RSWC #116 Neil Weidner – Riding Shotgun With Charlie

Riding Shotgun With Charlie
#116
Neil Weidner
Marketing Director, Active Self Protection

Neil Weidner saw me do a presentation at AMMcon (Alternative Multi Media conference) the day before the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix in 2019. He enjoyed the speech and the whole presentation. A month later, a friend called me to say she was talking to Neil and he asked her how he could get on the stagecoach. I didn’t believe it. When I saw Neil at SHOT in January 2020, we talked about the possibility of setting up filming a show somewhere. When I signed up for the MAG40 class in Sioux Falls in early June of 2020, I reached out to see if he was taking the course. Boom! We had plans.

Neil and his wife Stephannie (RSWC #112) have four daughters, but they wanted a boy. So, while living in Iowa, they wanted to become foster parents. They took in a young boy from a family that had some issues. Despite loving their son, the family wouldn’t be able to raise the son. So Stephannie and Neil took the boy in as their own.

When the paternal grandfather found out where the Weidners lived, he wanted to take the 2 month old boy back. That’s when Stephannie realized that maybe it would be good to know something about firearms and have a home defense plan. Neil was at work and grabbed his co-workers to ride with him to prevent something from happening to his new son and his family. Fortunately, nothing became of the incident. The Weidners did open their eyes and started doing some research.

One of the things they found online was Active Self Protection (ASP). Stephannie started watching John Correia’s videos and learning a lot. John put out a call for a volunteer job on the ASP social media to moderate comments. Stephannie took the position while Neil was working at a call center. The Weidners and Correias have been ‘family’ since they connected.

Neil and Stephannie went to a training seminar that John was doing. Stephannie was checking people in and Neil was taking his first real handgun course. There was an older couple who were new firearm owners. Their firearm handling wasn’t great and Neil had to keep his eyes on them as he was trying to learn during the class. Once the stress of that couple was gone, Neil fell in love with training and taking classes. When he was officially hired by ASP as the marketing director, he decided that he was going to take 100 hours of training a year. He’s taken classes from some of the best instructors in the firearm training community.

Neil’s ongoing education and training has led to him doing a series of videos on the ASP Extra YouTube channel that he calls the Suck Less Saturdays. He’s been working with the MantisX shooting performance system and also making dry firing videos and doing dry fire challenges. After seeing how he shot at the MAG40, I’ll ya…it’s working! And really well!

Neil has some great stories that he shares with us. Despite joining the ASP team, he stays really humble. Even when airport security notices him. Having the chance to get Neil in the stagecoach was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to running into him at various events around the country.

Favorite quotes:

“It was a good job. The money was good. The benefits were great, but the quality of life was kind of rough.”

“I have never been a quit guy.. I fell in love with the learning process.”

“I started taking a class every couple months or so.”

“I’m putting in 100 hours of training in 2020.”

“I want to suck less this year.”

Active Self Protection Website