TRAINING
Selling Confidence Dark Horse Training wants to train the world in self-defense By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski Photos by Pablo Robles
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hris Sebestyen is passionate about the safety of others. Through Dark Horse Training 6, he ensures clients are confident about their gun-handling abilities. “When I say ‘safety,’ I don’t mean your house or car,” says Sebestyen, an Anthem resident. “It’s more of a confidence you have in your ability to remain safe. I like to teach that part of it. “Once I’m done training someone with a firearm, they have a different look in their eyes. There’s a confidence and they know they can defend themselves and their family.” Dark Horse Training offers classes for every level of self-defense, including pistol, rifle, long-range, designated marksman, shotgun and suppressed weapons. Sebestyen also offer courses on gun basics, such as cleaning, assembly and disassembly, and how to build your first automatic rifle. “I mainly work out of my house,” Sebestyen says. “I sell and build firearms and transfer firearms. I do a lot of gun transfers, too. My primary location is at Ben Avery, where my classes are on one of their main three ranges that’s private.” His classes range from $120 to $250, de-
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pending if they’re beginning or advanced. Sebestyen offers discounts for first responders, military, law enforcement, nurses, teachers and real estate agents. “I have rifle-building classes once a month,” Sebestyen says. “We’ll shoot it and I’ll give you a discount on the first class. I really just want people to have that comfort. It’s an uneasy feeling if you don’t know what you’re doing—especially during the pandemic. People who were first-time buyers, they didn’t know what they wanted. They just knew they needed a firearm.” Sebestyen will prep buildings for gun ownership, too, to make sure the weapon is out of the sight of children, and how to access it if someone did enter the home.”
Record holder Sebestyen’s father had a number of firearms when he was growing up and frequently took his son shooting. He joined the Boy Scouts at a “very early age” and has the title of youngest Eagle Scout in California. It was there that he was exposed to firearm safety and archery. “In the ’90s, I was living in San Diego,” he explains. “There was no war going on. I lived between Camp Pendleton Marine Base and San Diego Naval Base. A lot of my friends were higher-end special warfare operators.
They took me under their wings because I wasn’t military, and they trained with me. It bumped my skillset up.” One person with whom he trained was former U.S. Army Ranger and CIA security contractor Kris Paronto, who is known for his heroic actions during the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stephens. “Kris Paronto is a friend of one of my friends here in town, who is an Army Ranger,” he adds. “It’s a small world when you start to pick those pieces apart. I was fortunate to spend time with those guys and pick their brains.” Sebestyen’s students are generally between mid-20s to mid-40s—many of them are females. “The funny part of it is, the females will outshoot the males in my classes,” he says. “The hit percentage is 85% and most guys are 75%, which I find pretty funny. The guys get a little riled, especially when their wives are taking the classes. “Women just have an inherent calmness about them that guys do not possess. Women possess an inherent calmness with a firearm.” Gun sales, he says, increased during the pandemic. He normally sells 10 to 15 guns a month.
