He's not a felon. He plead down to misdemeanor charges, then spent close to a year in a county jail.
If you do a search on "Gabe Suarez felon" you'll get a TON of links discussing the whole thing from all angles. You'll see almost immediately a significant difference between his story (as told by him and his supporters) and the story told by the judicial system.
My personal opinion about him is fairly low.
My
professional opinion about him is that a number of years ago, his contributions to firearms training were significant, particularly in the area of close-quarters work, and integrating force-on-force into standard classes. However, as the training community has changed and improved over time, he hasn't necessarily kept up with them, and has unfortunately developed a "cult of personality" exemplified by his forum in which his pronouncements are treated as gospel, and if people disagree with him, they are wrong. (You'll see what I mean if you go there and read for awhile.)
I think more highly of Suarez than I do Pincus (that's setting the bar remarkably low, though), but it does seem interesting to me how often in his newsletter he supports some new piece of equipment as a "must have" once he is able to sell it, but not before then.
For people who haven't done any defensive tactics or close-quarters classes, his courses (from the AARs I've seen, plus his books and DVDs---note, I haven't BEEN in one of his classes, so I may be wrong) are perfectly decent and cover a fairly standard curriculum. However, they are more technique classes than tactics classes, and several of his contentions about close-quarters work (based on what he's found in force-on-force) other people (and I) disagree with pretty significantly.
If you watch some of the youtube videos available, you'll see why---for example, he promulgates the idea that if someone comes at you with a knife, running backward while shooting over your shoulder one-handed is the best idea, because that's the only way in his force-on-force class you don't get sliced.
Of course, in that class, the attacker doesn't stop when struck by airsoft pellets, so of course you can't do anything but run away. However, Suarez says that's the ONLY way to survive. (Quite loudly.)
So,
in my opinion, Suarez taught some good basic CQT, and got force-on-force really started in standard classes (as opposed to LEO-only or military-only classes) but has moved on to some conclusions based on them that I just don't think logically follow.
Your mileage may vary.
In the past, he CERTAINLY has had an opinion about competition shooting, which folks have posted here on the forums in the past.
Lots of people have taken his classes. He was the guy recently who was quoted saying: "This is about killing, and killing is simple. So many non-killers teaching killing these days. Ask a killer what works best." Yeah, I posted an opinion about that.
Amusingly enough, awhile back sjwsti posted an article titled "Avoiding the Gamer Trap" written by the Suarez guy who is NOW one of the guys in charge of teaching competition shooting classes for Suarez.
Nice.
