Firearm Education

Firearm Education: Instructors, Schools, Books and the History Behind Every Gun

Responsible gun ownership starts with education, and that education comes in many forms: a basic safety class, advanced defensive training, a gunsmithing degree, a shelf of well-chosen books, or an understanding of how firearms and the wars that shaped them developed over time. This section of Minuteman University.com brings those threads together, with pages on firearm instructors, gunsmithing programs, firearm books, inventors and inventions, and the U.S. wars that drove so much of firearm design.

Formal training has deep roots. Jeff Cooper founded the American Pistol Institute in 1976, now Gunsite Academy in Paulden, Arizona, and it helped define modern defensive pistol training. The NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunSafe program, introduced in 1988, teaches young children a simple message for when they find a gun: stop, don’t touch, run away and tell a grown-up. Today, thousands of certified instructors teach everything from first-time pistol courses to carry-permit classes and advanced tactical work.

For those who want to work on firearms professionally, gunsmithing is taught at a small number of colleges and trade schools. Long-established programs include Lassen Community College (Susanville, California), Colorado School of Trades (Lakewood, Colorado), Trinidad State College (Trinidad, Colorado), Murray State College (Tishomingo, Oklahoma), Montgomery Community College (Troy, North Carolina) and the Pennsylvania Gunsmith School (Pittsburgh). Others include Pine Technical and Community College in Minnesota, Yavapai College in Arizona and Flathead Valley Community College in Montana. The NRA has also partnered with several of these colleges for short summer gunsmithing courses, and distance programs are available for students who cannot relocate. The full list is on the Gunsmith Schools page.

Table of selected U.S. gunsmithing schools and their locations

Pages in This Section

  • Firearm Instructors: profiles of influential trainers, including Massad Ayoob and other leading names.
  • Firearm Books: essential books on shooting, defense, history and the Second Amendment.
  • Firearm Inventors: the designers behind the guns that changed history.
  • Firearm Inventions: key innovations from the flintlock to modern actions and optics.

Related Pages

  • US Wars: the conflicts that shaped American firearms and the citizens who carried them.
  • Gunsmith Schools: colleges and programs that train professional gunsmiths.
  • Shooting Schools: training academies and instructor events.
  • Firearm Safety: the core safety rules every shooter should know.

Tips for Choosing Training

  • Start with a basic safety and marksmanship course before advanced or tactical classes.
  • Ask about an instructor’s certifications, experience and the course’s live-fire round count.
  • For a gunsmithing career, compare program length, credentials offered and hands-on machine time.
  • Find instructors and courses at After Action.net.

Sources

Gun Education, Shooting Instructors & Firearms Safety

  • Firearm Instructors
  • Gunsmithing Schools
  • Firearm Safety

Firearm Instructors

  • Massad Ayoob

Gunsmithing Schools

  • Gunsite Training Facility

Firearm Safety

  • Eddie Eagle