Dr. Andy Anderson, M.D., FACEP, is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at a Level I Trauma Center in Jackson, Mississippi, with more than two decades of experience in emergency medicine and more than three decades spanning prehospital care, trauma medicine, law enforcement, and tactical medicine.

His career began as an Emergency Medical Technician and later as a Paramedic with Metro Ambulance Service in Lauderdale County, Mississippi. That early experience laid the foundation for a career that would eventually take him from the back of an ambulance to the trauma bay, classroom, firing range, and tactical operations.

Today, Dr. Anderson serves as a Deputy Sheriff and SWAT Medic with the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department. Previously, he served as a Special Agent and SWAT Medic with the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and as a Tactical Physician for the AMR Tactical Response Team.

His unique career has allowed him to view violence and traumatic injury from several perspectives: on the street, on the range, and in the trauma bay dealing with what happens afterward.

Throughout his medical career, Dr. Anderson has treated countless gunshot wounds and serious traumatic injuries. That experience has given him an in-depth understanding of human anatomy, wound patterns, and the physiological effects of penetrating trauma—knowledge that directly shapes the way he teaches Tactical Anatomy.

The human body does not resemble the scoring zones printed on a paper target. Organs have depth and overlap. Bones protect critical structures and can alter projectile paths. The heart and great vessels change in presentation as the body turns, bends, moves, or is viewed from different angles.

That disconnect between two-dimensional targets and three-dimensional human anatomy is central to Dr. Anderson’s approach to firearms instruction.

Rather than focusing on mythical calibers, ammunition choices, or “magic” shot placement, his instruction emphasizes understanding what lies beneath the surface, how anatomy changes with body position and angle, and what must occur physiologically to produce incapacitation.

Dr. Anderson has helped carry forward the concepts established by Dr. James Williams in Tactical Anatomy: Shooting With X-Ray Vision, combining those principles with lessons drawn from emergency medicine, trauma care, tactical medicine, law enforcement, and firearms instruction.

He is also an active member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, National Tactical Officers Association, and Mississippi Tennessee Tactical Officers Association, and has provided medical support for numerous law-enforcement agencies throughout his career.

At the Tactical Anatomy Summit, Dr. Anderson brings a perspective few instructors can duplicate: decades of treating gunshot wounds and traumatic injuries combined with firsthand experience in law enforcement, tactical operations, prehospital medicine, and firearms training.

His goal is for students to look beyond the flat target and understand the three-dimensional structures beneath it, how those structures change with orientation, and what those realities mean in a defensive encounter.