What got you into owning guns??

[BergaminoCAV]

My father always had guns in the house, as a teenager I was always into them but I would never wanted to spend my money on them because my father would let me use his, after spending 6 years in the army with a rifle and pistol by my side almost every day I felt empty when I got home, like somthing was missing, so I bought my first pistol ( H&K USP 45acp) and it was all downhill from there.

 

[RandomAvenger]

I grew up around guns and have been shooting them since I was about 8. It just seemed to be the logical thing to do, considering howmuch I enjoy shooting.

Plus I love reading the complaints in the local newpaper about how loud the local gun range is!

 

[Sika Stalker]

It very simple for most people its nearly always family
For me it was my oyld man seeing him shoot clays for ireland and then going out deer stalking with him.

 

[Superpsy]

a friend's dad took me target shooting with an old single-shot .22...then pastor took me shooting (target) with shotgun and .22

the watershed moment was my junior year in college...everyone on that floor owned guns they kinda drew me in....

 

[Zen21Tao]

What got you into guns

Going hunting with my uncle from the time I was about 10 years old. This led to me getting my own 12 gauge and .22lr at 12 years old.

 

['Card]

I'm from rural West Virginia.

*shrug*

It would be much more unusual if I didn't own a bunch of guns, to be honest.

 

[Deer Hunter]

As my handle implies, I hunt deer. My entire family hunts. My mother's father collected, as did her brother. She helped them cast bullets when she was younger. My father has always owned guns.

I have pictures of me in diapers, red rubber boots, and two SAA replica toy pistols shoved down my diapers. My mother says that when I was very young, I would walk out onto the porch, draw an imaginary gun from my holster, aim at a bird, say "Tau! Tau!" (Sounds like the "tow" in "Tower"), then reholster my weapon, and walk back inside. Every picture of me from 2-9, I've got some kine of gun or knife in my hands, mainly plastic except for my Red Rider bb gun.

And no, I never did "shoot my eye out". I shot the eyes out of birds and lizards, though.

 

[Ben Shepherd]

I'm from Utah, born and raised mormon.

Out here you are a piker if you don't have at least 1 full gun safe.

Family thing several generations old. On moms side we have a muzzle loader that was built by Daniel Boone for a family member.

 

[David N]

I GUESS I'M THE EXCEPTION

I was attacked by two young guys with baseball bats in a case of mistaken identity.
I have now carried a pistol for 12 years. Mostly a Makarov, now a KT P11.
I did not grow up around guns and am teaching myself to shoot. I like sighted target shooting for fun and point shooting for SD.

 

[Bubbles]

I blame Sarah Brady.

Prior to the hoopla in '94 coming up to the AW ban I'd never shot a gun in my life. There was so much on the news about it that I decided to go to a gun store and see what the big deal was. Wasn't long before I took a safety class, then more advanced classes, got my CCW, and got bit by the NFA bug.

Thanks Sarah!

 

[BIGDADDYLONGSTROKE]

I grew up around firearms I remember going rabbit hunting with my dads .22lr on our land. But moslty when I got older and my brother got out of the service he got into to IPSC and I would practice with him and went to a few competetitions been hooked ever since.


The odd thing is the more I hang around THR the more guns I buy, wierd.

 

[XD Fan]

I blame Sarah Brady.

Prior to the hoopla in '94 coming up to the AW ban I'd never shot a gun in my life. There was so much on the news about it that I decided to go to a gun store and see what the big deal was. Wasn't long before I took a safety class, then more advanced classes, got my CCW, and got bit by the NFA bug.

Thanks Sarah!

God bless that woman. She keeps recruiting for us!

Grew up hunting and listening to my dad's tales of hunting. most every story he told had a gun in it somehow. Oddly enough, he still has a real antipathy for handguns. I am working on him though. I think he is interested in shooting a little Taurus .22 revolver I recently bought. Also, as he lives in rattle snake country, I think I have him talked into buying a revolover I recently saw that will fire .45 LC or a .410 shotgun shell.

 

[RioShooter]

One Word

Katrina

 

[orangelo]

AWB did.

 

[The_Shootist]

Experience

Almost 10 years ago I emigrated from Canada to the US - Texas to be exact.

Well, things were pretty low key until one Saturday night a bunch of drunken morons started banging on my door, intimating they were going to do some major remodeling on myself and my apt. I had no idea who they were (likely a case of mistaken identity) so I grabbed a kitchen knife, yelled back through the door I was armed (which was sorta true ) and surprisingly, things got real quiet as they decided they had better things to do.

