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My name is Tom Fenton. My day job is president of El Paso Inc. and partner in PDX Printing. I am a former editor, publisher, and president of El Paso Times and a former UTEP journalism instructor. Shooting, hunting, and firearm competition has been a lifelong hobby. So I turned my hobby into a fun job and became certified as a handgun instructor, home firearm safety instructor and I am Texas DPS certified as a License to Carry instructor.

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Tom is a lifelong shooter, hunter, and firearms competitor. He competes in shotgun matches at Fort Bliss, including five-stand, occasional skeet, and trap, and Cowboy Action matches. The latter involves timed shooting events with single-action .45 pistols, lever-action rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. Tom has been shooting since he was 5 years old when his grandfather began training him in Kentucky.
About 10 years ago Tom realized that one thing he really enjoys is helping beginners learn to safely handle and shoot various firearms. So he decided to start a new career around his longtime avocation.  He has been Licensed to Carry since 1995 and has taught basic handgun courses and License to Carry courses for the last eight years. Here are some of his training and coursework qualifications:
As much as he enjoys firearms, they are not Tom’s day job. For that, he is president of El Paso Inc., the weekly business journal, and he and his wife Ellie, a CPA, are partners in PDX Printing. Tom went into mass media on the journalism side. After graduating with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia, he went to work for The Associated Press, where he spent 15 years as a foreign correspondent and overseas bureau chief.
His postings for AP included Albuquerque, New York City, Mexico City, Panama, Chile, Bolivia, and Germany, where his responsibilities included news, sales, and service throughout Eastern Europe, then under communism. In his work for AP Tom spent more time in Nicaragua during that country’s civil war than any other American journalist. He was the last correspondent to interview deposed former Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza in Asuncion, Paraguay, shortly before Somoza was assassinated. Tom also covered guerrilla wars in El Salvador and Guatemala as well as the turnover of the Panama Canal. He also covered the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. While based in Chile he was on hand for three coups in Bolivia. Tom left The AP in Germany to become editor, publisher, and president of the El Paso Times, posts he held from 1986 to 1993. Tom spent two years with the Freedom Forum in Zurich before returning to El Paso to launch El Paso Inc. Tom has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of the Americas in Mexico City, and he is fluent in Spanish.

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