”

Some organizations such as churches, schools and corporations put together teams of armed guards to try and prevent the risk of mass shootings, but they will often neglect to invest sufficiently in training. MTAC offers training for such groups, as well as consulting for making a location a hard target. Training for armed guards is an investment that many organizations are reluctant to make, and many of them take other, less effective steps to appear like they have prepared.

There is no substitute for effective training, and MTAC’s mission is to provide that training to anyone concerned about using their firearms correctly and appropriately.

MTAC is located at 3800 East McGalliard Road in Muncie. For more info, call 765505-6822 or go to mtactraining.com.