About

Some Back Story

My name is Paul Gomez. I was a soldier for thirteen years [three years active duty and ten in the National Guard]. I was a police officer at Southern University for three years. And I’ve been involved in private sector training since the mid-90s.

While I had a significant interest in defensive skills & training dating back many years, I did not become actively involved in training until moving to Oregon in 1996. Outside of the Army, all of my training had been self-directed [through reading, acquiring video footage from various training orgs and lots & lots of practice]. Shortly after I moved to Oregon, I met a gentleman who had been running a defensive handgun program through the local community college for the last 10 years. He and I hit it off and I began assisting him with some of his courses, Shortly thereafter, I linked up with the other prominent instructor in the area and began assisting her as well. I also developed a close range carbine program and began instructing for the National Guard unit that I was assigned to. It was during this timeframe that I first made contact with Andy Stanford of Options for Personal Security. He provided a significant amount of guidance and direction. Taking advantage of the wealth of local martial artists, I began studying with several different people from a number of different backgrounds. This was also the time when I first made contact with and trained with Insights Training Center.

Moving back to Baton Rouge in January 1999, brought a number of changes. By this time, the training addiction was well & truly set. By 2000, I had trained with Karl Rehn of KR Training [one of the early proponents of Force-on-Force], began weekly training sessions with Ron Harris [an extremely talented and opinionated martial artist who was a professor at the University where I was a cop], taken courses taught by Insights Training Center, Steve Moses, James Yeager, Scott Sonnon and TDSA. Over the next couple of years, I managed to train with OPS, American Combatives, Gabe Suarez, John Benner’s Tactical Defense Institute and a few other assorted groups, including taking Urban Rifle at Thunder Ranch.

By this point, I was instructing for OPS and running a local training group that met once a week to work on integrated problem solving and once a month or so to do live-fire pistol work. A highpoint of 2004 was the opportunity to become immersed in the ECQC material of SouthNarc. From the first class in July through the next year and a half, I was present, working the line and fulfilling the role of bad guy for hundreds, if not thousands, of heavy contact, force-on-force iterations working on ‘multidisciplinary problem solving at 0 to 5 feet’.

In 2005, I was asked to present at Tom Givens’ Polite Society/Tactical Conference, Gabe Suarez’ WarriorTalk Symposeum and the National Tactical Invitational. Throughout 2005 & 2006 I continued teaching with OPS & Shivworks as well as teaching classes under my own name. In late 2006, I accepted a position with a private security company to provide training for a Force Protection Group for a classified project at the Stennis Space Center. After leaving that position, I moved to Mingus, Texas to teach for Tac Pro Shooting Center.

So, there you have it…a bit of background on me. Along the way, I’ve become friends with a number of people in the training community and they tend to hold my opinion in some regard but I’ve never been very good on the whole marketing thing so my name is relatively obscure in the larger community.

It is my hope with LouisianaSelfDefense.com to be able to bring a greater awareness of the training opportunities that are availalbe and encourage people to take advantage of these opportunities. During my formative years, no private sector trainers came into Louisiana. Attending any training entailed an eight hour drive to Dallas, Austin or Atlanta…drives I made many, many times.

Thank you for looking and I hope you find this site useful,

Paul Gomez