That got me thinking - I was at a disadvantage as far as personal defense goes so I started cruising around the gun boards and bought a S&W 617, .22LR calibre revolver, 6 shots. In a dim light (heck, maybe in ANY light) it would pass for a pretty business like piece, and if push came to shove I figured loaded with Stingers, it might buy me some time. I figured it was a good place to start.

I wasn't your average gun-phobic left-wing munchkin loving Canadian dedicated to tip-toing thru the tulips and singing Kumbaya. I had owned 2 shotguns and two rifles in Canada so I was comfortable with firearms and certainly the concept of using them for self-defense.

Well, after about 3 mos (and 5000+ rds of .22 expended) I got kinda bored, went back to my original gunshop and bought a police trade in S&W Model 915 9mm. Kinda big, but at least it fired REAL bullets. Since I had been in Texas for about 9 mos, I also filled out the paperwork to get my CHL.

Now I'm on my second renewal of a CHL, a US Citizen and 8 handguns (and 1 AK-47) later. All because some guys banged on my door one night (yeah, any old excuse will do). I also still have my original 617, I guess for sentimental value.

As well, now that I'm so well armed, in 10 years nobody else has banged on my door or confronted me in public. But I wouldn't do anything differently.

 

[CNYCacher]

Two reasons:
www.a-human-right.com
www.thehighroad.org

I was in to bb guns when I was younger, but that kinda fizzled out. Never actually got into hunting growing up, although my dad has been a big hunter since he was young, and tried to get me interested. Starting about 5 years ago, I had been wanting more and more each year to get into hunting. It was weird, every fall I found myself thinking about how cool it would be to be out in the woods hunting, and each year it got worse. Well I finally did it. Getting into deer hunting for the first time at 25 years old is not something you hear about every day, but I am hooked on it. I was twice as old as the average person in the safety class.
Owning my first shotgun got me interested in guns again, but finding these two websites is what got me IN to guns like I am now. One day I followed a link to A Human Right off of someone's sig line in another forum, it was all over after that. Now I own three guns and, well, you know I have a bunch more on my wish list.
Thank you Oleg, and all the other THR-ers!

 

[Fosbery]

When I was a kid, I somehow got it into my head that breaking bottles and perferating tin cans was a worthwhile pursuit, and bought myself a pellet gun. It occured to me one day that my pellet gun had some serious limitations in rate of fire, range, accuracy and power. So I begged my parents to get me a .22 rifle and a few months later I was the proud owner of a Ruger 10/22. It grew and grew from there (although it shrunk a couple of times too thanks to the Nazi regimes we tend to get in this country nowadays) until I one day realised that guns wern't just fun, they were important for other things too, like not being forced to wear a star on my shirt, and not getting stabbed in the face.

 

[pax]

Grew up around 'em, sort of -- went deer hunting every year with my dad. Never had handguns, never thought of self defense. After I got married, I had a battered old .22 rifle underneath my bed, but rarely got it out.

Fast forward a few years. Husband and I finally made our escape from urban life. We moved to a house in the country on a busy-ish rural highway. I was pregnant with Baby #5, and husband worked late-night hours.

Right around the time the first drunk crashed into our ditch and asked to use the phone, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have a gun or something for defense. By the time the second one did so (two weeks later), I knew I really ought to get past the "ought to" and into action.

When I got serious about making our house safer, we first bought throw-out-the-window fire ladders for upstairs. And more smoke alarms. And brighter lights for the outside areas. And better locks for the doors. Then we went looking for a gun.

At first I thought I wanted a shotgun for defense. That's what everybody says to do, right? Get a shotgun, you don't even have to aim it, just the noise will make an intruder crap his pants. Put it up high where the kids can't get it.

That was bad advice, by the way. Except on rare and unpredictable occasions, my children have never been the sweet, innocent, adorable types who play peacefully together or quietly by themselves and always do what they're told. Frankly, they were born monsters -- you know, the kind of kids who will get into the Christmas gifts and will slide down the staircases and will climb apple trees and will take the radio apart with a screwdriver and will get behind the wheel of the car if mom accidentally leaves her keys in. We've civilized them, sort of, but only with great effort and at a horrendous cost in terms of energy spent.

Even if I'd been able to convince myself that my normal children were inhumanly good after all, a toddler sitting on my fridge one afternoon convinced me that "hiding stuff up high" to keep it out of kids' hands was just a really stupid thing to do.

