The Rangemaster Tactical Conference didn’t start out as the biggest personal protection training conference for private citizens; it just sort of turned out that way.
Its origins lie in the IDPA Indoor Winter Championship match, which was held at Tom Givens’ Rangemaster facility in Memphis starting in 2000 (Givens wasn’t just an instructor but also an avid competitor, with IDPA membership number 8). The official historian for TacCon, as it’s commonly known, is veteran trainer Claude Werner, and he wrote of the origin on his blog, The Tactical Professor:
“Typically, a shooting match consists of a few minutes of shooting and hours or days of idle time. However, the Winter Indoor Championship presented a unique opportunity because it was held at an indoor range with classrooms. Tom Givens’ relationship with the training industry meant that he was able to host various trainers who could present concurrent lectures about Self-Defense and Personal Protection. Some of the earliest presenters were well known names such as Massad Ayoob, Marty Hayes, and John Farnam.”
It didn’t take many years before
