Greg Ellifritz is a retired police officer, firearms and combatives instructor, tactical-medicine educator, writer, researcher, and the founder, president, and primary instructor of Active Response Training. His work connects firearms, close-contact fighting, medical response, crime prevention, active-killer response, travel security, and preparedness into a practical system for surviving violent and uncertain situations.
Law-Enforcement Career
Ellifritz retired after 25 years as a police officer. He spent 13 years as the full-time tactical training officer for a central Ohio police department, where he developed and delivered in-service training for an agency of approximately 55 officers. His other assignments included patrol officer, firearms armorer, bike-patrol officer and coordinator, sniper, and Field Training Officer.
The full-time training assignment gave Ellifritz sustained exposure to the difference between a technique that appears effective in a controlled class and one that officers can retain and apply under operational pressure. His instructional philosophy favors simple, robust methods, clear decision-making, and adaptable principles over large collections of narrowly defined techniques.
Ellifritz also served as an adjunct instructor for the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy, teaching firearms, defensive tactics, bike patrol, knife defense, and physical fitness. He has taught at law-enforcement and firearms-training events associated with organizations including the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors, Gunsite Academy, the Rangemaster Tactical Conference, and the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police.
Tactical Defense Institute
For 17 years, Ellifritz instructed at the Tactical Defense Institute. He served as a lead instructor in ground fighting, knife fighting, active-shooter response, impact weapons, and extreme-close-quarters shooting. That work expanded his instructional base beyond conventional firearms and required students to integrate positional fighting, weapon access, retention, disengagement, and medical considerations.
This multidisciplinary experience is central to his later curriculum. At contact distance, a defensive problem may begin with awareness and movement, progress into an empty-hand or edged-weapon encounter, and only then involve a firearm. Ellifritz teaches the gun as one component of the fight rather than as the automatic answer to every problem.
Active Response Training
Ellifritz founded Active Response Training in 2001. The organization began with a focus on realistic women’s self-defense and later expanded into advanced firearms tactics, edged weapons, tactical first aid, close-contact fighting, active-killer response, force-on-force scenarios, crime prevention, emergency planning, wilderness skills, and international travel safety.
Active Response Training has taught private citizens, law-enforcement personnel, institutional clients, and military students. The company is headquartered in Leander, Texas, while continuing to conduct training in Ohio and at host locations elsewhere.
The defining feature of Ellifritz’s work is breadth with a purpose. He does not treat shooting ability as complete defensive capability. His curriculum asks what happens before a weapon is needed, what happens when a firearm cannot be accessed, what happens at physical-contact distance, what happens when someone is injured, and what happens when professional help is delayed. Avoidance, recognition, physical skills, weapons, medicine, communication, and aftermath management are parts of the same problem.
Extreme-Close-Quarters Fighting
Ellifritz is particularly associated with extreme-close-quarters gunfighting. His instruction addresses situations in which a defender may be physically entangled, unable to extend the handgun conventionally, protecting the head with the support hand, controlling an opponent or weapon, fighting against a wall, or operating from the ground.
In that environment, marksmanship is only one requirement. Weapon retention, body position, timing, distance management, access, and the decision whether to draw are equally important. Ellifritz’s firearms and combatives backgrounds allow him to teach these elements as an integrated problem rather than attaching a compressed shooting position to an otherwise conventional handgun course.
His instructor-development work further extends that material. By teaching other instructors how to analyze and present close-contact problems, Ellifritz’s influence reaches beyond the students who attend his own classes.
Defensive Firearms and Shotgun Instruction
Ellifritz teaches defensive handgun, revolver, rifle, shotgun, and weapon-maintenance material. He holds instructor, master-instructor, or armorer credentials involving more than 85 weapon systems, defensive-tactics programs, and law-enforcement specialty topics, and his official biography reports more than 4,500 hours of documented formal training.
His defensive-shotgun instruction is representative of his broader approach. Rather than repeat traditional claims about the shotgun, he emphasizes patterning the individual gun with the intended load, recoil management, reliable operation, realistic distances, use of cover, ammunition selection, and the weapon’s actual mission. The student must understand what the specific gun and ammunition combination does rather than relying on folklore about spread or stopping power.
Across weapon systems, Ellifritz favors adaptable principles and a small number of dependable actions. The relevant question is not merely whether a technique can work under ideal conditions, but whether a particular person can make it work reliably when the environment is uncertain and the consequences are serious.
