How Did It All Start?

It all started with my dad he was the one who showed me how to shoot the proper gun handling techniques and how to clean a weapon then my good friend and mentor took my under his wing and got me started in reloading since then my passion has taken off

First was a father that provided me with bb guns, 22's and shotguns and taught me how to use them.
Second was a Highway Patrolman that took a teen kid and directed him into competitive and combat pistol shooting.
Third was a number of mentors that took the kid deer/elk hunting and taught him tricks. the list could continue.
Dan

There was never a time in my life when guns weren't a huge part of it. Growing up they were stashed in all the corners. There was no safe or even a cabinet. They were around the house. And most were loaded.

I shot a gun for the first time and went hunting for the first time when I was 7 years old. It's just always been there.

Dad took me shooting at age 11. We went to the range and rented a .22 rifle for me. Dad owned one handgun, and was not really a gun guy at all. He just happened to believe in owning one. He is the type that many people trash of forums like this, who think a gun is a magical talisman and that owning it will keep you safe even if you don't practice with it, and keep it locked in a safe. But he did instill the ideals of gun ownership in me.
I never really thought about guns until i went to a very liberal college in Boston MA (liberal even by Boston MA standards) and was confronted by people who were virulently anti-gun. They kind of forced me to reckon with what I really believe and establish my own beliefs. Ironically, had i not been confronted by antis, i would probably not care that much one way or another about guns. But I retreated to the internet and did my research. I started by looking at pictures and admiring the aesthetics. Then I joined the rec.guns forum because it's pretty much all we had back then. Then I started reading Kim DuToit's blog and learned even more. Toward the end of college, i ended up establishing a gun club for the school and really got a lot of attention for it!!!
At this point, the disease has spread and I am a hopeless cause.

Long story short- my father is where it began but anti's are where it really gelled for me.

I don't really know where my initial interest came from, maybe talking to my grandfather, maybe video games; who knows? However, I know my first experience and what spurred me to further my knowledge regarding guns came from my father. He took me shooting for the first time with just a .22 handgun and his snubnosed .38 special.

I don't remember how old I was, 14 or 15 I'm pretty sure. The one thing that stood out the most was the noise, I never expected them to be so loud or to concuss you so much. That line of thought probably stemmed from watching action movies where nobody wears ear pro. Despite my family firmly resisting my interest and learning about guns, they've eventually accepted it.

When I was about 10 or so my dad gave me a pellet gun, and taught me how to shoot, and respect for firearms. Then I stepped up to shooting his Ruger Mk 2, and finally his 1911. First real rifle I shot was one of his .45cal muzzleloaders, then a .54cal. Next came a SKS, then finally the 300 Weatherby. My dad is completely responsible for my interest in firearms, and also my skill in using them. He also got me started in reloading. I still shoot with my dad on a regular basis, and don't plan to stop any time soon.

Dear old dad got me started with his guidance and then compounded the issue with copys of Shooters bible, American Rifleman and Guns and Ammo. At an age when most kids were reading comic books I had my nose in a reloading manuel.

Guns were always a part of my family when I was growing up. My mom had 2 revolvers, one from her mom and one from an old boyfriend. She used them more than once to chase off attackers when she was between husbands.

My older brothers were into guns and hunting (one became a gunsmith), and took me shooting and hunting with them, starting when I was 5. I got my first BB gun when I was 6, and my first long gun when I was 11 (22/410 over & under).

I bought my first pistol when I was 22, and never thought much about getting others until I transferred to a college with a vocal anti-gun staff at the newspaper. They prompted me to get "several" more and become a pro-gun activist. Sometimes jerks serve a useful purpose!

Hunters on both sides of my family, and came from an area where hunting was not just for food, but many folks' dads and grand-dads had made a living with their shotguns for at least part of the year, market gunning on the Chesapeake Bay. Spent many a long weekend afternoon with either grandpop or my dad or an uncle or cousin plinking on my uncle's farm or grand-dad's woods property.

Shooting was always the fun part for me, though, more than all the other hunting skill sets, and I'd started buying issues of Guns & Ammo and haunting all the local gun shops in a 30 mile radius by the time I was 14 or so. Went off to college and discovered the smallbore rifle team -- eventually was Captain for a year, went to Camp Perry. Competed in some sort of shooting sports pretty much constantly ever since.

My dad owned a single-shot .22 rifle and his WWII 1911. He left that 1911, loaded, on the nightstand, 24/7. We kids knew it was there and never messed with it.

I remember him letting me shoot both the .22 rifle and the 1911, probably one or two rounds of each, on several occasions, probably several years apart. We could sit in the attic and shoot through the back yard into the woods behind. Nothing but a wooded hill back there.

