How I Became Interested in Firearms

My Dad wasn't a shooter and we didn't have guns in the house; no objection, just not his thing. We lived in an urban area, so I didn't have friends with guns, either. I shot a couple of times when visiting friends in the country, but that was it. In college I tried out for the rifle team and found out I was pretty good, at least with a small bore at fifty feet. But the interest waned after that.

It was marrying my wife that really got me started. Her Dad was a real outdoorsman: hunting, fishing, trapping, hiking, camping, you name it. My wife bought me my first firearm, a Mossberg 500 combo (still have it), so I could hunt with her Dad. We hunted together for 30+ years. I got into handguns trying to figure out how to use something other than shotguns in the "shotgun only" areas of NY State; my first pistol was a Contender. A friend took me to LFI and the rest, as they say, is history. My FIL died two years ago. I miss him every hunting season.

Dad was in WW1 & 2
He hated guns
I didn't...............

I grew up with a family that occasionally hunted, but were never really shooters. Even though most of them had military experience.

What got me into firearms more deeply was the mechanisms of the guns themselves and how they are, or were, made.

All in both my extended families were farmers/woodsmen/hunters. My mothers father was the one that liked to make big noises with BP, hunt, trap, fish, reload, etc. Needless to say as the oldest grandson I spent a good many years with him learning some neat stuff. Ever since I could remember he told me to leave the firearms alone until I was "big enough" and I listened. The summer I turned 4 he had me in the back yard shooting his Underwood M1 Carbine at targets with his help. By age six I was on garden patrol with a single shot .22 rifle to keep the pests out as well as his main reloading buddy. The extended family encouraged me to become an outdoorsman as they called it then like the rest of them were.The rest as they say happened fast.

chicharrones

What got me into firearms more deeply was the mechanisms of the guns themselves and how they are, or were, made.

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That's how I was too! I loved to take things apart just to see how they worked. Tricky part was getting them back together again!

My family on both sides were farmers for generations. Guns have always been part of my world.
When I was very young, my dad was competing in trapshoots. At them time, the illinois State trapshoot was held in Casey, illinois. 18 miles from home.
He would attend a trapshoot almost every weekend. I would beg him to bring home unbroken targets for me to shoot with my BB gun.
Eventually I started going with my dad and his friends to trapshoot with my little LC Smith 20ga and shooting a practice round with them. Then one fateful day, dad' friend had a short stocked mod 12 Winchester that he had built for his wife. He offered to let me shoot it. I broke 8x10 with it. That was it. I was hooked. Dad bought a used mod 12 for me, had a stock cut to fit me, and I proceeded to shoot my way to the All-state trap team in 1981.

bannockburn said:

chicharrones



That's how I was too! I loved to take things apart just to see how they worked. Tricky part was getting them back together again!

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I started with that at age 10- took apart the IJ top-break .22 that was my Mom's Dad's gun-my mom found it in a drawer apart in a Baggie (remember those?) and threw it away thinking it was junk. A couple years later, I started shooting Trap with my Dad's spare 1100; A much used and abused one he picked up used. I had to work on it to to get and keep it running, and guys at the club started bringing their 1100's, 870's and Win. Model 12's to me to fix. It kinda snowballed from there.

bannockburn said:

Tricky part was getting them back together again!

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Truly!

Grew up in NYC, no gun culture, and my WWII vet Dad had seen enough of them. But I wanted one, and nudged my parents to get me a .22. Eventually they agreed, if I could find a place to shoot. I found a private below ground range that had a jr. club, and joined.

At 12 I was taking city buses with my cased rifle to and from the range, try that in NYC now. In college had a friend who took me hunting and I got hooked. Dropped out of school for a while and entered the military, more shooting. Later entered LE, forty years worth, more shooting yet.

Still target shoot and hunt, interest hasn’t really diminished.

My mother read Zane Grey novels to me at bedtime (1940s); Riders Of The Purple Sage, Destry Rides Again. I had Roy Rogers and Tom Mix comic books, Straight Arrow and The Lone Ranger on the radio. The first word I wrote on my little blackboard at home was “Bang”, having read it in a cowboy comic book. I shot my first real firearm, a .22 rifle, at YMCA camp at age 9. Nailed that pine cone squarely at 50 feet with the first shot. Luck, but I was hooked. I signed up for high school ROTC just so I could get on the rifle team. Killed my first deer in the company of a classmate at age 18.

Hard to explain where my interest comes from, but when all is said and done, I’m a gun nut. No apologies.

