Andrew Rothman
Member
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0725/123.html (requires registration)
Kiddies With Carbines
Dyan Machan, 07.25.05
Mom, Dad and Junior all can have a blast on a shooting-school vacation.
Samantha Tibbetts, 5, wears a pink T shirt with a lady on it carrying a sparkly purse. She squirms in her chair. Tibbetts, with big blue eyes and long blonde hair, is sitting in a classroom. But it's a classroom whose walls are cinder block, and her teacher, Paul, has a rifle cradled in his lap. Paul asks the nine kids, ages 5 to 16, to name the parts of the gun. "Can you say ‘trigger?'"
They can. But they'd rather pull one. These kids are at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute near Las Vegas--one of several family-friendly firing ranges springing up around the U.S. Kids learn nomenclature and safety while Mom and Dad take higher caliber instruction--"Handgun Combat Master," for example, or "Uzi Submachine Gun at Night."
Tibbetts, impatient, raises her small hand. "Can we shoot now?" Two other girls, Bethany LaBarge, 10, and Emma Stapleton, 8, are using felt-tip markers to draw shamrocks and hearts on their Styrofoam cups. They have a right to be bored. They already know the material. During class LaBarge explained the difference between a shotgun and rifle. Their families have come here on vacation five times in three years.
As for the Tibbetts, they switch annually between Disneyland and Front Sight. "It's hard to say which we like more," says Wayne Tibbetts, 49, a CPA and partner in a Mesa, Ariz. tax firm.
Five years ago Front Sight saw little such business. Now 15% of the 10,000 shooters it trains each year are vacationing families. Programs run by Glock and Smith & Wesson report similar upticks. The National Rifle Association debuted a "family camp" program in 2004.
Andrew Massimilian of Manhattan Shooting Excursions caters to affluent New Yorkers who want to shoot without having to go through the bother of getting permits. He transports them and their kids to ranges in New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Connecticut. Says Massimilian, "I am seeing more families who want to lock and load for the thrill of it."
State legislatures, meantime, have made that thrill more attainable. Ohio and Minnesota are the latest to pass laws permitting citizens to carry concealed weapons. Today 38 states issue "concealed carry" permits, up from 14 in 1990.
"Usually men come first. Then they come back and bring their wife and kids," says Front Sight founder Ignatius Piazza, a former chiropractor. Wayne Tibbetts first came in 2004 with his daughter Tracy, 19. The rest of the family soon followed. This weekend in April he's attending with his wife, Kathleen, 43, daughters Tracy and Samantha, his brother George, and his mother-in-law, Janet Grimaldi. "9/11 brought home our deep concerns for security," says Kathy. "We wanted our kids to be able to protect themselves. I want Samantha to have ‘stranger-danger' awareness. Of course, she's also having a good time."
Front Sight teaches kids to "trust their feelings" around "tricky" people. It also preaches firearms safety. Children memorize what they must do when and if they encounter a gun:"Stop. Don't touch. Leave the area and tell an adult."
On the firing range, under an unforgiving sun, Samantha presses up against her cheek the stock of a Chipmunk 22 by Rogue Rifle Co. She shoots at a square paper target. Older kids fire submachine guns, shotguns or handguns. James Minner, 14, was visiting Front Sight with his sister Sheila, 17, and parents, Gary and Sherry Minner of Delavan, Ill. We asked James if he had any previous shooting experience. "Yes," he said.
"What guns have you shot?"
"I shot a .44 magnum revolver, .44 magnum rifle."
"Really?"
"... And .22 rifles, .223 caliber rifles, .410 caliber, 20- and 12-gauge shotguns, an over-and-under single shotgun, an AK-47 and an AR 15 rifle [civilian M-16]." I stopped writing. James kept listing.
Shooting instructor Charlene, an off-duty Las Vegas cop, takes down Samantha's target. Most of the 5-year-old's shots have found home. Samantha, clutching her paper, runs to show her mother.
"Daddy will be so pleased," says Kathy Tibbetts, hugging her daughter. She and Wayne have themselves been busy:she in a defensive handgun program, he in a four-day rifle course. "It's hard to express how much Front Sight means to us," says Wayne. "We come away with a real sense of accomplishment." Daughter Tracy, her red hair done up in a ponytail, says that what she likes best about a shooting vacation is that she gets "good Daddy-time." "When he says, ‘Good job, Trace,' I'm euphoric."
There's little to do here, an hour west of Las Vegas, besides shoot. There are no cold sodas. No food. No bathrooms--just portable toilets. The nearest town is Pahrump, Nev., whose most famous citizen is late-night radio talk show host Art Bell--authority on Big Foot, Nostradamus and alien abductions. Billboards advertise fireworks, bordellos (legal) and jerky.
Says Wes LaHuillier, the former deputy sheriff who is Front Sight's range master, "We're professionals and not hoodlums shooting refrigerators in the desert." During my defensive handgun course I asked two guys in faded T shirts why they had come. They looked at each other. "Truth is, we kinda like to shoot appliances in the desert," said one sheepishly.
For families wanting more luxury, there's Valhalla Shooting Club & Training Center at Elk Mountain Resort near Telluride, Colo. It's as plush as Front Sight is spare. Lest anyone mistake it for a conventional resort, however, its baseball caps bear the motto "Take No Prisoners. Eat Their Wounded." Owner Thomas Forman, 39, a former professional wrestler, has broken his nose 22 times. His left collar bone is steel, as are parts of his left foot and spine.
Spending a vacation at Valhalla, Forman notes, is better than "being locked up on a cruise ship." Indeed, most ships don't have horseback riding or five-stand skeet shooting with silver-etched 28-gauge Beretta shotguns. Though the place is crying for a little landscaping (the hotel has been open only a year), its 18 three-bedroom cottages have 30-foot cathedral ceilings, hot tubs and 380-thread-count sheets. There's ATV riding, mountain biking, rock climbing and fine dining.
On a recent weekend, families staying included Randy, 43, and his son, Nathan, 13, from Chicago. They'd come more for father-son fun than for shooting. "I'm not a big gun guy," says Randy, a sales director for a pharmaceutical company.
The centerpiece of Valhalla's self-defense and shooting program is its scenario house--something like a haunted house at an amusement park, except that participants are given guns with deadly but frangible (ricochet-proof) bullets. Your movements trip infrared sensors that activate sounds, lights and smoke. "It was really fun," says Nathan, "More fun than paintball." You move from room to room, kicking open doors and killing artificial bad folk who pop out at you. One room is set up to look like a subway station, others like an urban alleyway, a convenience store and a smoky bar. It's a James Bondian experience--or, in my case, Maxwell Smartian. In the smoky bar I inadvertently shot an innocent bystander (simulated) who was brandishing a credit card.
