John Benner 1947-2025

John and I at the SHOT Show in 2006

The world lost a great trainer yesterday. John Benner, founder of The Tactical Defense Institute, died after a long struggle with prostate cancer. TDI put out this notice:

“It is with great sadness that we share the news that TDI founder and Chief Instructor, John Benner, has lost his battle with cancer and passed away peacefully early this morning. John served in the Army as a Military Policeman from 1966 to 1969 including a deployment to Vietnam. After parting from the Army, Mr. Benner entered law enforcement serving 45 years. He ran the Drug Abuse Reduction Task Force (DART) for 5 years and spent 25 years as a member of the Hamilton County Police Association Regional SWAT Team, 20 of those as a SWAT Commander. In addition to serving the people of Hamilton County, John founded the Tactical Defense Institute, building it into one of the most respected training organizations in the nation.

Mr. Benner devoted his life to serving the public in one capacity or another. Either as a law enforcement officer, soldier, or firearms instructor for civilians desiring to learn how to protect themselves and their loved ones. Mr. Benner also spearheaded the training of armed school staff in response to active shooter shortly after the tragedy at Sandyhook Elementary, which led to the development of the FASTER Saves Lives program, which has become a nationally recognized non-profit organization.

John Benner was an amazing individual, gifted instructor, and good man. He wanted nothing more than the legacy he built of Tactical Defense Institute to continue training civilians, law enforcement, and military personnel after he was gone. In our strongest efforts to preserve the legacy of TDI, and carry out John’s wishes, operations will continue at Tactical Defense Institute through these difficult times. Our team of instructors know that John is still keeping an eye on classes from above, and we will do everything in our abilities to continue to make him proud of the organization he started with so much hard work, so many years ago.

Thank you John. Your generosity and work impacted more lives than you could ever imagine. You will be missed. -The TDI Team.”

In addition to his incredible work training thousands of students at TDI, John was a SWAT pioneer. If you’ve done any CQB or “limited penetration clearing” in your building search classes, you might be curious to know that John and the Hamilton County SWAT team pioneered those techniques and made them a standard procedure for the team in the early 1990s. I have been teaching “limited penetration clearing” since I first learned the system in 1998. It’s taken 15-20 years for most of the rest of the industry to catch up.

John also was responsible for Ka-Bar’s TDI Law Enforcement knife as well as numerous other knife designs for both Ka-Bar and Rick Hinderer knives.

One of John’s designs became Ka-Bar’s best selling blade

I first attended TDI as a student in 1998. A fellow officer and I were bored with our department’s firearms training and we wanted to get better. I saw an ad in the back of Combat Handguns magazine about TDI being in Ohio. My friend and I went to attend Level Two handgun. We skipped level one because we were cops and thought we knew how to shoot.

We were the two best shooters in the department. Both of us had won our respective academy shooting contests. Both of us learned more in that one day at TDI than we had in all of our previous police firearms training.

The following year, we went back for Level Three Handgun. By that time I was the agency’s full time firearms instructor. I had won my firearms instructor class “top shooter” award. I learned more at that one day at TDI than I had in several weeks of police firearms instructor certifications. John offered me a teaching job at that class for the upcoming 1999 shooting season. I accepted. The job changed my life.

I worked at TDI for 18 years. I initially started teaching basic classes and then eventually developed my own curriculum to teach there. At different points in time, I co-taught all the classes TDI held. Later I served as the lead instructor for TDI’s knife fighting, ground fighting, impact weapons, close quarters shooting, and civilian response to active killers courses. I continued to work at TDI until my own business began eating too much of my free time.

Mr. B. and TDI instructors after teaching West Point’s pistol team

I didn’t learn to be a firearms instructor in police instructor school. I learned to teach under the mentorship of John Benner and the rest of the early staff of the Tactical Defense Institute. John was my very first mentor in the firearms teaching game.

In addition to giving me teaching experience, I also owe my first expert witness testimony to John Benner as well. Back about 20 years ago the state tax division reclassified TDI from a “police shooting range” to a “carnival” thereby tripling the workers’ comp fees Mr. Benner had to pay. They didn’t have a listing for “commercial shooting school” so they classified us as a “carnival” instead.

I had to testify how firearms training was fundamentally different than a carnival experience. For real.

Surprisingly, the state tax board agreed with my explanation and my expert witness work began.

John (on left) training under Rob Leatham’s guidance

John took me all over the country on missions training other police departments. He paid my way to the SHOT Show every year for a decade. He introduced me to countless of my current friends and most of the industry luminaries I know today, paving the way for the successful business I run today.

I will be forever grateful for his friendship, guidance, and advice. I can only hope to follow his path with the same grace and courage.

Rest in Peace Mr. Benner. When you ponder on how your life tuned out, I hope that you feel able to award yourself a really high score. You deserve it. Countless cops, soldiers, and armed citizens are better able to protect themselves and their families thanks to your boundless passion for training and tactics.

This is an entire rolling trash can full of my police shooting trophies.
During my last year as a cop, I got so disgusted by the job that I didn’t want anything in my house that reminded me of police work.
I trashed the trophies.
I wouldn’t have won any of them without Mr. Benner’s instruction.

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