Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Black.
Dan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have had a keen interest in the outdoors, the military, firearms, and all adventures between those book ends since I was young. I grew up on a large piece of property where I taught myself to hunt and spent hours, days, and nights in the woods, often getting up before the sun to hunt before school, and spending my weekends in the outdoors whenever I could. I read of adventures on the frontier in Last of the Mohicans, the special operators of the Vietnam war in John Plaster’s MACV-SOG, and science-fictional combat in space in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. My father taught me to shoot, ride motorcycles, especially off road, and hiked with me on the same trails in the Adirondack mountains that his father had hiked with him on.
I enlisted at 17 in 1998, and my last combat deployment ended in 2012. I retired from service in 2021. In between I served as an Infantryman and a Special Operations Combat Medic with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with both conventional and special operations forces. I served in roles as diverse as conducting direct action raids with Special Forces in Afghanistan, working convoy security as a machinegunner at the height of the Iraq war in the Sunni Triangle, providing medical care to civilians injured by suicide bombers, working as a medical planner for hypothetical large scale conventional war in Europe, and training in Prolonged Field Care, the art and science of keeping combat casualties alive in austere environments when the the only “doctor” is a combat medic working with what he carries on his back.
When I retired in 2021 I was an Army National Guard soldier simultaneously working as a Section Sergeant supporting 19th Special Forces Group out of West Virginia while serving as a contract instructor at the Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center out of Ft. Bragg North Carolina. As I searched for the next step in my career I had begun to teach emergency medical techniques and basic hand to hand combat in association with Franky McRae, the former owner of my current business, 37 PSR. When Franky decided to retire and put the business up for sale, which happened around the same time I became involved with him and his business partner as an instructor, the idea of purchasing the business was brought to my attention.
The jump from soldier and contract instructor to business owner was a big one, and the learning curve was steep, but now I can hardly imagine myself doing anything else.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There’s nothing worth having that’s easy to get, and I can’t think of any time in my life where there weren’t challenges. The Army wasn’t easy, being an instructor wasn’t easy, combat wasn’t easy, and being a business owner isn’t easy either. Sometimes though, I think it would do us good to look back at history and reflect with a bit more gratitude on the luxuries that we, as modern Americans, currently enjoy. Our ancestors hunted and trapped the great plains or the woods of the North East for months at a time, eating only what they could shoot. Others worked endless days and nights in the quest for things like electricity, refrigeration, or the automobile: basic things that we take for granted. None of this was easy, so I don’t know why I would expect my own journey to be easy.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a low restriction outdoor shooting range, gun club, and training facility. We try to strike a balance between the necessary safety protocols of the industry and providing our members with enough freedom that military, law enforcement officers, and serious recreational or competitive shooters can do the training they need for success, or sometimes survival, without undue restriction. In this vein we host a “run and gun” style shooting match every quarter, the 37 PSR Combat Match, which challenges shooters both physically and in terms of rifle and pistol marksmanship.
Another thing that I am particularly excited about is our training program. We do introductory level classes in pistol, rifle, and home defense, and we’re rolling out a training series in the fall called Advanced Concealed Carry. One thing that I am passionate about is the concept of integrated defensive skills. Any Soldier, Police Officer, Marine, Federal Agent, etc. who has dealt with life threatening situations will tell you that survival in those environments is a multi skill event. Simply knowing how to shoot on a golf-course like shooting range is helpful, but it doesn’t really get you where you need to be if you are serious about defensive training. Our Advanced Concealed Carry (ACC) program will integrate shooting, medical, and unarmed self defense skill sets. I believe this integrated training is far more ideal for the needs of the civilian who carries concealed for self defense, as opposed to a simple “pistol 1, pistol 2” type of training framework. Since the training will be a series of three two-day courses I think we will have the training time to build a very legitimate skill set that allows a much greater chance of survival given a true life or death situation.
How do you think about happiness?
I have always loved the beauty of nature, and the wilderness, and the self sufficiency and simplicity that comes from being comfortable in the austerity of those environments. There’s also something deeply satisfying in both the saving of human life and the the destruction of evil in the world. I know that some people would take issue with that because they don’t believe in absolute evil. Unfortunately my own personal experience has convinced me to while heartedly believe in the concept of human evil. I believe that the ultimate solution to the problem of evil is in fact spiritual, but in the meanwhile, the solution often involves lead delivered at high velocity, and that’s the business I’m in!
Pricing:
- Range Time: 1 hour, $20; all day, $40; Tactical Bays, 45/person/2hr.; Steel bays $65/person/2hr.
- NC Concealed Carry Handgun Training $75
- Introductory level defensive training $150/ 1-day class
- Advance Concealed Carry (multi skill) training $350/ 2-day class
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.37psr.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/37psrgunclub/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/37PsrGunClub
- Twitter: @37PSRgun
- Other: Blog: https://articles-and-announcements.ghost.io/