I remember my dad shooting a crow with that .22. We went out and picked it up off the snow, lifeless and bloody.

That gave me an appreciation for how deadly that mere .22 was. A perfect lesson, without a single spoken word.

I remember carrying it back, holding it by its wingtips, and its wingspan was as large as mine. I must have been pretty small, or that crow must have been pretty decent-sized.

I don't remember my brother or sister being invited to observe or participate--I was the eldest, and in those days that meant something.

He left our family when I was 12, but had sold the 1911 several years prior, to fund a special barbecue/dinner for his parents/my grandparents 50th anniversary. I never figured out what happened to the .22.

In HS, I hung out with a kid whose father had more money than brains, and gave his son access to a .300 Savage rifle and a shotgun, but no training or supervision. We never did anything monumentally stupid, or at least nothing with permanent consequences. Thank God.

I joined the military after high school (1977), and that re-kindled my interest in firearms, although I was sporadic for a while. Had a good friend who won a Rem 870 in a raffle, and he got interested. I learned a lot from him, and got more interested myself. This was early 80s. This same friend got me into handloading about 6-7 years ago. I owe him a lot--a great friend and a good man.

Since then, it's been an ongoing interest, and as my earning power has increased, I have been able to dedicate more time/resources to it. When I moved to a Free State almost ten years ago, I got my CHL and now spend a bit more time/money in firearm-related pursuits. My wife would call that an understatement.

No one in my family were interested in guns or hunting, although I had a fascination/admiration for firearms that started at a very young age.

When in my late 20's, a friend bought a T/C Contender in 22LR, and we would go to a mutual friend's house and shoot on a make shift range. I was hooked!

I took the initiative to get licensed and soon purchase my first firearms. Since then I've been deeply involved with shooting and competition along with reloading, although I have no desire to hunt (I have tried hunting...it's not for me) My son was about 8 or so when this occurred, and he grew up with firearms. We're all in

orionengnr said:

I remember my dad shooting a crow with that .22. We went out and picked it up off the snow, lifeless and bloody.

That gave me an appreciation for how deadly that mere .22 was. A perfect lesson, without a single spoken word.

I remember carrying it back, holding it by its wingtips, and its wingspan was as large as mine. I must have been pretty small, or that crow must have been pretty decent-sized.

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orionengr, I had an experience to this one. My grandfather had taught me how to shoot a bit and had given me a 22 rifle for my 12th birthday. I did a whole lot of plinking of tin cans and paper targets behind our barn with that thing, always with either my dad or my mother supervising.

One day I walked outside to see my mother perched atop the hill in our backyard with my rifle. When I asked her what she was doing, she said "I'm going to get that snapping turtle at last." About 30 yards away, I could see the snapping turtle that had been terrorizing the ducks and fish in our pond rearing its ugly head. A loud CRACK later, that ugly sucker was history.

I learned two important things from that experience. One, much like your experience, I learned that guns are powerful, even my little 22 rifle. Two, I learned that my dear mother, who was a small woman and never weighed more than 110 pounds soaking wet, was a crack shot!

My mother was deathly afraid of guns, so the largest caliber allowed in the house was a Benjamin .177 cal pellet gun.
I killed many a coffee can with that gun.
I wonder what ever happened to it?

I rec'd basic instruction at Boy Scout summer camp.
I went 5 times in 4 years - age 12-16.

When I finished high school, I joined the Army.
Rec'd LOTS of instruction there.

My story is kinda strange. My feather is an avid hunter, and taught me how to shoot rifles and shotguns, but 95% of our shooting was either sighting in the rifles, or out in the fields. I was never into hunting, so I never shot that much when I was younger, and lost interest in shooting because my dad rarely went plinking. Meanwhile, my mother was somewhat anti gun growing up (they've been divorced since I was very young). It's ironic because she got into guns a few years ago, got her CPL and everything. She got me back into guns. She paid for my CPL class for my 21st birthday.

The three people most influential in my shooting have been my grandfather, a classmate's older brother, and my youngest son.

My grandfather taught me to shoot when I was young enough that I had to prop his Winchester 67 on something because I could not hold up its 27" barrel by myself. I spent many visits to his farm happily plinking (soda bottle caps were the preferred targets) or hunting squirrels.

My shooting went into remission after my family moved to another state, but I was introduced to pistol shooting in high school. A classmate's older brother was a cadet at West Point and he took us shooting nearly daily one summer during his home leave. And we were not shooting just any old pistol; the guy had used a chunk of his cadet pay to buy a shiny, new Colt Python.

