[P95Carry]

We've had ... ''first gun'' threads ... meaning what we first handled and shot but I thought back to my first (one I could recall) memory of a gun as a specific item.?

I am gettin on!! I reckon I have two choices! Most likely is bein at my Godfather's place and seein him carrying his ''rook rifle'' .. a real old octagon barrel .22 single shot. OTOH it might just have been (in B/W - of course!!) Roy Rogers and his amazin ability to shoot from the saddle .... sorta ''stabbing'' with each shot ... even shootin over his shoulder!!:D

So - it's split between rook gun and Peacemaker!!!

You??:)

[SkunkApe]

I have no idea what you just said.

[SkunkApe]

?

[Dave R]

Ya just have to get through the enthusiasm. He's talking about your earliest memory with a gun.

Mine in my father teaching me to shoot his .22. Explaining the difference between squeezing and jerking the trigger.

One of my favorite early memories...

I had a Red Ryder bb gun. Or whatever was the equivalent in the early 60's. Big capacity, low power, poor accuracy. But I shot it a lot.

Once I was out shooting with all the guys. A bird landed on a fence post just out of range. Everybody took a shot at it. I hit it. I still remember the hold. About 2" high and an inch right.

[CommonSense]

Dave R: Did you kill the bird or just injure it and it’s future remains unknown to you to this day? If you killed it, did you eat it?

My father taught us to shoot both BB and pellet guns as well. He bought us a small electronic moving target “range” so that we could practice on moving targets. I believe both the rifles and the range were produced by Daisy. The “range” was pretty cool. With 3 boys vying to win, the competition was intense for 8 thru 10 year olds. We’d be timed on how many moving targets we could hit while still obeying his safety rules.

We were taught not to shoot anything that wasn’t a danger to us (he hasn’t a hunter, so that point never came up).

[TonyB]

AS a kid my father got me a toy M16 that made gunshot sounds and actually had recoil!!!It was awesome(I wonder what happened to it??)My 1st real gun memory is probably being in the wood w/ my Dad and Granddad,and Grandad shooting a huge double barrel 12 ga........it was SOO load,and Soo cool......I didn't shoot that day,but soon after I remember shooting my Dad's 410 Mossberg..........:cool:

[son of a gun]

Shooting my Dad's Red Ryder in the basement, the muzzle caps spot weld failed allowing all the BB's to spill out, it was like a shotgun effect to a 5 year old (REAL COOL). Dad wasn't to happy about having to round up all those stray BB's though.:D

[P95Carry]

Skunkape ... sorry if confusing!!

What I was thinkin of was .... not so much when someone first handled a gun or shot one (we did that) ......... more the (very) first remembered situation where you ''became aware'' that guns existed!!

I didn't mention in my original post but I was I think about 3 years old ..... but am unsure whether my first ''gun exposure'' was the ole rook rifle -or - Hopalong Cassidy totin his Peacemaker!

For some reason I cannot ever remember saying to anyone, or asking .... ''what's one of those''?? ........ :cool:

[Checkman]

My grandfather letting me handle his then brand new Colt Detective Special (3rd model) when he brought it home. Very cool - just like on Dragnet and Mannix. It was 1972/3 and I was either four or five. A few years ago my grandfather began to suffer from Alzheimers. He gave me that Colt and it now serves as our bedroom gun. The amazing thing is that DS is almost like new. The royal blue finish and the lock up is like it was the day Colt shipped it.

[tcdrennen]

I was 9 when the Civil War (War Between The States/of Southern Rebellion/of Northern Aggression/Your Fave Term Here :uhoh: ) Centennial came around, and everything from said time was intensely interesting - and the toy mfrs fed the craze quite well :D :cool:

I remember paper cap "Springfields" and revolvers, (and the cap "flintlock" pistols which were basically the same lock as the "Springfield" rifle muskets on a "pistol" shaped stock) but my absolute favorites were the two "Johnny Reb" toy CANNONS we somehow got for Christmas one year.

These were fantastic! A spring on a guide rod was compressed by feeding the plastic ball onto it at the barrel muzzle then "ramming" it down with the rammer - it had a carriage with wheels and some elevation control, and a lanyard to release the spring, firing the piece. The whole thing, gun and carriage, was about 30" long and 15" high and weighed about 8 or 10 lbs.

It would knock down a wall built of wooden blocks very satisfactorily, but a direct hit with the 2 - 3" plastic ball would, at most, sting and leave a red spot on skin.

Many happy rainy day hours playing war in the basement rec room with my sister, brother and cousins. :cool:

Of course, it usually ended with us throwing blocks and toys at each other and screaming enough that the elders would "have to come down there.'" :what: :rolleyes:

When my nieces and nephews came along, I was dismayed and saddened by the absolute prohibition on "war toys", or anything with metal parts, or spring loaded, or INTERESTING at all.

My brothers oldest wasn't allowed to even SEE "guns" on TV or magazines - yet by the time he was 4 he was playing war with his (similarly sheltered) cousins using T-ball bats and toy golf clubs as rifles. ( :neener: to my sister in law :evil: )

It was good to see the kids were all right after all.

[Snowdog]

My first memory firearms was my grandmother's Savage 99 in .250 (marked .250-3000, of course). I absolutely loved the looks of that rifle. Unfortunately, the rifle didn't stay in the family as it should have.

My first "shooter" was a Daisy PAL (a cheap spring rifle similar to the much fancier Red Ryder). Then I graduated to a Daisy 880 and a Crossman 2200 (.22cal). Those where the days when the 880 had hardly any plastic, making it somewhat substantial and realistic for a little kid.

