Top photo: Instructor Dan Wells, left, gives some pointers to Ron Deal of Tulare at the Visalia police shooting range northwest of Visalia. Wells teaches four-hour and 16-hour classes on guns.

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Mary Ellen of Tulare gets instruction from Dan Wells at the Visalia police shooting range. Ellen has applied for a concealed weapon permit.

Dan Wells is a life long resident of California, born and raised on a small farm in Tulare County, California. He grew up shooting BB guns and .22 caliber rifles and was a very good shot. After graduating from high school 1964 and attending one semester of college, Dan joined the U.S. Air Force in 1965. After boot camp, he attended the Air Force Police Academy and began his career as an Air Force Policeman. He qualified expert with the rifle, pistol and shotgun with both his right hand and my left hand. After leaving the Air Force in 1969, he worked as a police officer in a small town and attended the local police academy. Then Dan joined the Tulare County Sheriff's Department for several years. While he was with the sheriff's department he was a member of the only riot control team that Tulare County ever had and was a sniper on the STEP (Special Tactical Enforcement Personnel) team. He attended advanced officers school, FBI major crime scene investigation school. He then left the sheriff's department and obtained his license as a California Private Investigator and ran his own investigation agency for the next twenty six years until he retired from that business in 2001.

Dan was a youth baseball coach, youth basketball coach, Captain in the California State Military Reserve, Trustee on the Tulare County Board of Education, District Administrator of District 34, Little League Baseball and charter member of Chapter 441, Vietnam Veterans of America.

In 1987, he attended the NRA Security & Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor Development School in Raton, NM. He then attended the California P.O.S.T. Rangemaster/Firearms Instructor School in Fresno, CA. In 1988 he obtained a license from the California Bureau of Security & Investigative Services as a firearms instructor and began his career teaching security officers and civilians a sixteen hour basic firearms course at the College of Sequoias in Visalia, CA. Dan later became licensed by the California DOJ as a hand gun safety instructor. In 1999 he started teaching a four hour CCW Firearm Safety Class at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA and at Porterville College in Porterville, CA. He has also testified in Tulare County Superior Court as a small arms expert and range safety expert. In 2008 he took the necessary courses and became certified by the states of Utah and Florida as a CCW Firearms Instructor to teach non-residents so they came obtain a Utah or Florida CCW Permit which is accepted in up to thirty two states.