Collegiate Opportunities for NRA Families: Gunsmithing at Piedmont Tech

Here at NRA Family, we love to highlight careers in the gun and outdoors industry. One of the hottest careers to emerge in this bizarre year of 2020 is, interestingly, gunsmithing. With gun sales at an all-time high--we're expected to hit 20 million firearms sold this year--the demand for people who can customize those guns has grown tremendously. However, the list of places where you can learn to be a gunsmith is quite short. One of them is Piedmont Technical College (PTC).

Piedmont Tech tells us that, on average, they place 93 percent of their Gunsmithing program graduates directly into jobs. Furthermore, although this year's record-breaking gun sales won't continue forever, gunsmithing is an "evergreen" skill for which there will always be a demand. (The profession is about 700 years old, after all!)  

Although the average gunsmithing student finds a job immediately, there is no average student in gunsmithing. PTC reports that their gunsmithing students range in age from the "traditional" 20ish college student, to second-career seekers in their forties, to hobbyists in their sixties. Whatever their age, PTC's gunsmithing grads will be very busy for a long time to come.

Part of the reason why is that many firearms companies are starting to move away from repairing their products in-house. They still need skilled, expert workers to do the customization and repair work, so many of them contract that out to independent gunsmiths or to repair centers. Of course, the other part of the reason why is that many gun owners don't like to send their guns away for months at a time...they'd much rather have someone local do the work so they know what their repair status is, and so any questions or concerns can be addressed locally.

Want to learn more? PTC.edu