- So if ... someone came to you and they're like, "I'm gonna design a gun, and I've got this great idea."
- Ah, I would tell them to sit down until the feeling goes away.
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, ... first off, I apologise, my voice is a little bit rough, I'm recovering from a cold here,
but today I want to talk about a question that I get asked on a pretty regular basis.
And I have been asked for years now on a regular basis.
About five years ago I wrote a blog post on ForgottenWeapons.com talking about this subject,
but I continue to get asked and I think it's worth taking a few minutes to discuss today.
And that question is some variation on, "Hey Ian, I'm in high school, or I'm in college,
and I really like guns and shooting, and I want to get into gun design or gun manufacture as a profession.
Like, that's what I want to do with my life, how should I go about doing it?"
And right off the bat I'm gonna divide my answer into two separate answers for two different groups of people.
So I would first ask, are you the sort of person who really enjoys doing stuff with your hands?
Building stuff, making stuff, fixing stuff. And I don't mean, ... this isn't the idea of like, "I like to build ARs."
No, that's assembling parts and there's no real mechanical skill required.
This is more along the lines of do you like to build AKs from flats, where you have to do
some mechanical bending and some heat treating and use a press and hammer rivets,
and actual skill-requiring mechanical processes.
Do you like tinkering on cars? Not bolting on some extra high beams on a Jeep,
but, say, pulling an engine out and re-boring it, things like that.
If that is you, I would suggest, I would recommend, that you not go for a specific education in firearms or gunsmithing.
And I say that because that sort of education is limiting, it's narrow in scope,
and it doesn't apply itself necessarily very well to professions outside of guns.
So the reality of the matter is if you are working for a company making guns,
what you are probably doing is running a CNC machine making parts. And they just happen to be gun parts.
If you don't like actually making parts, whether they be for guns or for something else,
you're probably not going to enjoy that work.
And I know this first-hand because I spent six or eight months getting a CNC operators certificate
specifically to make guns, and discovered I don't really like that process.
I like the gun part, but I don't really enjoy the parts manufacturing process.
And that's most of what that job entails.
So if you do enjoy that process, what I think you ought to do is find your local community college
and get yourself an education in ... generalised machining, whether it be welding,
casting, CNC, manual machines, ideally all four of those.
That will both give you the skills required to work for any proper gun company.
You know a company that's manufacturing guns,
they're not really going out looking for, you know, graduates of a gunsmithing school.
They're looking for talented machine operators, because that's what most of the work involves.
In addition, having that sort of more generalised education will allow you a tremendously larger number of opportunities
should you discover that you don't like guns as much as you thought you did. Or should the economy
take a downturn and you lose your job, or should you simply not be able to find a job in the firearms
business where you live or where you want to live.
I think it's a much safer way to go, and that's what I would strongly recommend to anyone.
Look into Mike Rowe, what he says about the actual hands-on skills,
I think is very wise and tremendously valuable today. So,
and by the way, ... like I have first-hand experience in this additionally, in that when I went to university
I spent my first two years studying aeronautical and astronautical engineering,
because I had this notion that I wanted to build airplanes or better yet, spacecraft.
And it took me two years of going through that to really recognise that aeronautical engineers don't build aircraft.
Now I had this notion of like, "Ah, I want to build a World War One airplane,
so like you sketch it out, and then you go make some parts, and you put them together, and then you fly it."
The reality is aeronautical engineering involves doing a tremendous amount of calculus.
It just happens to be calculus applied to airplanes.
Same thing with making guns. What you do is actually machining parts.
They just happen to be parts for guns instead of for aircraft or cars or any other industry.
Now if you are the kind of person, perhaps like me, who discovered that this whole hands-on
manufacturing thing just isn't really your cup of tea,
My suggestion is find yourself a profession that has nothing to do with guns.
Find something else that you enjoy and that you're good at.
Doesn't necessarily have to be something that you're totally passionate about,
just needs to be something that you'll be happy doing, and that can earn you a decent living.
And then get into gun making or gun designing as a hobby. Because if you do this as a hobby
there's no pressure on it. If you decide you don't like it, no big deal.
You can take up butterfly collecting or scuba diving or mountaineering or anything else and you're none the worse off.
If you decide you do like it, it's something that you can start to engage a little bit more,
spend more and more of your time at as it actually allows.
If you do this for a profession, and you're often put in a position where you've got a big project,
and if it doesn't work out you're seriously screwed financially.
Like you have a tremendous amount invested in a project.
And you can see this if you look at some of the people who have designed their own firearms.
Like every once in a while it works out, but much more of the time someone invests all of their savings
and all of their time and a tremendous amount of their soul into a project only to find it failed commercially.
And ... like I wouldn't want anyone to be in that position.
The people that I know personally who have successfully manufactured, say, reproduction firearms,
or even just totally custom firearms, making stuff that they like for themselves,
not all of them, but most of them have entirely different professions.
And they do gun manufacturing, or gun building, or gun designing on the side as a hobby.
Often they do it after they retire, but that's because they're older.
But regardless, they're not relying on ... the gun industry to provide their primary income.
And I think that is a much wiser way to go about this.
In particular the people who are out there who have really great gun collections,
some of them, admittedly, are in the firearms business,
but a lot of them are in completely unrelated professions that make a really good amount of money,
and give them the freedom to buy up all the really cool guns and the machine guns
(if that's what they're into) that they want to have. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, that sort of thing.
So, ... I suppose that's pretty much my advice.
If you really like hands-on stuff, don't go into gunsmithing, go into machining. That will give you far more options
and doesn't limit you in the gunsmithing trades really at all.
Unless you're talking about like the top-of-the-line German or English professional gunsmiths,
in which case get your machining background first, then do that once ... you're sure that it's a good idea for you.
And if you don't like that part, the hands-on mass-production, spending eight hours a day at a CNC lathe or a manual mill,
then find yourself a different job that'll pay well, that you don't mind doing, that you're good at,
and use your income from that to fund a hobby in firearms.
So, hopefully that is of some help to those of you who are out there who are at that point in your life
in high school, or college, or, you know, re-educating yourselves in a new career field.
Hopefully that's helpful to you in planning a path forward.
I wish you all the very best and
good luck.