David Aldea is a Firearms and Defensive Tactics Instructor providing students at all levels of experience with reality based training and consultation.  David is the Operations Manager and Training Coordinator of Range, Guns & Safes LLC in Atlanta Georgia, and is a 20 year NRA Certified Firearms Instructor of multiple disciplines, a Glock certified Advanced Armorer and Instructor, a Smith & Wesson M&P Armorer, founder of Kinetic Options, and a Certified Combat Focus Shooting Instructor.      

David has been a student of the ballistic arts for 30 years. His unique approach to Instruction comes from many years of being both an instructor and student, while remembering there is always more to learn.  KINETIC OPTIONS, a training company started by David in 2007, was founded with the intent of offering a comprehensive understanding that loosens the traditional and narrowly fixed ideals related to firearm use.

His experience includes Highpower, Smallbore, and Longrange Rifle National Match competition, 4 years in the U.S. Marine Corps with combat experience, and USMC Marksmanship Instructor.   As a civilian he has been a corporate security officer, licensed private investigator, undercover investigator, and executive protection agent, including a stint at the ’96 Atlanta Olympics.  He is also a member of IAPPA, and is a PPCT Defensive Tactics and SHARP instructor. 

Confidence in the core principles, evolutionary development, and benefit to the end user, would be my short answer.  To further understand why I teach CFS, you would have to understand my history, my values, my daily doldrums and annoyances with the material handed out over the years with drone like instruction.  You know the ones that preach and teach the only way they know, with no comparison to other methods and no comprehension for the “how’s and why’s”.   They quote classic lines but don’t know the source or reason for them.  Since my preteen years I have enjoyed the challenge of the ballistic arts.  That journey went from listening to older more experienced shooters to finding answers to questions no one had heard before.  “Why do eyes see better through small apertures?”  I would always hear, “because they do.”  No one understood why things worked. They followed like drones what they were shown by others.   This bothered me at age 12, and started a hunger for learning.   Finding these answers was at times a real challenge.  From science journals, eye doctors, sports medicine accounts and personal introspection the light bulb turned on.  The value of WHY was solidified when it produced a Distinguished Expert Rifle Ranking, a shelf of trophies, and a position captaining a Highpower rifle team.  Understanding WHY was the key.   With that understanding I was able to help my team mates, in turn helping us tremendously at the national matches.   Here I had gone from student to teacher.   When I joined the Marines I knew I was in a new world, and that meant ears and eyes open, mouth shut.   What I learned was this same problem of repeating what some other guy said was still in effect.   When posed a question, somewhere in the response was the word, “Because”.   This gave rise to that hunger again.  Fueled by a driving need for answers I challenged, questioned, and tested.   Also this was life and death, not a target range with paper that doesn’t shoot back.  This time these answers to WHY could decide the life expectancy of myself and my comrades.  Through the demonstration of skill, applicable knowledge, and ability to speak clearly I became a USMC Marksmanship Instructor.   This challenge was not just knowing the material, it was getting it inside some thick skulls in a functional way.   Explaining concepts in 3^rd grade rhetoric was not degrading as it would seem, but for the environment a proper teaching approach.   Big words didn’t matter, results did.  Impressing the guy watching me teach with snappy vocabulary wasn’t as important as the Expert Qualifications that stacked up under my watch.  Sticking to what I knew worked and passing that on, in whatever manner or form the student needed, to understand it, was the right answer.  They didn’t have to rise to my qualifications, I had to lower myself to their understanding.  I learned from them how to be a better instructor, by listening as much as I was speaking.   This is a quality I look for in other instructors when I take their classes.   It is a rare quality.  One I value in others and will never let slip from me.  To be confidently proud of the principles by which I teach and the material I present.  To remember I am learning each day something more than I knew previously and with that I can apply it tomorrow better than I was yesterday.  Finally it is about the results, I.E. the student’s ability to understand, retain, and perform to their best ability.   I found these 20 years ago on my own and recognize it again in Rob Pincus with his Combat Focus Shooting concepts.  Many need this beneficial opening of the mind.  Teaching Combat Focus Shooting is the natural next step in my own evolution.  An honor I take seriously and will perform to my best ability.