The History of NLEFIA 

NLEFIA was created in late 2014 and was officially launched on January 15, 2015. NLEFIA was based out of Phoenix, AZ.

NLEFIA was created to offer LE firearms instructors a different organization to be a part of that truly focused on networking and offering a wide variety of instructor training courses across the nation instead of offering a yearly conference that only impacts a small percentage of the membership.

Jason Wuestenberg was the Founder and Executive Director for the first ten years. NLEFIA started with one course (Advanced Firearms Instructor), a few staff instructors, and 300 members in 2015 and evolved to offering 15+ development and certification courses, employed 20 staff instructors from across the nation, and issued over 3400+ memberships by 2025.

In addition to offering the Advanced Firearms Instructor course, which was a ground-breaking course that changed the way many agencies conducted their in-service firearms training. NLEFIA was also one of the first organizations to offer an instructor development course for Red Dot Sights on Duty Pistols, an instructor development course for Variable Power Optics (VPO's) on Patrol Rifles, and offer the first hybrid* 40-hour Semi-Auto Pistol Instructor certification course and hybrid* 40-hour Semi-Auto Rifle Instructor certification course. All of the NLEFIA courses have provided unique training methdologies for LE firearms instructors to learn and evolve.

In January 2025, Andy Butts took over as the new Executive Director. Andy was a staff instructor for several years before becoming the Exec. Director.  Jason Wuestenberg moved over to the Board of Advisors.

*Hybrid - 12 hours of online training followed by 3 days/28 hours of in-person training