#207 After Dark: From "Professional Class-Taker" to Director of Training: How One Cop Is Quietly Changing Law Enforcement Firearms Culture, With Anthony Coley

In this episode of Iron Sights, Scott sits down with Anthony Coley of Aegis Consulting at the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association Conference in Round Rock, Texas to unpack one of the most detailed, honest, and actionable roadmaps for changing firearms culture at the agency level you will ever hear.Anthony walks through everything: the professional class taker problem, how competition shooting cracked open his understanding of real-world performance, and why getting bit by the PCSL bug turned into a mission to drag as many officers with him as possible. He does not pull punches about the resistance he faced from inside his own firearms unit, the admin conversations he had to be fully loaded for, and why good enough has never been good enough to him. This is the debrief you wish you could have with the guy quietly grinding in the background of every department while everyone else is doing the bare minimum.And then Kim Pastore Pastore walks in. The founder of the Jorge Pastore Foundation joins Scott and Anthony live on the floor to drop a major announcement: Anthony Coley is officially the Foundation's new Director of Training. The conversation that follows is equal parts raw and inspiring, built on a shared belief that the ripple effects of good training touch officers and families in ways you will never fully see. The legacy match, the PCSL monthly shoots at Texas Shooting Academy, the nationwide reach: it is all coming. And this episode is where it starts.In this episode:• The professional class taker trap: Anthony explains how taking course after course without deliberate instructor-mode observation turns into diminishing returns, and how flipping that lens into instructor development makes every class exponentially more valuable• Competition as a gunfight simulator: Anthony breaks down hit factor math from his first match, showing exactly why a slower shooter with cleaner hits still loses to a faster shooter with acceptable hits, and why that calculus maps directly to real threat encounters• The survey before the pitch: before approaching administration, Anthony personally talked to every officer in the agency one on one, built a spreadsheet of who had red dots, who had zero formal training on them, and compiled case law on liability before walking into the chief's office armed with an answer for every possible question• The cookie cutter problem in firearms instruction: Anthony's baking analogy makes the case that a single teaching method guarantees you will always produce students missing an arm, and that instructor development means accumulating 20 different ways to explain the same concept• Inside the Red Dot class: 400 rounds, five hard-fought hours, aggressive trigger manipulation drills starting cold with zero classroom warmup, self-diagnosis doubles, and a final volley at 25 yards where exhausted officers shoot the best groups of their lives• Building up instead of down: Anthony explains why he went to line-level officers first, then patrol shift lieutenants, then commanders, then administration, so that demand for training was already visible before he ever made a formal ask• The Legacy Match origin story: a customer service mistake on an optic plate, a single giveaway stage, 24 brands cold-called into donating prizes, and a sold-out 100-person law enforcement only PCSL match that spawned a monthly series at Texas Shooting Academy in Florence, TexasChapters:0:03 Episode intro and Scott's mission statement0:59 Setting the scene: TTPOA Conference1:26 Introducing Anthony Coley and Aegis Consulting2:20 Anthony's background: CHP, Texas, canine, and the training gap5:20 The professional class taker problem9:08 Getting into competition shooting12:25 Competition as a gunfight simulator: hit factor explained15:35 Confidence, competency, and isolating deficiencies through competition22:32 How the Legacy Match started by accident26:23 Anthony's backstory: broken leg, CHP academy, and training mentality56:07 Building the case for agency red dot training1:28:04 Kim Pastore joins: announcing Anthony as JPF Director of TrainingMentioned:Anthony Coley — Guest, law enforcement officer, canine handler, PCSL competitor, firearms instructor, and founder of Aegis Consulting, announced as the Jorge Pastore Foundation's Director of Training during this episode.Gabe Rivera — Active California LE SWAT officer and instructor at Mindset Tactical Solutions, credited with introducing Anthony to the term 'professional class taker' and referenced as an upcoming guest on Iron Sights.Rick Crawley — Founder and chief instructor of Achilles Heel Tactical, whose dinner conversation pushed Anthony to stop waiting and start shooting competitions immediately.Dave Mehulma — Instructor from Slick Training Solutions who taught the intro to competitive shooting class where Anthony was first invited to shoot a live match.Kim Pastore — Founder of the Jorge Pastore Foundation, who surprised Anthony on air to announce his appointment as Director of Training for the foundation.Jorge Pastore — Austin PD SWAT officer killed in the line of duty whose legacy inspired the foundation; Anthony had made an Instagram post honoring him that first connected him with Kim Pastore Pastore.Paul Costa — Contact who connected Anthony with Ron from Walther, helping secure demo guns for the agency demo day that eventually snowballed into the Legacy Match.Jordan — Owner and representative of Ryze manufacturer, whose accidental shipment of a wrong optic plate sparked the idea for Anthony's first competition giveaway stage.Aaron — Owner of Texas Shooting Academy, described as a big three-gun and competition shooter, who signed up for the Legacy Match and whose facility hosts the monthly PCSL matches.Eric Foss — Associated with Howitzer, running competitions and working alongside Gabe Rivera to give back to the law enforcement community in Southern California.Rafael — Prior Iron Sights guest from Northern California who competed at a Howitzer match and performed very well, helping spread competition culture in his region.