In this livestream replay, Brooke Cheney, founder of A Great Start Shooting School, shares her personal evolution from a law‑abiding gun owner (since 1991) to an active Second Amendment advocate. She explains how involvement in the shooting community revealed that restrictions such as 10‑round magazine bans are effectively gun bans and that proposed Connecticut legislation targeting rifles is misguided and unlikely to curb violence. Cheney critiques the complexity and length of the governor’s gun‑related bill, emphasizing that gun violence represents a small fraction of overall violence. She then announces a series of private Zoom “office hours” (four scheduled sessions on March 10‑11) where she will help participants read bills, draft testimony, and navigate the legislative process. She references advocacy groups like CCDL and the DC Project, encourages viewers to share the information, and stresses that citizen voices are essential for informing legislators rather than attacking them.
Chapters
Ta-da! I am live. Who am I? Wait, where is it? There it is. I am Brooke Cheney, and oh yes, I run a Great Start Shooting School. It's really hard to point at things that aren't really there. I don't know how weathermen do it, really. So, um, welcome to replay viewers, because goodness knows no one's that fast. Well, except for maybe DJ, because it does say there's one person And DJ's pretty fast usually. So real quick, I think you all can see what the description says regardless of where the description is, whether you're watching on Facebook or YouTube. So I just need to come on real quick because I think this is an important story to tell, especially considering the legislation that we have before us this year in the legislative session. And of course it was DJ that was the first here. I'm gonna start worrying about you, dude. I'm gonna think you're just always online. So here's the thing. What I thought as a gun owner— that's the first part. Long ago and far away, 1991 to be exact, I got my pistol permit. And as far as I knew, I was a legal gun owner. I had a pistol permit, I had a license to carry, and that allowed me to be a law-abiding gun owner. So in my mind, I figured— oh look, I've even got more fans! Yay! Hi Fiona! Um, in my mind, I did everything I needed to do to be a legal gun owner, and that was 1991. So from 1991 till around 2010, I pretty much had the same idea. One, I was a legal gun owner because I did the things they told me to do. Two, politicians do the best they can for the most amount of people that they can all of the time because they have the best resources. I don't think I have a three. So that's what I used to think. Now, when I got into the actual gun community, i.e. Traveling, going to clubs, actually competing, learning more about actual firearms. Then I learned that a 10-round mag ban is a gun ban, and they are coming for our guns in little tiny pieces. I learned even more because not only are they coming after our guns, they're coming after our finances, they're coming after firearms all different crazy ways that no one is even aware of. So this is why I do what I do. I stand up for our Second Amendment rights. I actually look at what is violence prevention, and there is so much of this legislation that comes forward under gun violence prevention which has nothing to do with gun violence. For example, We have a bill coming up on Monday here in Connecticut, and it is going after rifles, and it's going hard after rifles. And it just shows how insincere the anti-gun people are. There are plenty of anti-violence people out there that just don't understand, but anti-gun people are being disingenuous when they're saying banning rifles is going to stop Violence. If you actually take the time and look and see where violence actually occurs, gun violence is actually the smallest portion of it. Gun violence with rifles is barely a blip on the chart, and yet they continue to go after rifles, specifically Black ones that look scary or look as though maybe perhaps they might have been used in war at some point in time. When actually myself and my friends, uh, run around all the time playing with them. For real, it's a game, folks, for a lot of us. And yes, do people get killed? Of course. Not in our games. Do people die? Yes, they do. Do they die by rifles very often in America in general? No, they really don't. So I'm popping on here today really quick because I have to post this again. I want to invite you— oh no, it doesn't. Oh man, hold on. I was so— thought I was caught up, but no. Hold on. Ready? I want to invite you— oh, is my— my— oh, my keyboard's not working again. All right, technical difficulties. Fiona DJ, if you'd be so kind. Uh, oh, you don't even know. All right, so at 4 o'clock for me, which is like half an hour from now, I'm going to do a legislative session where if you want to learn how to submit testimony here in Connecticut, I will happily help you. It is not a seminar. I'm not going to talk at you. It's if you have any questions, go to my 4 o'clock, my 7 o'clock, tomorrow at noon, tomorrow at 6. If people are actually interested, I will put hours on for this weekend. However, I want to help you understand how the laws are written. Good afternoon, G-Webs. Um, and on Facebook at A Great Start Shooting School, I have an event, and if you go click on that event, you will see all of the different places that I am. I've got different Zooms for this because I don't want it to be like open, open to the public, but I do want to invite you in. So I used to think I was a law-abiding gun owner and did everything like, that I was supposed to do. And seminar style, yeah, question and answer. Really, it's— think of it like office hours for your professor when you're at school. Any questions you have to help, or if you want to know what does a bill say, or how do I write about this, or how do I get this testimony that I wrote to the legislative, how do I sign up for testifying on Monday. These are the kind of questions that I can ask— answer, I mean, if you ask me. So