TarDevil said:

That led to an interest in rifling, then powders. All my interest in cartridges and bullets eventually led to an interest in which guns matched well with those projectiles

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I'm curious if you reload or hand load. Based on your post, it sounds like you'd really enjoy it. It requires some investment in time, research, and equipment to get started, but once I did, I was hooked.

Anyway, my first experience was my friend handing me his 44 mag, and just saying "Hang on to it". then he handed me his 300 Short mag rifle, and said "Make sure you have it firmly tucked up to your shoulder." I bought a DPMS Panther Bull Special about two months later.

I sold that gun years afterwards because I didn't really shoot it anymore and it really was bought in ignorance.

Two years after I started shooting I had an incident where legally speaking I was doing my job, and not trespassing in the least, where a home owner decided I was two close to his property and decided to threaten me with a shotgun. I wasn't on his property, it was public property. It went to court. He lost. In any case, I felt really helpless in that circumstance and not too terribly long afterwards I bought and started carrying a revolver. Not at work though. My career would end if I did that and got caught.

My handgun addiction started as a practical means of self defense, but lead to a hobby I have a lot of passion for.

My Dad never owned a gun, but my brother had a Red Ryder, which he gave me when he outgrew it and bought a Rem 513.

I shot hundreds of bottles sitting on top of our "burn barrel", chipping them down to the bottom, then doing the same with another. I found that I was much steadier holding rifles than most of my friends.

When my brother went to college, I used his 513 with lots of .22 shorts and belled the chamber so much LRs wouldn't extract. Traded it away for another rifle as I progressed in the game.

Although dad spent 1942-45 in the South Pacific Islands in the infantry he never had any guns when I was a kid. Maybe that's why? I got started when I moved from Connecticut to Iowa to go to college in a small town. I got bored and asked myself what the heck do these people do out here for fun. Most of the pickups out there had a rifle on a rack in the back window so they obviously hunted. So, in 1969 dad gave me a 12 gauge Ithaca model 37 and I proceeded to shoot pheasant and make beanbags out of rabbits. After getting tired of mangling rabbits and quail with the 12 gauge I bought a Mossberg .410 and then a Colteer 22LR. We ate a lot of game in the dorm and drank a lot of beer. Much later got interested in handguns, especially revolvers. Sure wish dad brought home the 45 cal. sidearm I have pictures of him carrying in the army.

it runs in the family:



i'm the one on the bottom. my younger brother is up top. still have the rifle!

murf

murf said:

it runs in the family:

View attachment 775195

i'm the one on the bottom. my younger brother is up top. still have the rifle!

murf

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Haha, good one.
My grandpa used to make me potato cape buffalo and wildebeast out of a potato and toothpicks, with a sears and robuck backstop......then we would go on a BB gun safari in the dining room ....much to grandma's lament.
.....hadn't thought of that in 30yrs.

murf said:

it runs in the family:

View attachment 775195

i'm the one on the bottom. my younger brother is up top. still have the rifle!

murf

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Gun ports in your house! You really were defending your homestead from Indians!

chicharrones said:

Gun ports in your house! You really were defending your homestead from Indians!

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i'm not quite that old. had a lot of fun with that rifle in my younger days, though.

murf

My first firearm was a Daisy Cub air rifle, which I loved. A couple years later my dad made the mistake of trying to get me to shoot a Winchester '94 before I was really ready. Going from a Cub to a .30-30 is a pretty big jump for some kids. I was only nine or ten at the time. It was too bad, because it put me off of guns for a number of years. My grandparents also paid for a yearly subscription to Ranger Rick magazine, which some of you may recognize as environmentalist literature tailored to children. That sort of ruined any interest in hunting. When I reached college age, I shared a house with two other fellows, one of whom was an avid hunter. His hunting stories piqued my interest. Eventually he got me to try deer hunting. Been at it ever since. Lesson: don't force your kids to try shooting. There isn't a set age when they should take up the sport. If they're interested, they'll let you know when they're ready.

Very interesting stories. I will share as well.

I was raised with both paternal and maternal grandpas who hunted, as well as my dad. I got a Daisy BB gun when I was young, and spent hours in the back yard shooting pepsi cans and whatever else I could set on a stump and knock off with a BB gun. Before I was old enough to hunt, I would accompany my dad and my grandpas on various hunting trips, mostly deer or pheasant. Even before I was old enough to hunt, one of my grandpas let me hunt rabbits with a 22 on his farm. Looking back, he shouldn't have, but it was farmland Colorado and no one really cared. He even made me clean them and get them ready to cook. Once I was old enough, I started going deer hunting with my dad and paternal grandpa. I got my first hunting rifle for my 16th Birthday, which I still have and shoot 20 years later.

