Brooke Cheney, a firearms trainer, balances her business with legislative advocacy in Connecticut. She explains why in-person testimony at the Capitol beats written statements, and walks through how she adapts pre-written testimonies to specific bills like HB 7052 on magazine capacity.
Ta-da! All right, hey folks, uh, YouTube, Facebook, all of the people. Yes, this is gonna be a little tiny short live just because I don't want to pre-record and forget to put it up. So today is Thursday, February 27th, and I am about to start my work day. I will be working 9 to 5 helping people understand how to handle firearms safely, get better, and learn how to train better so they get more confidence with firearms. So that's an exciting thing. However, last night at— what time does this stand? 8:30? No, sorry, 8:26 last night, I received an email, and the email is an action alert from CCDL. And what is an action alert? An action alert is— here in Connecticut, we have— we are currently in our legislative session, and there's lots of bills that have to do with guns. And today they are putting up a thing saying let's go back to standard capacity magazines. And so unfortunately, 8:27 last night. Yeah. So literally 12 hours ago, we got a thing saying today is the day you have to do this. And maybe there were other emails before this, but I didn't see them because I've been running around a lot this week. So at 8:30 last night, I had to make the decision. Am I going to cancel my students and go spend my day at the Capitol, or am I going to take care of my students and hope that maybe the testimony is still going on afterwards, and then I shall be able to go up there and put my list name at the end of the list? So I am opting for option 2 because calling my students at 8:30 at night the day before they're all planned and have me scheduled does not seem like good customer service. So this is one of the challenges of being an advocate. You have to make decisions. Am I going to make money, or am I going to talk about why this is so important that perhaps they change some of these laws that have not done anything to reduce violence? I have studied the FBI stats for a long time, and one of the things I can tell you— yes, stats are lies some of the time, but it really depends on how you look at them and if you understand them. In the past decade and a half that I've been watching the statistics on crime and violent crime specifically, I can tell you that yeah, they keep tweaking the definition of how they gather data, so it changes what it looks like. But if you've been following it for a long enough time, you understand where that all is. Good morning, Ozzy, nice see you this morning. And so the action alert, 8:30 last night, first time I saw it. So I'm not going to cancel my students. I'm going to work until 5, and then I'm going to hop in my car, drive 45 minutes to the Capitol. And I mean, I'll check in with people to make sure they're still going, but usually these things bring out a lot of people, and I may have missed previous things letting me know this was coming up. On the plus side, here's the deal, because I've been through this before, I already have 3 testimonies written. And so the good news is when I have breaks in between my students today, I can pop into the testimonies I already have and tweak them specifically for the bill that is currently coming up. So that is kind of it. I just want to pop on here and let you all know. It's gonna be a long day, and I will probably put StreamYard onto my phone, so maybe this evening I'll give you some, uh, live feeds from there. Oh, and if I was super smart, which I'm not because I gotta go because my student's gonna be here momentarily, but, um, if you go to the Connecticut CGA website, Connecticut General Assembly website, you'll be able to see the live stream, and you can look for HB 7052. I'm going to post that in the comments real quick here. And CT— what the heck is it called? Connecticut General Assembly, CGA. Let me see if I get there, because if you go to the Connecticut General Assembly page, then you can, um, look at the live stream. And I don't know if it's.gov or.whatever, so What is it to be— good morning, Foss, nice to see you. Dude, you are up early. That is— why are you awake this early? I would be sleeping. I wish I was sleeping. But anyway, nice to see you, Tim. All right, so that's it. Advocacy. What does it mean? Being aware, being flexible, and making hard decisions. Are you going to make money or you're going to go comply? Yes, so here in Connecticut we are also able to just submit testimony. However, I can tell you going through COVID and not being in the building makes a huge difference because here's the deal, just like everything else in the world, your testimony on a piece of paper is not the same as you showing up in person and talking to people because here in Connecticut you've got 3 minutes to give your testimony. Maybe they ask you questions, maybe they don't. However, while you are there, you can talk to other people that are in the building, and kind of the idea of each one reach one, because when you talk to them, you're talking to the panel of whoever is there. They have to come and go, so none of them are there throughout the entire day. And, um, so that's why going in person makes a huge difference. And also you get to talk to other people about their testimonies, and you get to hear more So as much as yes, I could just submit a written testimony, I definitely know it is more advantageous to go and actually talk to them because a lot is lost. That's why I'm doing a live video versus writing a long post is because you can see my face. You can tell I'm tired, right? I went to the gym already, so there's that. But, um, I do have to go because my student will be here shortly. But y'all, if you want to know questions, things you want to cover while I'm at the Capitol tonight, providing it stays going on that long, because gun bills often do. Judiciary has to listen to other things as well. The judiciary will not just be on this one bill. It'll just be probably the thing that's talked about the most, because I don't know what else is on the docket and all those things. So tonight, maybe on my drive, maybe I don't know when, um, yeah, while I'm there, if I have good internet connection, I will catch you all up So y'all have a good day. I will see you later. And I'm not playing the intro outro, I'm just gonna end the stream. Goodbye guys, thanks for popping in.
