Yesterday the news rippled through the firearms training community that Dr. William Aprill of Aprill Risk Consulting had passed away. I’ve known William for close to 20 years, as he and I were regular presenters at the annual Rangemaster Tactical Conferences, and in recent years I had hosted (and co-taught) his “Unthinkable” course.
His “Unthinkable” course was offered all over the country, sometimes as a stand alone package of his lectures, and sometimes as a longer course co-taught with other trainers, incorporating their material with his. The training he offered was unlike anyone else’s: a guide to understanding behavior of violent criminals, and how to interact with (or preferably, avoid) them. He was also a very skilled handgun shooter, and presented some excellent blocks of training on unarmed self-defense at some of the early TacCons.
Another course he co-taught was the “Establishing a Dominance Paradigm” class, with Tom Givens and Craig Douglas. KR Training’s Dave Reichek attended and wrote a detailed review of that class back in 2015.
William and I had talked in the past few weeks, as I scheduled him to teach two 1-day versions of “Unthinkable” in December at the A-Zone. As soon as I put it on the calendar, people began signing up. Earlier in the year his name was top of the list of student requests for guest instructors. His reputation and the quality of the information he shared on many podcasts and videos made the course easy to market.
Recently he was featured on two episodes of Ballistic Radio, sharing his thoughts on recent events. These may be the last interviews he did before passing. He was a frequent guest on that podcast and many other, older episodes are also worth listening to.
William frequently updated his Facebook page with his “they don’t think like us” posts, giving examples from the news of behaviors and situations similar to those presented in his classes. It’s another way to learn from him, even though he’s no longer with us. Hopefully his family or friends will keep his page active, so his knowledge and digital memory will be preserved.
Most of the KR Training team knew William, as many of us were frequent TacCon attendees, or interacted with him in person and online. We were looking forward to having him back at the A-Zone, not just for training but to enjoy his company and catch up with an old friend. We are diminished, and he will be missed, but never forgotten.
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