Have you been shooting longer than I've been alive?

[ExSoldier]

Lessee, I'm 50 now and have been an NRA Instructor since I was about 30. Introduced to guns by my dad at age FOUR. 46 years total? WOW. I think that if someone wants to guess my age in the future they're going to have to cut me in half and count my rings.

 

[GBExpat]

Fired my first shot on a visit to my maternal grandfather's farm (I now live in a house on the west side of that farm) when I was, probably, 6 or 7, so I've been shooting for ~48-49 years.

 

[Vitamin G]

I don't really count air rifles and beercan plinking as a boy. I guess i "grew out" of it in high school. I was lucky enough to have a father that was willing to "let me use his legally-purchased-for-himself Ruger Mark II", any time I wanted, for a large up-front fee.
I went out regularly to the range then, sometimes burning through two bricks of .22lr in a day. Man, those were the days. Eventually that too faded, and from about 20-23yrs old i didn't have much interest in guns, shooting or collecting.


Then came 9/11.

 

[Chipperman]

I'm in the 26-30 year section.

Quite frankly, I'm shocked that almost 30% of the responders have been involved with guns for >41 years.


Who taught all of these old people how to use a computer?

 

[bsf]

Have you been shooting longer than I've been alive?

Well, you are going to tell us how old you are if we can answer that, do you not think?

 

[JohnBT]

"Who taught all of these old people how to use a computer?"

Piece of cake compared to doing advanced math using a slide rule or starting a car with a manual choke during the winter.

I was self taught on pcs. The 5.25" floppy was high tech and my pc didn't even have a hard drive. I got an RGB monitor before I got a hard drive because those 20MB drives were $400 or $500. I did have the upgrade to
640k though. The other folks in the office were struggling on Apple II's and some old clunker Kaypro II running CP/M OS. Not a bad pc, but I never did figure out the Wordstar commands.

Now buying a pc takes about as much effort as buying a toaster at WalMart. But they work better.

John

 

[Hooptie]

24 years young and been shooting for close to 15 years.

 

[CnRcollector]

My WWII combat vet dad taught me to shoot a rifle when I was 10, was a junior member of NRA until I joined the Navy, then became Life Member in '66. Been slowly accumulating & shooting ever since.

 

[Mongo the Mutterer]

Wow, we really are a bunch of cranky old farts...

I have it on good authority that I am, but the rest of you now are on notice....

 

[JohnBT]

Actually, if you figure that the top category includes folks from 40 to 80+, the total in the groups from 0 to 40 is more than twice as large.

398 vs. 171.

John

 

[slabsides]

I'm 72. That means I've been shooting for 67 years, as I started at age 5-1/2. You do learn some stuff in that length of time, devoted to a single interest.

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

While I shot my first gun nearly 40 years ago (and liked it), I did not really become a firearms enthusiast (i.e., made it my hobby/pastime) until the early 1980s.

 

[Stevie-Ray]

Shot my first real gun 42 years ago. Received my first real gun 39 years ago.