So where in the world could I safely fit an easily-accessible long gun into our home? I couldn't. It just wasn't possible. If I couldn't get at it when I needed it in a hurry, there wasn't any point in having it at all, I figured.

And that's where I left it for a long time. Yes, I ought to have a gun. But no, there wasn't any way to store one where I could get to it in a hurry but a child could not get to it at all.

(What, train the kids? I believe in training kids, ask anyone about that, but ... kids are human beings. Human beings make mistakes. I was not going to bet my children's lives on the slim chance that they were actually the first perfect human beings ever born into my family.)

Not too long after I'd sighingly given up the idea of getting a gun for defense, a family friend revived his long-dormant interest in shooting. At his invitation, I joined him and some other friends at an impromptu range session out in the woods. He brought handguns along and urged me to try one.

I was hooked. And as I blazed away with a handgun for the first time in my life, I realized I was holding the solution to my home-defense needs. If I had a handgun, I could simply put it into a holster and carry it around with me during the day and evening hours when I was solely responsible for the house and children. I might not know what the little darlings were up to in the next room, but by golly if I couldn't keep them out of trouble when they were standing right next to me I was a poor excuse for a mom.

At the same friend's urging, I signed up for a firearms training class about a week after I received my first carry permit.

So, that's the tale. I owe a debt of thanks to buddy Don (he goes by username tstr on THR and TFL, but rarely posts). It's all his fault.

pax

 

[JohnBT]

I tried playing with dolls and having little tea parties, but didn't enjoy it nearly as much as shooting and hunting.

That, and at about age 5 my grandparents gave me a BB gun outfit with cleaning kit and wall rack. And my father was a State Trooper. And my uncles were gun traders. Well, you get the idea.

John

 

[dragongoddess]

I really don't know what motivated me last November to to purchase my first handgun but it happened. Maybe it was the Gun Shop that opened just 3 mins from my house. Whatever it was it hit me hard and has not let up since. I've been joking about belonging to the shops gun a month club. Truth be known its probably the 2 gun a month club. In fact I may pick up another weapon today.

 

[Sonny74]

About 3 years ago one of my friend took me to the range and show me how to shoot. I was hooked ever since. Now I own 3 handguns 1 rifle, have a CHL and regularly compete in USPSA.

So go and take a noob to the range. It could change his/her life for the better.

 

[cavman]

Last Fall a friend from back home in Maine was re-telling me of how he was trying to finish off a deer he had shot the week before. Wounded it and blood-trailed it late into the night when he lost the trail.

Found it the next morning and was going to shoot it with his Glock 9mm, to finish it off. Couldn't hit it from about 15 feet away.

Simply got me to a'thinking if I could hit something with a pistol.

Now 10 months later, tonight, I am going to a Bullseye match.

who knew?

have a great day,
cavman

 

[qlajlu]

I'm from Utah, born and raised Mormon.

Out here you are a piker if you don't have at least 1 full gun safe.

Family thing several generations old.

Same with me. Utah born and raised. When I was about 8 years old my father gave me a Red Rider BB gun. It became my best friend. Any sparrow landing in trees on our property were chancing their own life. Red-headed sparrows were a special prize. I learned a lot about Kentucky Windage from that gun since the sights were not worth a pound of powdered owl pucky.

Graduated to a pellet gun. Same story, sights and all.

My Dad, his Dad, and his brothers went deer hunting/camping together every fall and I just fell into it along with a couple of cousins. The opening deer hunt weekend in Utah was/is a NATIONAL HOLIDAY. Even the schools closed the Friday before because everyone was headed up the mountain to their "camps."

Got my first promotion in the Marine Corps for shooting high range score on qualification day, but that is another story.

Right now I own enough firearms to equip a small third world nation. Not all of them are the most modern weapons, but I wouldn't trade or sell any of them.

 

[TallPine]

Mostly Roy Rogers and Gene Autry

Plus I grew up (well, that I'm still working on) in the era when little boys played with capguns and such.

My first real firearm was a .50 caliber T/C Hawken replica. (unfortunately, that one got stolen)

For years, I was too busy with work and family (and too broke) to have more than a passing interest in guns. About ten years ago, I started getting serious and adding to my "collection" every chance I got.

I still like single action revolvers and lever action rifles

 

[birddog]

I married into a hunting family, forever changing the path of my life.

My brother-in-law (Mantis) got me into handguns, forever changing my credit rating.

Damn them all!!!!!!