Hi all,
I am happy to be included in this community. I am a new user to CFF, and a relatively new firearms owner. I didn't even fire a gun until I was almost thirty, and I got my first firearm in early 2017 because I was working in and commuting through a dangerous area. At this point, I live and work in areas that are very safe, fortunately, but I continue to collect and train with firearms as a hobby and as an exercise of my constitutional rights and role as a responsible citizen.
Professionally, I have a background in history and especially archaeology, with a decade of field excavation seasons at sites across eastern Europe and the middle east, but I am currently focused on a career in education and mental health--teaching part time (I used to teach full time) and taking grad classes and internship to become a school counselor.
I know educators sometimes get a bad rep from the 2nd amendment community... and in many cases it is based on accurate evidence of a teacher's misunderstanding of firearms and unhealthy transmission of biased and/or false information to children, which is a serious problem.
As a teacher and education professional, I strive for honestly when working with students (mostly middle grades and some high school, though in the past I have worked with everything from kindergartners to university students), and I do occasionally tell students that there is a topic inappropriate for their age or that I am not comfortable discussing with minors, but in the context of firearms I often get interested students with questions (frequency of student interest was actually one of the reasons I initially became invested in learning more about guns).
In these contexts I do discuss firearms with students, emphasizing above all safety and accident/negligence prevention, secondly I talk about legal information that could potentially impact their future (and sometimes their parents' future because I've hear some...things), and thirdly I talk about anything they happen to be interested in that I have knowledge about that is appropriate and healthy.
The upshot in my case though is that I am a teacher (by trade) and I will soon be a school counselor, and in both cases I have summers free (when I'm not digging). Furthermore, I also enjoy firearms as a hobby and low-intensity exercise of my constitutional second amendment right (I own semi-auto rifles but don't carry semi-auto rifles into Chili's), and I was thinking I might try to look for a summer and/or weekend teaching gig doing basic firearms safety and handling instruction. Does that sound viable? As a late-in-life firearms owner and educator I think I have value in terms of understanding potential new firearms owners and their perspectives that might be more (mis)informed by the media, TV, movies, and video games than by experience and relevant information.
Thanks again for including me!
