Tactical Response CEO James Yeager on Monday denied any relationship between his company and Ohio shooter James Gilkerson after what appeared to be his company’s firearms training materials were found in Gilkerson’s car.
“He’s never been a student of ours nor a customer of ours,” Yeager said in a YouTube video posted to respond to media reports, like TPM’s, that Gilkerson seemed to be in possession of the group’s “Fighting Rifle” course training materials.
Connecting Tactical Response to Gilkerson, he said, is “absolutely wrong” and “yellow journalism at its finest.”
Gilkerson died in a shootout with two police officers in Ohio, emerging from his car firing a AK-47 rifle after being pulled over for running a stop sign.
Yeager said that what was being called material from a Tactical Response course was actually a “rip-off of our Fighting Rifle DVD.” Yeager said that Gilkerson may have downloaded it illegally from the internet, but had never purchased it or anything else from Tactical Response.
Yeager condemned violence against police officers and offered financial support and free Tactical Response courses to the two officers who survived the shootout with minimal injuries.
“We do not support violence against police officers,” he said. “I am a police officer. We do not support any kind of militia movement or anything like that.” (Yeager’s biography on the company website says that he formerly worked in local law enforcement.)
To the officers, he said: “We would be glad to help you financially or in any other way. And if you guys ever want training from tactical response, it’s on me, for the rest of your life for free.”
Yeager drew national attention to himself in January when he promise to respond to increased gun control by “killing people.”
