What were your first experiences handling a gun?

[Vana2]

About safety and stuff...

Once upon a time, long ago, I had my rifles in a rack on the wall. Now, here in Canada, all firearms (which includes airguns over 500 fps) are legally required to be properly stored in a lockable cabinet or with a trigger-lock in a case.

I miss having them on display but from my own experience see that it's for the best to keep all firearms out of sight and unaccessible to unauthorized people.

These days, with all violence in video games and on TV, safe gun handling is a concern.


So that brings me to my point of asking about your first experiences handling a gun.

Having always been strongly attracted to anything that shot a projectile, I was totally impressed with my father's Crosman 101 multi-pump pellet gun. In spite of being forbidden, I'd shoot it (bits of wood, wads of foil or even screws) whenever I got a chance. Luckily, I never did any damage to myself or anything else.

My first "official" use of a rifle came when we visited a family friend who lived in a rural area. There was a .22 rimfire by the back-door and a large amount of begging netted me two boxes of shells. A couple of tins were put in front of a high backstop and a blanket was put on the ground about 10 yards back. I was told that the rifle could not leave the area of the blanket and must always be pointed towards the backstop. After basic instructions on how to operate the rifle and demonstrating that I could manage it, I was left alone to shoot. One hundred shots later, the tins were mostly unharmed but I did have a great time I was told (years) afterwards that they kept an eye on me from the house.

The closest that I got to formal instruction was when I was shooting my Slavia 618 break-barrel beside the road (in the 1960s). A cop watched me for a bit then came over and showed me how to hold the rifle and use the sights properly.

Without someone to mentor you (back before home computers, the internet and YouTube videos) books and magazines were the only source of information. Most of what I knew about guns and shooting came Jack O'Connor's book "Complete Book on Rifles and Shotguns". People are lucky to have access to all kinds of detailed information now.

Anyway, that's where I'm coming from and that's why I'll help anyone who wants to try archery or airguns.



So I'm curious how people got into shooting and how you learned the trade. Did you have someone to teach you or did you have to figure it out yourself?

...Done rambling, heading out to do some plinking

Cheers!

 

[Iowa Airgunner]

When I was ten or eleven I took a 38 revolver that was just laying around and would shoot it into the water about a foot deep. This would stun the minnows. So I could get fishing bait. It was the seventy’s.

 

[boresnake]

In 1958 I got a Boy's Life Winchester single shot .22 and I dreamed the dream. Daily. It was in southern Utah. The dinosaurs still roamed the land and the indians were building the mountains.

 

[Bedrock Bob]

About 1967 in a bunkhouse on a ranch near Sheridan Wyoming. I was 5. My dad let me shoot a single shot bolt action rifle for the first time and patiently instructed me how to handle it. He handed me a Daisy model 99 bb gun that afternoon and I shot it every day for many years afterward.

My father was a rifleman in Korea and a sniper in the early days of Viet Nam. He hunted big game on 3 continents. He was a guide and professional hunter for a time. He did gunsmithing and manufactured bullets. We shot every day for many years and reloaded every round we shot.

I remember shooting the rimfire for the first time very clearly. It was a rite of passage I had earned. Every male role model in my life at that time was an accomplished hunter and rifleman. It was a big deal for a kid to be deemed worthy of a rifle in a crowd like that.

 

[Basher]

Right here:

I have no idea what brand or model of air rifle that is, but that’s me at about four or five years old shooting soda cans at my grandparent’s place in Nebraska just before Christmas. It was cold, but I didn’t care. Same for the ride around the neighborhood I begged for and got in the bed of Grandpa’s pickup while it was snowing, same year. It was the late 80s, definitely a different time lol.

And for some weird reason, I grew up to love guns and be mildly irresponsible in things that go fast (but mostly on two wheels).

 

[Moog]

Back in the early seventies I talked my parents into letting me buy a Crosmsn 760 that my neighbors were selling at a garage sale. It took a lot of convincing because I didn't come from what you would call a pro gun house hold.
I had lots of neat little adventures with that Crosman. I took it with me when we went on vacation. I had fun going on "safari" with it in the woods. I don't remember why but I preferred shooting bbs out of it rather than pellets.
later in life a the ripe old age of 17 I was able to acquire a Ruger 10/22.