Most of my shooting growing up was with my dad, and most of it was for hunting purposes, either working up a new load, or sighting in before hunting season. We did shoot pellet guns and 22 a lot when we went camping. Once I was out on my own, I decided to buy my first pistol. I always enjoyed shooting handguns, but had not been around any besides revolvers. I have been shooting recreationally and for hunting purposes ever since. My dad passed a few years ago, so my brother and I inherited guns my dad had collected over the years. We divided them up. Since then, I have been more into recreational shooting and reloading. Reloading has been fun, and I like trying new bullets, different weights, whatever. I like to tinker and build things, so this goes with my nature. I am always trying to find a little better bullet, or accuracy of an existing load. I do stick with some that work well, but also try to make them a bit better. .

It was kind of good to reminisce on some of these things. I could go on more, but this is where my start was.

When he was a boy, my father wanted a BB gun but his parents kept saying "no." Eventually when he was about 12 years old they said "yes" but after a few days, he accidentally shot out a window so the BB gun was taken away. As soon as he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the army where he was assigned to an AA Battalion. The 90mm guns were a little more than he wanted but it was a start. Landing at Normandy on D+12 in an AA Battalion without much of a Luftwaffe left to fight, led him to volunteer for all sorts of duties during which he picked up a sizable collection of liberated firearms. Unfortunately, when he was returning to the states, his commander told him, incorrectly it turned out, he could only keep one of them. He gave the others to the guys in the unit who didn't have a souvenir on the condition that they sell it back to him if they ever wanted to get rid of it. No one ever did. In the years after the war, he went to college, became a pharmacist and got a job with the VA. Many of the vets that came through the pharmacy were hunters and became life long friends and hunting buddies. Others just liked guns and shooting or had guns and sometimes needed money. He got married to a nice girl who liked guns and they shot trap together and went hunting together. His pet name for her was "BB" and they had a dog named "Buckshot." When it was apparent they were going to become parents and folks asked what they were going to name the child, my folks jokingly said they were going to call me "Millimeter." Well, they didn't but I always thought that was a big part of why I grew up liking and being surrounded by guns. For example, Dad was visiting a gunshot where the smith was making a custom .270 for him when the smith presented me with a "toy" rifle he had made for me from various parts. It didn't shoot, but it looked better than any toy you could find in a store. In the years that followed, I discovered there was a boy who lived next door who had a grandfather who was even more into guns than my father. I spent every moment that I could with my new buddy's grandfather. He had been in the Marine Corps during World War I and the Navy during World War II. He shot and did well at Perry, was employed by Peters Cartridge and was an avid collector of US military firearms. He also had a pretty extensive workshop where he could produce almost any part, regularly attended dozens of meetings, and flea markets along with having a booth at places like Friendship, Indiana. All of this was supplemented by regular visits with the guys in the VA hospitals were my Dad worked, just hanging out and listening to stories about their time in service from the Philippines during the Spanish American War to the Chosin Reservoir and everything in between. That's the abbreviated story of how my interest began. Hope it was interesting.

Father left right after my birth all my up bringing was by my uncle . He got me started into shooting and the bug got me, then came a 4 year stint as a seebee in the Navy. Retired from the Police Department. I've had guns since I was eleven and at 80 I can no longer hunt but do target shoot every chance I get. My suggestion is to read as much as you can Pick any one's brain that will listen, Join a shooting hunting club Post questions on the sights you belong to Go to U-Tube you can learn just about anything there After the Navy I bought tA Mossberg 12 Gauge from Momtgomery wards for $24.00 and went deer hunting killed my first Deer I have been gun poor ever since Good Luck Lou

I learnt how to shoot from my dad, first with a slingshot, shooting the parrots in nanna,s fruit trees, when I reached the legal age for a rifle, I brought a .177. air rifle. That year I wa old enogh to go duck shooting, dad brought me a Baikal double barrel shotgun, first year I learnt how to do deflection shooting. When I was 19 I joined the Australian Army, and had to qualify with the 7.62 SLR. M60 and 9 mm F1 submaching gun. I later trained as a mortarman.
I now at the ripe old age of 63 just shoot parrots in the orchard, and rabbits. Occasionally I shoot Kangaroo as well with my .223 target rifle. And still shoot duck and geese with a triple barrel 12 g shotgun.