Brooke Cheney on Accidental Advocacy and Suicide Prevention

Brooke Cheney is a Connecticut firearms instructor, competitive shooter and founder of A Great Start Shooting School who calls herself an accidental advocate for the Second Amendment. In this November 2023 conversation on the Daily Gun Show, she traces her path from a gun owner who did not know how to unload her own firearm to a veteran of legislative testimony and a leading voice on suicide prevention in the gun community.

An Elevator Pitch Built on Violence Prevention

Asked for a quick introduction, Brooke skipped the resume and went straight to the argument that drives her work. Guns are not the root of violence, and removing them would not remove it. Her focus is on what actually prevents violence and suicide, which she sees as the real answer to the gun control movement’s claims.

“If I could snap my fingers and make every gun in the world disappear, we would still have violence.”

Brooke Cheney

She describes herself as the “stats girl” of her circle. Since 2013 she has studied FBI statistics on violence and suicide, and she uses simple math to make her case: with more than 400 million guns in America, the number involved in murders is a tiny fraction, and rifles account for only a small share of those. Policy aimed at the tool, she argues, misses the problem. Real solutions start with community, because people who are isolated and segmented from one another stop valuing life.

She also offered an insight from years of talking with people on the other side. Many anti-gun acquaintances tell her they trust her with a firearm but do not trust themselves, and that insecurity becomes a desire to make ownership harder for everyone.

From “Don’t Touch” to Packing Her Own Range Bag

Brooke got her Connecticut pistol permit in 1991 for one reason: her boyfriend, now her husband, had guns, and she did not want to be caught in a car with a firearm without a permit. For years the rule at home was simply “don’t touch.” That changed after her two children were born in 2006 and 2007, when she realized she had what felt like monsters in the closet and did not know how to make them safe.

Her first goal was modest: learn to unload a firearm and verify it was empty. Her husband packed her range bag, and the regulars at the range helped her through the basics. She joined a Tuesday night bullseye league, shot silhouettes, and was invited onto an all-women bullseye team despite insisting she was not good enough. It was 2010 before she could pack her own range bag with confidence. That experience shapes how she teaches today. She encourages new shooters to try competition because nobody else cares about your score; the only person keeping track is you.

Finding real beginner training was so hard that it became one of the biggest reasons she opened A Great Start Shooting School. In 2012 she left her children for the first time to attend Babes with Bullets training in Arizona, taught by world champion women shooters including Kay Miculek. She later found A Girl & A Gun, met founder Julianna Crowder through IDPA competition, and attended the group’s first national conference in Texas.

Testifying Against Magazine Bans

In 2011, Brooke was asked to testify for the first time, against a proposed 10-round magazine limit. She did her homework, comparing FBI data for Massachusetts, which had a 10-round limit for more than a decade, with states that did not, and found no meaningful difference in violence. She also realized her own Smith & Wesson M&P Pro came from the factory with a 17-round standard capacity magazine. Her message to lawmakers was direct: as a mother who wants to keep her kids and herself safe, a magazine ban does not do that.

By 2013 and 2014, after testifying again and again, she came to see the Second Amendment as the linchpin of every other freedom. The hearings after Sandy Hook were the hardest: 15 to 20 hours a day, three days in a row, covering guns, mental health and school security. She notes that the Connecticut Citizens Defense League grew enormously in the years after 2013, a reminder that tough moments can build a movement.

She is candid that testimony never gets easy. Preparing can be heart-wrenching, knees shake at the podium, and doubts creep in. What has changed is the depth of data she can draw from. She holds to a lesson from her grandmother’s living room in the 1970s, “each one reach one”: even if the politicians do not change their minds, someone in the room may hear something new.

Suicide Prevention Is a Gun Owner Issue

Brooke works with Aiming for Zero, part of Active Heroes, and regularly receives calls from people dealing with a suicide in their family or a friend in crisis. She pointed to a moment in Connecticut’s 2023 legislative session, when a senator said gun owners never show up at mental health hearings. It stung, she admits, because he had a point. Advocates have limited bandwidth, but she believes the community needs to be present on mental health as well as gun bills.

At the time of the interview she hosted a weekly suicide prevention live show on Saturday nights. Her reasoning is one every advocate should know: about two out of every three gun deaths are suicides. When opponents ask how many have to die before gun owners give up their guns, her answer is to ask what they have done for mental health lately.

Finding Your Why and Pacing Yourself

Her own why is simple: she wants to make the world a less violent place, and that goal pushed her to research what really works. She notes that owning a gun does not make someone an advocate; she owned guns for years without being one. Anti-gun activists are often fueled by fear and anger, she says, while Second Amendment supporters are fueled by love of country, and knowing your own reason is what keeps you going.

She does not pretend to balance it all. Her family has gone days or a week without seeing her during DC Project trips and long days at the Capitol, and she has since stepped back from some leadership roles, including directing the DC Project, to focus on her business. Life has seasons, she says, and taking a break is part of staying in the fight. Looking ahead to the 2024 election from late 2023, she urged gun owners to stop searching for a perfect candidate and vote on freedom.

Watch the full interview

Video: LIVE with Brooke Cheney on the Gun Websites YouTube channel.