Our Story

Memorial Valor Foundation began on a range at Fort Bragg. Erik Torres was serving as an instructor at the Special Forces schoolhouse and saw that instructors had little time to keep their own marksmanship sharp. He decided to put on a small match for the cadre and asked Bryce Laemmlen, who was then working in the unit’s supply section, to help him run it. About 32 shooters came out for that first match. The battalion commander asked for another, and the second match drew more than 70.

As the cadre matches grew Erik shot the Duskin Memorial 3 Gun match at Fort Bragg, which honors one fallen Special Forces warrant officer every year. Brothers were still being lost downrange, and Erik and Bryce decided to build a match that would remember as many fallen Special Operators as they could. The first Memorial 3 Gun named each stage after an honoree.

That first match nearly did not happen. One week before the event the original venue was canceled. Gryphon Group Security Solutions in Maxton, North Carolina heard what the two were doing and opened its entire facility to the match. Gryphon Group has hosted Memorial 3 Gun ever since.

After the match shooters began asking Erik and Bryce to remember their own fallen friends the following year. The two co-founders realized they had built something larger than a single event, so they formalized it as the Memorial 3 Gun Foundation, recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2019. Bryce stayed up late one night and sketched the foundation’s original logo on a napkin. In October 2024 it became Memorial Valor Foundation.

The match has always been the means and never the mission. Memorial 3 Gun grew from a one-day cadre match into a three-day, ten-stage event with about 300 competitors and ten each year since 2019. Funds raised have supported their Gold Star and Surviving families through the foundation’s programs. Since inception, including 2026, the foundation has raised $2,196,297.

Our motto has not changed since that first match: Remember. Honor. Memorialize.