Although I bought a few guns, my shooting was limited for years as I moved from broke college student, to broke newlywed, to broke young parent. When my youngest son was between his freshman and sophomore years in college, he casually told me he wanted to go shooting with me the next time I went to the range. I immediately made arrangements to go shooting that weekend and weekly range trips became our bonding time for several years. While life's demands no longer allow us to shoot weekly, we still go as often as possible.

Like a lot of others here, guns were tools that go as far back as any memories I have.
Dad wasn't so much a "gun guy" as he was a hunter, and his tools were mainly shotguns and .22s, and he loaded most of his own shotgun shells. He did own a few other rifles that were seldom shot. (at least until my brother & I got older)

Moms brothers were hunters as well, but they also shot those fascinating ( to me) centerfire rifles with scopes. The first time I watched a groundhog fall from clear across a field at the hand of one of my uncles and either a .22/250 or .270, I knew I just had to learn more about those wonderful tools.

None of my family handloaded rifle rounds until I took the plunge in the mid seventies, and nothing I currently load means as much as when my uncle still occasionally stops by with a batch of empty .270 cases for me to "fill up" again for that same fifty year old rifle.

My family as I had a number of people to get me going in that direction. A couple of uncle's & friends. My dad gave me my first serious gun a BB gun that was an exact model of an M1 carbine. Next a .22LR rifle. After I got my shotgun, I went into the military and after that, I was hooked! Started reloading & things just got more fun! When my kids came along taught them & now started with grandsons!

When I was about seven, my dad brought home a Daisy BB gun, replica of a Model 94 ... made a little range in our basement with cardboard box BB traps. First "real gun" I ever handled was the beautiful Stevens single-shot .22 t(he wood and the bluing was superb) his dad had passed down to him when he was a boy (think the rifle was made back in the '20s -- haven't seen it for years, but I can wait -- Dad's still with us, thank the Lord).

Dad taught me gun safety rules when he gave me my first BB guns (which, truth be told, I didn't always observe, particularly when I shot at my brother's butt from about thirty feet away ... he was wearing his "snowpants" ... quite a tussle ensued ... killed a robin -- the state bird in the backyard, felt guilty about that for years).

Even the we lived in the city then, we had pheasant hunting in the fields and farms right on the edge of town, duck and goose hunting in the winter, and of course, whitetail in the fall. Growing up in SE Michigan in the '60s was paradise.

krupparms said

My dad gave me my first serious gun a BB gun that was an exact model of an M1 carbine.

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Hey, that was my second BB gun! Made by Crosman, real wood stock, stored BBs in the detachable magazine, pumped the barrel to the rear to charge (keeping finger off trigger and not putting a finger over the muzzle ... whoopsy, painful lesson).

Oh, and the handgun love started by watching Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger -- I thought the Colt Peacemaker was the coolest thing in the world -- later, the WWII shows like "Combat" and "Rat Patrol" turned me on to my lifetime love for the 1911.

Growing up in an "guns are fine just not for us" family, I never received any formal or informal training. My first real class on a firearm outside video games was by a Master Sergeant wearing a certain type of foliage green head gear teaching me on a M16A2. To this day I still remember how he worded his lessons on marksmanship fundamentals.

My dad was into guns, particularly .22 target rifles, when he was a kid and shot Expert when he was in the Army during WWII. But after he came home he really had no interest in anything having to do with guns. Of course that didn't stop my brothers and I from developing a healthy interest in toy guns and then later BB guns. So I suppose in a way we were our own mentors, pretty much learning and sharing our firearms interests with each other.

Reading these shows a common thread - dad. I was not so fortunate to have a dad in my life growing up. I am now nearing 60 and have two kids of my own. Both shoot, my daughter actually more than my son. I didn't spend as much time with them shooting as I probably should have. They were involved in every activity under the sun growing up and we wouldn't change a thing if we had it to do over. I was a teacher back then and money was always tight, very tight so that was a factor as well.

God bless each of you dads who has handed down an interest in firearms to your children. Primarily spending the time with them is vital. I am now a principal and know what a difference it makes.

Thanks for sharing everyone! I enjoyed reading the different accounts of how each came to love shooting.

I fell in love with my first bb gun at the age of 12 and have been mildly obsessed ever since. I simply love the process of shooting and all that comes with it (except maybe the cost). The relaxation and focus of each shot, the satisfaction of a can falling over or a center-punched target, and the enjoyment of learning about the acquiring the various guns and equipment involved in shooting have always been what brought me to it and keeps me coming back for more, and more, and more, and more!

My dad had a couple shotguns and a 22 magnum, but those were rarely ever used. Shooting has mostly been a solitary activity for me (until recently). I don’t have any great memories of shooting with a dad or grandpa. Now of course I’m teaching my kids and shooting isn’t normally a solo trip anymore! I trust one day my kids will love shooting because of our time spent at the range and in the field.