Force-on-Force and Active-Killer Response
Ellifritz has extensive experience with force-on-force and scenario-based training. These methods introduce moving people, uncertain information, resistance, communication, and decision-making that a conventional range cannot reproduce. He also emphasizes the safety systems required to conduct realistic scenarios responsibly, including weapon segregation, ammunition control, equipment inspection, assigned safety responsibilities, and disciplined scenario management.
His active-killer material addresses both professional and private-citizen response. The appropriate action depends on role, available information, proximity, equipment, responsibility for other people, and the arrival of responding officers. The goal is not to provide one universal script, but to improve recognition, decision-making, and the ability to act within the conditions actually present.
Tactical Medicine and Preparedness
Tactical first aid and austere medicine are longstanding elements of Ellifritz’s work. His courses address immediate care when emergency medical services may be delayed or the scene remains unsafe. Medical capability fits naturally within his broader system: surviving the violent act is not the end of the problem if the defender, a family member, or another person has been injured.
His preparedness instruction similarly focuses on realistic needs rather than accumulating equipment without a plan. Medical supplies, communications, physical fitness, emergency planning, and basic survival skills support resilience when ordinary systems are unavailable or slow to respond.
Travel Security and Choose Adventure
Ellifritz is an experienced international traveler who has visited more than 50 countries, frequently traveling alone and independently. His travel-security work combines criminal-behavior analysis, situational awareness, preparation, transportation choices, lodging considerations, medical planning, and strategies for reducing exposure without eliminating the value of travel.
He is the author of Choose Adventure: Safe Travel in Dangerous Places, which translates lessons from extensive travel into practical guidance. The book reflects the same approach found throughout his defensive instruction: identify likely problems, recognize warning signs, prepare useful options, and avoid allowing fear to become the sole decision-maker.
Research, Writing, and the Weekend Knowledge Dump
Ellifritz has written for publications including The Firearms Instructor, Ohio Police Chief, Combat Handguns, Concealed Carry Magazine, Recoil, and American Handgunner. His own website contains a large archive covering firearms, police work, crime prevention, medical issues, psychology, active killers, travel, equipment, and training.
Since March 2012, he has published the weekly Weekend Knowledge Dump, selecting and commenting on useful articles, research, incident reports, equipment information, and competing viewpoints from across the defensive community. In August 2026, he published installment No. 750 after more than 14 years without missing a week.
The series is more than a recurring link collection. It functions as continuing education and information curation for readers who would otherwise have to search across many disciplines and sources. Ellifritz regularly directs readers to other instructors and researchers, challenges unsupported claims, and revisits his own conclusions when better evidence becomes available.
Education and Professional Development
Ellifritz holds a master’s degree in Public Policy and Management, with a research focus on criminal-justice policy. That academic background supports the research, comparison, and policy analysis visible in his writing, while his law-enforcement and instructional experience keeps the work connected to operational realities.
His professional development spans firearms, armorer work, empty-hand fighting, edged weapons, physical conditioning, emergency medicine, instructor development, scenario training, and related law-enforcement specialties. The importance of that breadth is not the credential count by itself, but the ability to compare methods across disciplines and determine how they interact in realistic defensive problems.
Areas of Expertise
- Defensive handgun, revolver, rifle, and shotgun instruction
- Extreme-close-quarters gunfighting and weapon retention
- Empty-hand, ground-fighting, and edged-weapon skills
- Law-enforcement firearms and tactical training
- Force-on-force and scenario-training design
- Active-killer response and emergency planning
- Tactical first aid and austere medicine
- Crime prevention and situational awareness
- International travel safety and preparedness
- Instructor development, research, and information curation
Primary & Secondary Connection
Ellifritz’s work has long circulated within the Primary & Secondary community because it aligns with P&S’s emphasis on vetted instruction, evidence, context, and practical application. His writing provides useful connections among firearms, combatives, medicine, crime analysis, police training, and preparedness—subjects that are often discussed separately but must work together during real incidents.
Current Work
Ellifritz continues to teach through Active Response Training, publish original articles, maintain the Weekend Knowledge Dump, and provide instruction in firearms, close-contact fighting, defensive shotgun, medical response, travel safety, and related personal-protection subjects.
Sources
- Active Response Training — Instructor biography
- Active Response Training — About
- Active Response Training — Class reviews
- Weekend Knowledge Dump No. 750
- Greg Ellifritz article archive
Profile last reviewed: September 10, 2026. Biographical details and professional affiliations were checked against the sources listed above.