it's literally just, if you have questions, come visit, and I will, um, I, I will, I will be there to answer questions. Because honestly, I'm just going to be sitting here in front of my computer on my Zoom links for today and tomorrow. And if you show up and have a question, I will answer it for you. I can show you some sample testimony. I can talk to you about testifying. I've been doing that for the past decade or so. So that's kind of my idea. So this is my little mini commercial as to what I used to think, which is I did everything I needed to do because I didn't shoot anyone with my gun, so I must be a law-abiding gun owner. I learned the 10-round mag bans are gun bans, and I know that the politicians actually, actually mean well, and they need us to educate them. They have thousands of bills that go before them every day, every session, and they can't possibly know what's in each of those bills. So you and I need to help them break down and understand why what they're doing is not really effective and it's really punishing and, um, there's lots of bad things there. So, Liam. Hi, Liam. Hope to see you on the range soon. Thank you, David. Well, and that's— here's the other thing, David. I'm actually going to do Zoom today and tomorrow, but then if people need any help with anything over the weekend, Sunday, Saturday or Sunday, I'll pick different times and I might do a StreamYard because you guys can all come in here. I can have up to 10 people if we do a StreamYard. So, um, and then I might just have a Q&A session maybe on Saturday depending on how Thursday and Friday go, because that's already 4 hours of my time that I'm going to be sitting here. But, um, I will be breaking down testimony for myself. I'll be submitting my testimony. I'm gonna make little videos on that. But I mean, if— or I'm gonna find the videos that CCVL already has them, because I'm very sad that my, uh My keyboard just died, so I can't put any of my, my, my links in here. So CCDL.us if you want to know what bills are coming up on Monday, if you want to get, let's see, if you want to get stream your Zoom, I don't know how to stream my Zoom, but I'm sure you're going to tell me, DWeb. Sorry. Yeah, here we go. Stream your Zoom. I don't know how to stream my Zoom, but the other part of it is though, I kind of want it to be closed because I do want people to ask whatever questions they want and not be in this public arena. So that's kind of why I'm doing the Zoom thing. So it's closed. And then like I said, if you want, if, if there's enough interest over the next couple of days and I have specific questions, I'm going to take all the questions people ask me and probably do a live one sometime Saturday afternoon or something. And yes, if you are part of— oops, wait, hold on, let me go backwards. If you're part of CCDL.us, you should have gotten the alert here in Connecticut about the testimonies coming up. So I am just here to try to help anyone who wants to but never has, or if you want help with reading the bills, and I can help a little bit. I'm not as good as some because honestly they're confusing. So yes, you should have gotten your email about submitting testimony. And Fiona, Since you are part of DC Project, you should have also got an email from me today. Unfortunately, a lot of my emails are going to spam. So that's kind of it. The politicians do need your help. They do need your voice. Your voice does matter. It can be a thing as simple— yeah, sorry. So David said confusing by design. Yeah, laws were initially intended to be clear and concise so it was easy for us to follow them. Our gun laws have gone so very far away from that. It's really, really bad. The current governor's bill is 50 pages long, has 34 sections, 3 of which have to do with juveniles, 2 of which have to do with gun violence or gun violence reduction, and the rest of it is about bureaucracy for the most part. Yeah, so it's going to come from brookechene@gmail.com. That's where you're going to look for it. Like I said, unfortunately, a lot of them have been going into spam. How far? What? I don't know how far. So far. Oh yes. How far have they gone from being simple and simplistic? Correct. Sorry, I'm like, I'll catch up. I forget about the lag sometimes. So it's like when I say something versus when you hear it and reply. So yes, laws are not simple and easy. Politicians cannot understand and know everything that is in the copious amounts of legislation that gets put in front of them every year. Because think about it for just a moment. The governor's bill that's coming up on Monday is one, and it's 50 pages. I do this like 5 times, right? 50 pages with 34 sections. And that's one of the bills that the politicians have to look at or deal with, pay attention to. So you and I are needed to help them understand. We are not there to attack them, we're trying to— there to inform them. Education— wait, see it? No, it doesn't say education. That's my shirt. I need to get one of my shirts up here, so I'll just hang my shirt up behind me too. Education, not legislation. So I just want to jump on real quick, give a quick commercial basically for my sessions I'm holding this afternoon, 4 o'clock 4 PM Eastern time today, which is Thursday, March 10th, 7 o'clock Eastern time tonight as well. I'll be just sitting here, like I said, office hours. If you have questions for the teacher, ask. Um, and then tomorrow, Friday the 11th, I will also be here at noon and 6 PM. And if you go to Facebook and click on the link, it will have the links in there for you. And I'm sorry, I can't put it in here for you. So that is it. Thank you all for popping in. And this already went longer than I expected. So have a great day, and hopefully I will help. Oh, and share this so that people know. Absolutely share, share, share, because the more people that I can help, the more people who will feel comfortable writing testimony, the more voices will be heard, and that is super important. All right, good afternoon all. I gotta get ready for my next, next meeting. Bye!
