About
A Michigan training company that teaches nationally.
The Ammo Academy started as private firearms instruction in Southeast Michigan. It still is. What's been added is the education side — permit training and carry law, for students anywhere in the country.
Founder & lead instructor
Wes Francis
I built this business around a specific frustration: most firearms training is designed for throughput. Get forty people into a room, move them through the statutory minimum, hand out certificates, go home. It is efficient, it is legal, and for a lot of students it is close to useless.
The people who need training most are usually the ones a big class serves worst. A new owner who is genuinely nervous. A woman who was handed a firearm by a well-meaning relative and has never fired it. A couple where one has been shooting for twenty years and the other has never loaded a magazine. None of them get what they need from a room of forty.
So I teach privately. One student, one couple, one small group at a time. It costs more than a bargain class, and I am upfront about that. What you get for it is instruction that adapts to you and an instructor who will tell you the truth about where you are — including, sometimes, that you are not ready to carry yet.
The national side grew out of the same instinct. People kept asking questions about permits, reciprocity and travel that nobody was answering honestly online. Most of what exists is either an affiliate page pretending a course is a license, or a wall of legalese. There is room for something in between.
Credentials
- U.S. LawShield Institute instructor partner
- USCCA certified instructor
- Church Safety: Protecting Your Congregation — instructor certification
Credentials are listed as statements of fact. The Ammo Academy is an independent business and is not owned by, operated by, or speaking on behalf of any of the organizations named above.
Get in touch
How we teach
Three commitments.
Safe and responsible, before anything else
Every session starts from safe handling and stays there. Nothing else you learn matters if the fundamentals are shaky, and no amount of skill compensates for a bad habit around a loaded firearm.
Practical and relevant
Training should map to your life. What you do, where you go, what you're actually likely to face. Not a curriculum built for someone else's circumstances.
Tailored to the student in front of us
Not a package. Not a script. The session adapts to what you can already do and what you need next, which is the entire reason to train privately rather than in a class.
Who we're right for
- People who want to understand what they're doing, not just get certified
- New owners who want patient, unhurried instruction
- Couples and families who want a shared plan
- Congregations thinking seriously about safety
- Permit applicants who want the requirements explained straight
Who we're wrong for
- Anyone whose only criterion is the lowest possible price
- Someone looking for a certificate without the training behind it
- People who want a permit sold to them as a shortcut around a rule
- Anyone wanting a tactical-fantasy experience rather than instruction
We would rather say this plainly than waste your time and ours. Bargain CPL classes exist and they are legal — if that is what you want, they are easy to find.
The national side
How the online training works.
The Ammo Academy is an independent U.S. LawShield Institute instructor partner. That means we can offer their approved eLearning courses — state permit training and short firearms education courses — through our own links, and we earn a commission when someone enrolls through us.
We disclose that on every page with a course link, because you should know it. It does not change what you pay, and it does not change what we say about the courses. Where a program has a real limitation — Texas's instructor requirements, California's county variability, the fact that Delaware's course is not a carry course — we write that on the page, next to the link.
The alternative business model is to imply that buying a course produces a permit. It converts better. We are not doing it.
Start
Tell us what you're trying to do.
A short conversation is usually enough to work out whether we're the right fit — and what the honest next step is.