Name: Mark Haskins Occupation: Shooter’s Depot Tennessee Handgun Carry Permit Class instructor; retired Chattanooga Police Department sergeant Hometown: Cleveland, Tennessee
Mark Haskins, retired Chattanooga Police Department Sergeant and former Chattanooga State College criminal justice adjunct professor, has always been fascinated with guns. After 30 years of service, Haskins continues to pursue his passions while serving as an instructor for the Tennessee Handgun Carry Permit Class at Shooter’s Depot.
? I was always, since I was a kid, interested in guns. I was leaning toward going into the military more but got into criminal justice in college and was a reserve police officer for about three years in Cleveland. While I was in school working on my Master’s, they said they were hiring in Chattanooga. It was a bigger, busier town than Cleveland so I said ‘I think I’ll give that a shot.’ I got hired and the rest is history.
? SWAT was my favorite part of the whole thing. Since I was a sniper, I did a lot of dignitary protection. I’ve been on buildings with a scoped rifle when presidents and vice-presidents came in. I would also sometimes get assigned to help the Secret Service when dignitaries came in on the pre-visit stuff. George Bush, Sr.’s wife came in one time and that was a low-profile deal, so I worked with the Secret Service on that and no one knew she was here. It was very interesting.
? Sometimes they would look at a guy and say, ‘You know you’re a really good shot.’ But you have to have the aptitude for it, and patience, because you just have to lay there and watch most of the time. Once for six hours I had to lie in a ditch in front of a house in a barricaded gunman situation. I had a foam mat that I laid on … it was in Hixson, and I remember it was snowing. I picked up my mat and there was just the outline of it in about a half inch of snow. You have to really want to do it. It’s very rare that a sniper takes a shot. But it’s a really important job. If I miss that guy sticking a gun out of the window for a fraction of a second, I might have just cost somebody their life.