 

[sekiar]

A Daisy model 25 on My birthday in about 1947. Wore it out on house sparrows on our farm. Charles

 

[Struckat]

Maybe 1970? My first gun was Daisy 102. I remember carrying it through the woods deer hunting with my dad. A couple years later he upgraded me to the Daisy Safari.

 

[Bakeryoubeezy]

My dad taught me safety and how to shoot handguns. Taught myself with rifles, however I was in boy scouts and had shooting and archery badges as a youngin and again as a teenager.

 

[Mark.in.AZ]

1963 Camp Delmont Boy Scout summer camp. I was 12 years old and the first time I had any "formal" marksmanship instruction. .22 single shot rimfire rifles. After the "basics" of safety, aiming, safety, sight alignment, safety, trigger control, safety, that wonderful smell of Hoppes #9, safety, and given 10 rounds of rimfire with strict observance of what I (and my fellow scouts) was doing, we safely fired 10 rounds at 50 feet.

I WAS HOOKED!

Here it is, 61 years later, and after many thousands of dollars spent on guns, ammo, gear, etc. etc, etc. buying and selling and wasting money here and there, and three marriages, and getting rid of most of that, I am left with some of the most accurate air guns I could have ever wanted; both spring piston and PCP.

 

[SteveV]

My first experience handling a gun (firearm) was at the deer camp my father belonged to, the Lonesome Pine. Pop gave me a Stephens .410 that he had cut down the stock to fit me better. 1967 maybe? Later on I graduated to .28 gauge and my younger brother got the .410. This was also my first experience with a break barrel, as one of Pops buds had been stationed in Germany, brought one stateside and I ended up shooting it a bunch between the morning and evening hunt, and I still have the faint scar on the web between my thumb and index finger, cause I shot it till I was too weak to cock it any more and it got away from me.

 

[3Crows]

I grew up with guns in the woods, swamps of north Louisiana. We did not target shoot or waste ammo on dirt clods, ammo was precious and expensive. The four guns I was allowed to use were my Crosman 140 .22 pumper, a .410 single shot and a .410 double barrel and a Remington single shot Target Master. I would be given one or two "bullets" to put in my pocket and I was expected to produce a squirrel or rabbit or something edible with each. My grandfather grew up in a time where pot hunting was a nessecity, it was not sport though it was sporting, it was because they were hungry otherwise. In the Depression my father learned from my gf the same. My gf then taught me, how to still hunt, how to stalk, how to move through the woods silently and invisibly. I am not very good at targets and would get soundly beaten I am sure if I ever took it as a endeavor. But, I also cannot remember actually missing.

Me and my border collie Smoky and my .410. And yes, I was going out to get something to eat.



Occasionally I got to use "my" Marlin 39A Mountie, bought the day I was born and given me in due course. I have pictures of me shooting it before I could walk good somewhere on slides. I did not carry it often because my gf or dad would only give me one or two "bullets" so I preferred the Target Master or the .410. What good is a repeater when you have only one or two pocket bullets.

 

[NorCal David]

My uncle took his son and me quail hunting when I was 11. His son got the 16 gauge and I got the 12 gauge magnum. That thing had a real kick! I do not think he actually taught me how to shoot, but I got a quail anyway. Then my uncle took over and provided dinner for eight of us.

 

[Springrrrr]

Sometime around 12-13 I went into the woods in N.J. with a friend and his 12 gauge shotgun (Yes, it was a long time ago when N.J. was still part of America). He set up an old dinner plate and blew it apart.

Then he set up another one and gave me the gun. It took about 10 minutes before getting up the guts to pull the trigger because I saw the recoil my friend absorbed.

The plate decomposed and I was hooked.

 

[Vana2]

Funny, (not really) how some people think that giving a 100 pound pre-teen a 12 gauge shotgun and laughing when it knocks them on their ass is a good way to introduce a youngster to firearms.

A number of my friends went through that "ritual" and a couple of them were totally (permanently) put off powder-burners. Most of the guys who stayed with powder-burners had a bad flinch that took years to get over.


I was lucky when I was introduced to shotguns. Ear-muffs and low-base skeet shells were used. My friend explained how to stand, hold the gun, demonstrated how the recoil would move me and was ready to support me during the first shots. It was an exhilarating POSITIVE experience.

Hope that people keep that in mind when handing a heavy recoil gun to an excited young person for their first experience with a real gun.

Cheers!

