To fully understand and appreciate what we have to offer is to look back and examine where we came from. The journey has been long and hard, and begins back when Troysgate's founder, Randy Martin was a kid. Like many kids he always had plenty of questions, was very curious about things, and liked to experiment just to see what would happen which at times got him into trouble. Years later one could easily recognize that he was a visonary and with that he would be an individual with a mission, the passion and the determination to do great things.
After Randy graduated from high school he became a law enforcement officer having worked for both the local police department and the sheriff's department during his career. He loved the excitement of the job and liked the challenges responding to potentially dangerous situations. It was not long before he joined SWAT. He liked training and took just about everything a law enforcement officer could take, so it was no surprise that he became an instructor. He was one of the best and most sought after instructors, and even today 50 years later is still highly regarded and respected.
The world of law enforcement had a huge impact on Randy. What always concerned and troubled him was when an officer was killed in situations where another person took that officer's life. To this day it has been his life long quest and mission to find ways to prevent law enforcement officers from losing their lives in the line of duty.
Saving lifes has always been important to Randy and he recognized and was fully aware that innocent civilians could be and too many times would be unintended victims and casualities of deadly encounter situations that turned deadly. He took innocent civilian deaths seriously and looked to see what could be done to minimize and reduce civilian casualities. He also knew that most civilian's had the misconception that the police were there to protect them. What they didn't know and understand is law enforcement is there to serve and protect the community at large. So, he took his law enforcement knowledge, training and expertise and put it to work to help the civilian population by offering firearm and concealed carry handgun training. He felt strongly that every law abiding civilian had the right to protect and defend themself and their family members, and it was equally important to educate them on how to survive deadly encounter situations.
Eventually he decided to leave law enforcement to work full time on being an instructor to serve law enforcement and the general public. Years earlier he had established an outdoor firing range and had been teaching firearms and concealed carry training, as well as teaching advanced tactical training, and had established a solid base of existing and new clients. His business and client based continued to grow and he continued to advance and offer higher levels of training.
Then one day when he was by himself out on his range, he had an ideal and for fun wondered what it would be like to shoot at his reflection in a mirror. When he did a revelation happened... Immediately after shooting his reflection he flashed back to his first deadly encounter where he nearly lost his life in close quarters combat with a suspect with a shotgun. In their hand-to-hand struggle, the weapon discharged and the the shotgun round missed his head by a few inches. That personal experience was the event that would be responsible for changing everything he knew, or thought he knew about training and deadly encounters.
Change began right away. Randy started to conceptualize how his new revelation could be incorporated into training. He enlisted the help from a close friend, Les Hoot, to help fast track the concept, feasibility, design and development of training where an individual could shoot at an image of another person. Randy worked on the technical aspects of what would be needed and how it could be implemented on the range. Les, worked on finding the materials that would be needed, and for documenting and developing the progress of the design, development, integration and implementation of products and methods that would be developed and used in the training environment.
Both worked tirelessly for 2-3 years before countless number of iterations of products and methods were integrated into a viable and safe training environment. During Troysgate's early early years, the landscape of the range changed dramatically incorporating several training models and structures. A U.S. patent was developed and submitted, and approved and granted several years later. Hundreds if not 1000 or more participants from local law enforcement gladly and appreciatively volunteered to go through our training environments and methods to help advance and refine the products, training environments and methods that we now currently use on the range. Since then, the number of participants have grown astoundly to over 20,0000 from law enforcement, military, federal agents, armed security and civilians that passed concealed carry handgun training.
An unintended development that later helped Troysgate transition into what it is today, came about during the early years of Troysgate. Les Hoot, given his academic background and his interest and passion for human science, was always curious about the things he noticed at the range and what he would see during the review of videos taken to record each participant's deadly encounter experience. He spent the better part of 5 years conducting his own research looking into the human effects of deadly engagement. He found, read and studied scientific studies as far back as the 1930's regarding specific parts of the brain he thought might be responsible for and related to what he was seeing being exhibited by so many of our participants. His effort took severals years before he was confident he was pretty sure he found enough of the pieces of the puzzle to present this finding and recommendations to Randy. Although Randy didn't embrace it right away, he eventually did, and with that, they both worked to incorporate and integrate the human science of deadly encounters and engagements into the Troysgate environment. This effort, didn't dramatically change much of the physical elements of the Troysgate environment, but it made a significant impact on the training methodology and our understanding of the realities, effects and consequences of deadly engagement. The science opened our minds and thinking to explore all possibilities where we thought Troysgate could made a difference.
Science clearly showed us that althought formal training is necessary and important, that training alone and without the understanding and consideration of the human science as part of equation for dealing with deadly encounters and engagements... the saving of lives could not be acheived, and that people would continue to die, and there would be no possible way to prevent that from happening.
There are a number of people that have joined Troysgate in the spirit of wanting to make a difference and wanting to help save lives, and Troysgate would not exist without everyone that is with us now and that has been with us in the past. All of us have made contributions, personal commitments and sacrifices. Although Troysgate is a small company, its continued success to the company's mission of saving lives is because of the passion and commitment of each individual. Troysgate appreciates everyone for everything have done... thank you for jobs well done!