Does Rutherford County Need a Firearm Training Facility?

In Tennessee, there are nearly 500,000 valid, handgun carry permits with nearly 25,000 of those just in Rutherford County. Every year, the Rutherford County permits issued increases more than 2,000. The question becomes where do all these people begin and continue their training so that they know how to safely and responsibly care for and use their firearms. While Rutherford County has a few independent certified instructors and local indoor range, On Target, the combination of those have increasing limits on their availability and in the case of On Target, the size of their facility.

This means that many people go outside the county for their training, often driving longer distances that necessary. USADefense wants to change that by becoming one of the trusted places of instruction open to local Tennesseans, especially those here in Rutherford County and Murfreesboro.

USADefense began with a vision of providing instruction for helping Rutherford County residents to protect themselves and their families while growing their business to expand by building a new state-of-the-art facility. They continue to offer training for new and continuing firearm owners through a range of classes taught by their numerous instructors. Current classes that they offer include a Tennessee Handgun Permit class, basic pistol, maintenance and care class, shooter improvement classes, competition shooting, personal and home protection, Tactical training courses, and their state-of-the-art laser training course. They maintain a calendar of their class offerings.

One thing that sets them apart is their range of veteran instructors with years of continued training as well as firearm instruction. Many of them are also local to Murfreesboro.

• Joe Jenkins retired from the U.S. Army in 2014 after more than 20 years of Honorable service and proceeded to spend many more years training other members of police and military before joining the business.
• Robert Smarrt is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force before spending more than 20 years as a Police Firearms instructor training officers in both Murfreesboro Police Department and Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office.
• Jason Carter served eight years in the Military Police in Nashville with the Army Reserves and was deployed two times.
• Michael Billings is also a veteran of the U.S. Army and served as a combat engineer, and more recently has been working in the area while gaining his B.S. in aviation.
• Scott Randolph has more than 20 years of competitive shooting and has been an instructor for several of those.

Each of the instructors enjoy shooting and assisting others to learn to shoot. They hope to encourage situational awareness and fundamentals of shooting for all their trainees.

For more information on USADefense and to schedule your training, check them out at their website.