Brooke Cheney is an accidental advocate. She had been around guns all her life but didn't really know anything about them. Once she had children, she decided to learn how to handle firearms safely. Learning how to handle firearms safely led her to competition, which taught her that a 10-round magazine ban is a gun ban.
Her first time testifying - against the 10-round mag ban - was in 2010 in front of the Connecticut legislature. On December 12th 2012, the Sandy Hook tragedy happened, and her kids were 5 & 6 years old at the time. Broken hearted, she started researching how to prevent violence. What she found is that there are many ways to approach violence prevention and none of the studies pointed to legislation, they pointed to programs that build communities. Looking at reports, programs, and statistics from the CDC, Department of Justice, the F.B.I., and more, she learned that all the "gun violence deaths" people talked about were not primarily violence, but 66% were suicides. Since then she has been actively engaged in the local and Federal legislative process asking our representatives to use the programs that work. Her goal is to get across the message, if we focus on suicide awareness imagine how many lives we could save.
Brooke currently owns and instructs at A Great Start Shooting School in Harwinton CT. She is an NRA Training Counselor, Chief Range Safety Officer and instructor, and an IDPA Safety Officer. She has competed in NRA Bullseye, USPSA, Steel Challenge, and IDPA. You can also find her on Saturday nights on Facebook & YouTube doing a quick 10-minute spot on suicide prevention. She started Suicide Prevention Saturday one night in 2018 not knowing if she would keep going and it is 2021 as this is being written, with the program still going strong.