Ah, the carefree memories of being a kid.

[SoCalGeek]

Well, my parents have always been rather anti so i don't have much like the memories you guys did, but i do remember the first time i held a gun. I must have been 7 or 8, over at my friends house. His dad asks if i've ever seen a gun before, i say no, a few minutes later he pulls out (not sure whether it was) a beretta 92fs or a henry arms ar-7. Anyway, he taught me about clearing them and all that, let me dryfire them and stuff. I didn't really have much to do with guns again until christmas 2 years ago. I kept telling my parents over and over, all i wanted was a BB gun, if they got me just a BB gun that i would be happy. They were insistant that no was their final answer, and if i asked again i would just get in trouble. Sure enough, they got me a Daisy CO2 pistol. :) First real gun i ever shot was when a friend of my mom took me and my brother to the range, where i shot a 7mm-08 bolt action and a Walther P88. I've been going as often as possible ever since, and my dad is slowly becoming less anti-- i'm getting a membership to said range for christmas :D

[PrudentGT]

Although I don't quite remember my age the first and only time my father took me shooting, he had to cock back the hammer on the .44 mag he handed me... Oh, and hearing protection never came up. Only took me a little over a decade to get back into shooting.

[Wedge]

I have a couple of fond gun memories. When I was 5 my younger brother got a toy lever action rifle that you could cock and make a bang sound (didn't shoot anything) and I was pretty jealous so my dad ended up going to the grocery store to get something similar for me. I was out playing with it in the backyard trying to get it to shoot something out of the barrel when my neighbor (he was probably 12) came out and showed me his new pellet gun. I argued that mine was more powerful because it was louder.

A few years later I bought a military weapons book from the school book fair (even in the '80s you could still have books about guns in school!) i just looked up the book on ebay. It is called Weapons and Warfare by Maynard and Jeffins printed in 1986 as a Willowisp factbook. I read the thing so many times that it fell apart.

I think I was in 4th grade when I got to hold a pistol for the first time. My friend's grandparents had come over from Lebanon and opened up a shop in town and we went to his grandfathers shop where he let us look at and hold "Old Betsy" as my friend liked to call it. I believe it was a mil-spec 1911 and I am pretty sure she was ready to rock and roll at the time. I was smiling for the rest of the day and hadn't even gotten a chance to shoot it!

[wardog]

Of course I had BB guns, but my first "real" gun was a Mossberg 500 shotgun with 18" barrel. I was 16, and bought it at a gun show for $160, cash and carry. (This was in CA before the "Occupation") Anyway, I was driving home from the big (5000 table) Pomona gun show with my new baby when I get pulled over by a cop. I was starting to sweat as you had to be 18 to own a long gun then. I had covered up the gun in the back hatch-back area with a blanket, but out of the corner of my eye I could see that the blanket had shifted just a bit, and exposed the recoil pad of the stock. Luckily, the LEO didn't see it, and my folks would know nothing about it (being pretty much anti-gun).

Several months later my sister saw a rat in the garage and told my mom to get my BB gun. Well luckily my sister recognized that my mom had not retrieved by BB gun but my Mossy! That would have been a huge surprise for mom if she had pulled the trigger!

[Barbara]

I can't remember. I had a bb gun, and I know I shot my father;s guns probably from the time I could hold them up, went squirrel hunting with him, etc., but my first clear memory of any particular gun was shooting a black powder pistol when I was probably 6 or 7.

[outdoorman63]

was a 22 rifle that looked like a m1 carbine

[ACP230]

My first exposure to guns was watching TV Westerns with my granddad.
Roy Rogers and more obscure TV cowboys, including a Sheriff who wore only one gun and was gunned down by a two gunned outlaw.
That would have been around four or four and a half.

A little later I watched my dad sight-in in his sporterized Mauser at a gravel pit in Washington State.

My first shot was a year or two later. I shot at a big spider with some kind of BB pistol. I missed, but so did everyone else who shot at it.

Six years later I owned a Crosman pellet rifle. I've never stopped shooting and acquiring guns.

[Stoney]

Summer time in 1968, My dad, two brothers and a Mossberg model 152 .22 that my dad got from my uncle Gene. Bitten buy the shooting bug right then and there . Wish I still had that Mossberg, like a fool I sold it and now only have the memory.

[GigaBuist]

It's like asking when you first realized what a door was. Every house has one, it's jutst there -- you never really gave it any thought.

First time I remember shooting anything I was probably 6 or 7... blackpower rifles and pistols with my granddad, a .22, and 410 shotgun. I think somebody brought out a 20 gauge one time for me to try but I couldn't shoulder it and keep my finger on the trigger. I was quite the little guy.

Still got a scar on my nose from a blackpower pistol. It was foggy out and we had just come back in from the woods so my glasses had fogged up from body heat. Couldn't see the sights so I kept it too close to my face... muzzle flip brought the darned thing right into my nose. Grandpa musta been looking at the coffee can instead of me. Never said safety was the #1 issue when we had them out.

[chaim]

My first gun memory might be playing with a friend's toy rifle at 2 or 3 years old.

My first real gun memory is about the same time. I was at my grandparents house ogling my grandfather's gun collection (he was a hunter back then). He showed me his .22lr revolver (hidden in a drawer) and unlocked a few of his rifles. One of my parents walked in and saw this (I don't remember which parent) and read granddad the riot act.