Gun Owners Are Preparing for When All Hell Breaks Loose

Ten men, some wearing camouflage, others in vests loaded with ammunition for their AR-15 rifles, gathered under the morning shade of oak trees in Central Florida last month. They were there to learn marksmanship tactics common among Special Operation forces and elite law enforcement units.

Their instructor, Christopher Eric Roscher, an Air Force veteran, introduced himself and then led the group in prayer.

“Lord, you would use them as assets, to be protectors in this world, in a world that’s full of evil,” he prayed.

The men gathered around him were not soldiers, police officers or right-wing militia members. They were mostly civilians, including two pilots, a nurse and a construction company executive. The class’s title — Full Contender Minuteman — even referred to the civilians turned soldiers of the American Revolution.

In a world shaped by war, a pandemic and extreme weather, more Americans are getting ready for crisis — whether it’s to fight a tyrannical government, repel an invading army or respond to a natural disaster.

They are known as prepared or professional citizens, part of a growing number of gun owners who are adapting their mind-set to uncertain and polarized times. And rather than being part of more fringe “prepper” culture, they are growing more mainstream, catered to by companies ready to offer them the tools and training to be ready.

The traditional aspects of gun ownership — such as simple target shooting — are increasingly being shelved in favor of topics like radio and medical training, night-vision shooting, drone reconnaissance, homesteading and military tactics.

“We are looking at a growing number of companies who are broadening the appeal and normalizing self preparedness and the tools needed to enable it,” said Kareem Shaya, the co-founder of Open Source Defense, a startup working to normalize gun culture in the United States and invest in new companies in the civilian defense industry. “Five or 10 years ago, we couldn’t have done what we’re doing because there just weren’t enough startups in the space. We’re seeing it accelerate in real time.”

Prepared citizenry and the more familiar practice of “prepping” share some characteristics, though preppers are more focused on getting ready for long-term self-sufficiency — keeping chickens, growing a vegetable garden and storing supplies in bulk. Prepared citizens want to be ready for sudden calamity.

The concept emerged for Mr. Roscher, 35, as he watched Russia invade Ukraine in 2022. Ukrainian civilians were flooding the streets with little ability to defend themselves.

“It really hit home for me,” he said.

Mr. Roscher began teaching firearms classes after leaving active duty in the Air Force and started his own training company, Barrel & Hatchet Trade Group, with his business partner Tyler Burke in 2020. Barrel & Hatchet also has a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, a podcast and a gear store.

Their programming is a mix of firearms reviews, training tips and lists, and lessons in being mentally prepared for a disaster. In the past year or so, Mr. Roscher’s turn toward Christianity and prayer has also attracted a receptive audience and clientele.

Mr. Roscher recently produced a video he called “Things We Need to Remember, for the Dark Chapter Coming,” which highlighted his belief that some societal flashpoint is near, whether it be from attacks led by drug cartels, possible terrorist sleeper cells spread across the United States or an economic downturn.

His monologue, which also detailed a vivid dream of a nuclear blast, sounded almost like a sermon.

Mr. Roscher, like other veterans or former law enforcement officers in the prepared citizen community, said he started teaching to pass on his knowledge to regular people.

His work is not limited to in-person training and even draws from global conflicts. A video on his channel exploring drone combat in Ukraine and how the technology can be used for civilians in the United States was shared on an Appalachia-based Telegram messaging channel for prepared citizens in early March, sparking interest among those in the chat.

“I gotta find a group to train with,” one message in the group read, lamenting that their choices for training cadres were limited to local militias or other right-wing fringe groups.

“Try Barrel and Hatchet if you’re in Florida,” another message said. “They’re trying to recruit.”

Josh Eppert, 40, was one of those recruits. During the pandemic, he found a group of people he liked shooting with and received much-needed instruction from Mr. Roscher and his team.

The vice president of a construction company based in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Eppert represents the quintessential prepared citizen.

“If I’m gonna own this stuff, then I want to become proficient with it — not that there’s any illusions of becoming Rambo or anything like that. It’s just I enjoy the challenge,” Mr. Eppert said.

Wearing camouflage, a chest rig loaded with AR-15 magazines and black-and-white Adidas sneakers (he forgot his boots at home), Mr. Eppert spent the minuteman class shooting from barricades, practicing pistol draws and learning a new way to store ammunition on his belt.

The drills were framed around how students might need to act “on the worst day of your life,” Mr. Roscher said, so target shooting often took place after 25-yard sprints.

Mr. Eppert’s AR-15 rifle had a close range sight, a flashlight and a sound suppressor, or silencer. Some students had infrared lasers on their rifles for night-vision shoots, a class Mr. Roscher also teaches.

And though Mr. Eppert has a less gloomy outlook on the future than his instructor, he stressed the need for self-reliance, especially with the enduring threat of deadly hurricanes across the state.

“Am I putting a bunker in my backyard?” he asked, jokingly. “I don’t have plans for any of that, but I think it’s important just to be smart and be able to take care of things.”

On the other side of the tactical training spectrum from Mr. Roscher’s Barrel & Hatchet is Ben Spangler, a former Army officer who has run an Instagram account called @tacticalforge since 2023. His short videos explaining military infantry tactics like patrolling and setting up ambushes and observation posts get hundreds of thousands of views and are widely shared in the prepared citizen world.

He also has an Etsy page where he sells training kits with maps, protractors to plot navigation points, compasses and field guides. Old military instruction manuals, once a forgotten staple of Army Navy surplus stores, have had a resurgence among the prepared citizen crowd.

“They’re usually quieter, because they’re usually more of an observer, or they’re asking questions,” Mr. Spangler said of his customers. “They’ll go on hikes, they maybe go to the range a few times, or they’ve got a core group of people that like doing that stuff. But it’s not a militia in any sense of the word, but usually those folks, when they don’t have that military background, they’re just looking for information.”

For decades, fear has been a significant driver of gun sales, but what separates the prepared citizen from an average gun owner is community. Whether it’s Barrel & Hatchet training classes or groups in North Carolina or Colorado that spend days in the woods, hiking and preparing defensive positions to train for notional invasions or societal collapse, prepared citizens like to collaborate and find strength in numbers.

Thirty-five miles southeast of the minuteman course, Danielle L. Campbell, 43, picked up a pistol at the Orlando Gun Club and fired into a paper target a few yards away. Protect Peace, the community-focused group that she helped found in 2023, would not define themselves as prepared citizens in the same way as Mr. Roscher’s cohort, but they share much of the same DNA.

“I started training after my assistant was killed by a stray bullet,” Ms. Campbell said, sitting in a lounge chair at the shooting club. “Before that, I always had guns, but I never trained, I never took it seriously.” Her colleague was killed during a robbery in 2017, and she started firearms training soon afterward.

Protect Peace serves as a community outreach group for dozens of gun owners in Central and Southern Florida, where instead of preparing for a chaotic future, they are helping local communities affected by gun violence.

Ms. Campbell’s group helps provide medical trauma training; distributes naloxone, an overdose reversal drug, in impoverished neighborhoods; and hosts community shooting events attended by dozens of gun owners. She is also working to get members of the group amateur radio licenses so they can communicate in an emergency.

“Part of the reason why we do it is to really form a community,” she said. “We had a public defender, a police officer, state troopers, all kinds of people. It was just so welcoming and inviting. I think that’s where this whole concept was born.”