John Pemberton is the owner of Spartan Dynamics LLC and a manager at Kodiak Firing Range. 

And more importantly, he’s a Marine Corp Veteran.

“I served a little over five years in the Marine Corps, my main job was signals intelligence,” said Pemberton.

He’s been deployed to places such as Iraq, Japan and the Philippines. 

“My second MOS was a First Degree Black Belt Instructor in the Marine Corp Martial Arts program,” Pemberton said.  “I’ve been teaching that an instructor since 2006 and that’s kind of how I got my start in this kind of industry.”

Pemberton says that when it comes to guns it is important to be well educated on them.

“Unfortunately in the gun community there are a lot of myths out there,” said Pemberton. “We try to educate people that’s our first goal here at Kodiak. Education first.”

  His students train with both an empty and loaded gun and even on a simulator to prepare them for potential threats.

“If you’re going to carry a gun it’ more to it than just buying it and putting it on,” said class attendee Mike Bartkowiak.  “You should really have the knowledge of not only how to use it but when to use it and why you need to use it.”

Pemberton said his program is always evolving.

“I continue to take training and education whether it’s martial skills like martial arts or combatives, knife defense, or even other firearm training classes and I pick and choose things and add it to make the program better.”

Since he is a veteran, we wanted to know what Veterans Day means to him.

“It’s a day that we get together and we talk about stories and it honors those who have gone out there and put their lives on the line,” Pemberton said.  “So I think it’s great that our country honors us and those kinds of things and it really makes me proud to see all of the people who like veterans and veterans getting together because in the Military you have that cohesion, you have that unit when you get out sometimes you lose a little bit of that and I think that really helps veterans get together to swap stories and those kinds of things and I think it’s a day of comradery for me with other Veterans.”