 

[jkingrph]

I grew up with guns in the woods, swamps of north Louisiana. We did not target shoot or waste ammo on dirt clods, ammo was precious and expensive. The four guns I was allowed to use were my Crosman 140 .22 pumper, a .410 single shot and a .410 double barrel and a Remington single shot Target Master. I would be given one or two "bullets" to put in my pocket and I was expected to produce a squirrel or rabbit or something edible with each. My grandfather grew up in a time where pot hunting was a nessecity, it was not sport though it was sporting, it was because they were hungry otherwise. In the Depression my father learned from my gf the same. My gf then taught me, how to still hunt, how to stalk, how to move through the woods silently and invisibly. I am not very good at targets and would get soundly beaten I am sure if I ever took it as a endeavor. But, I also cannot remember actually missing.

Me and my border collie Smoky and my .410. And yes, I was going out to get something to eat.



Occasionally I got to use "my" Marlin 39A Mountie, bought the day I was born and given me in due course. I have pictures of me shooting it before I could walk good somewhere on slides. I did not carry it often because my gf or dad would only give me one or two "bullets" so I preferred the Target Master or the .410. What good is a repeater when you have only one or two pocket bullets.

Where in N. Louisiana. I grew up in that area also, W. Monroe, but in town. Dad bought a standare Marlin 39a when I was about 7 years old and every two or three months, would buy a box of ammo and take me out to shoot tin cans. Then a bb gun around the house and that was about it. He also got a 336 SC about the same time, in .35 Remington, I still have both, and an old Stevens double 16 ga which my son now has.

Thats one of the best looking little Marlins I have seen, I wish mine had wood half that nice.

 

[Darch845]

We had a shooting range in the basement of my high school, and NRA hunter safety training was usually taught early; about 9th grade, if I remember right.

We would do a few days of shooting with .22s to get comfortable, those of us who hadn’t been plinking from an early age. I turned out I was a fairly awful shot, but I could usually at least hit the target most of the time.

it was fun enough, but not something I got really worked up about. After that, my shooting was limited to scaring the woodchucks and the grackles with a shotgun when it was necessary. Sometimes in the summer I’d do some shooting on the range at the Boy Scout camp, but not being very good at it.

 

[3Crows]

Where in N. Louisiana. I grew up in that area also, W. Monroe, but in town. Dad bought a standare Marlin 39a when I was about 7 years old and every two or three months, would buy a box of ammo and take me out to shoot tin cans. Then a bb gun around the house and that was about it. He also got a 336 SC about the same time, in .35 Remington, I still have both, and an old Stevens double 16 ga which my son now has.

Thats one of the best looking little Marlins I have seen, I wish mine had wood half that nice.

Yes. Drew area. Love 336 Marlins.

 

[Peashooter]

That would be when i started to shoot .22 rimfire at the age of 9 or 10, NO parental thing here regarding safety or getting me into shooting, purely the instructors in the club.
I dont remember a single thing of it though, had it only been a little traumatic i would vivid remember every second, but it must have been very uneventful and making sense. ( mid 70ties )

There was NO additional tutoring when i later stepped up to 50 M rimfire and a year later 200 M with quite powerful 7.92 mm backing quite a punch for a scrawny little kid

PS: mind you none of the distances did you carry your rifle around, it was laid out at the lane, so all you did was buy your 25 shots in the " shop " and then go to a lane and launch them.
I never had my own rifle back then, though on 200 M i did always shoot the very same rifle, i suppose as the club did not have very many of them.

When i was like 25 or something or in the early 80ties they changed the law, before that you just had to be 18 to buy a shotgun, dident even have to have a hunting license or anything.
And it was not like a lot of PPL got hurt back then, probably fewer than today with rules and laws galore.

 

[rcarlisle]

My first time handling a gun was in the mid '70's at a neighbors house where I would go after school until my Mom got home from work. She was never comfortable with the idea of guns or me handling them. The neighbor's sons were into anything that shot a projectile. Particularly air rifles and sling shots. They'd run out and kill squirrels and bring them home for their mother (who was a true Cajun) to cook. They let me tag along with a Red Ryder while they went at it with a Daisy Powerline 880 or wrist rockets (those boys could shoot those slingshots!). My mother eventually allowed me to have the 880 when they bought a Sheridan Blue Streak. When my mother remarried, my stepfather introduced me to rimfire and centerfire rifles at about 13 years old. But I was hooked after my first shot with the Red Ryder and it's been downhill ever since.