My wife

[rellascout]

Again, I am not disagreeing with starting someone on a .22 who wants to start on a .22, but if after a range session, a mag, three shots or whatnot they are eyeing something "more exciting" ... please don't sit there and thump that one "ought to" start on a .22.
"Ought to" or the notion thereof is something I think best avoided, especially when the point of the exercise is to breed a passion.

Sorry but I disagree with you 100%. You are offering up poor advice and you are going to do the person you are teaching a disservice. There are sound reasons to start with a 22. There is a right way and a wrong way to learn a skill. When you start with a heavier caliber you are fighting heavier recoil and a louder more forceful discharge which new shooters anticipate and attempt to correct for. This is the #1 source of poor grip, flinching and jerking the trigger IHMO.

Think of it this way. If you are learning to play golf you do not pull out the driver and start swnging away. A beginner lacks the skills to control the driver and hit the ball where it needs to go. You start with a wedged or lofted club. You work on the basic swing. You learn and correct your form. You practice practice practice with the easier club until you have mastered it. Once you can control the lofted clubs at shorter distances then you can start to effectively pick up and use the drivers and the flat faced clubs. You will not find a golf instructor in the world who is going to take a person who has never swung a golf club to the range and hand them a driver.

Teaching someone to shoot a gun is no different. The reason I like to start everyone off with a 22 is because it is easier to control. The recoil is almost non-existent and the sound does not distract a new shooter. This allows you to build solid fundamental. A new shooter needs time on a trigger to develop sound fundamental. 22LR is cheap and allows one to do this. Correcting a shooter on a 22LR is easier in my experience.

In my experience it is harder to teach on a larger caliber. Can it be done. Sure it can but it is not ideal. Why set someone up for failure? One of the rolls as a instructor or teacher is to teach someone correctly and in the correct manner. Remember once you establish poor shooting habits and they become ingrained they are harder to correct. Many of us did not learn on a 22. I did not. Looking back on it I would have been much better served if I had. I would have shot more rounds for less money and would have developed better fundamentals faster. In the end its not about restricting someone. Its not about gender I give the same advice to men as I do women. Its about the proper way to teach a skill.

I think the #1 and #2 mistakes new shooters make is not getting trained on the basics and picking too large a caliber and developing poor habits as a result. YMMV Also the concept of forcing a grown adult male or female into doing something like shooting a 22LR against their will or wishes is absurd on its face. When you are teaching someone you are not forcing them to do anything you are instructing them based on your knowledge and experience which at that point is superior to theirs. Just like a teacher or and instructor of any skill would do. If the person does not want to heed your advice and take the instruction then they are not really looking to be taught are they....

 

[rellascout]

I love how everyone gets themselves all worked up as if recommending starting with a 22LR is a gender issue. It is not. It is a fundementals issue and maximizing trigger time issue. It does not matter if you are a man or a women. If you are a new shooter to get proficent you need trigger time and sound fundementals and correction.

You can shoot 550 round of 22lr for less than $15.00. 550 rounds of 9mm will cost you $110+ and that is the cheapest of the "larger" calibers and IMHO due to the nature of the round the 22LR trigger time early will be more productive. A new shooter needs thousand and thousands of rounds to become proficent IMHO. Again it has nothing to do with gender. It has to do with how to properly develop and skill like shooting.

 

[Nushif]

And I am *still* not disagreeing with starting on a .22.

But let's take a concrete example here.

I take new shooter X out to the range for the first time, and I bring a .22. New shooter X is excited at first, shoots a couple mags of .22, has passable groups, passable form and well, kinda likes it! Great!
After a couple of mags they say ... "Hey, this is fun and all, but like ... can we do something exciting?" Now, I have options here.

I can say "Well, I'd rather not, because the .22 is the ideal learning tool and really, a beginner should just stick to that. We'll get to shooting something more fun when you can shoot a <insert some kind of decent group here>."
Alternatively I can say "Sure, how about we throw in a couple of mags of 9mm, then some .45 and maybe a .45 Colt .... and then we can go back to teaching the basics, with some cheaper ammo."

And this is what I'm talking about. In some other thread we had a guy who wouldn't let people shoot anything other than a .22 until they could hit a 3x5 card at like fifteen yards every time. Now, granted, I may be misremembering this, but I don't see how this is going to help introduce someone to the sport who really loves watching fruit explode and is just kinda dipping their feet, in the first place.
We have to keep the end-goal of our instructee in mind. And let's face it, while good marksmanship is a very important aspect of shooting, if we have someone who is desperately itching to play USPSA or something along those lines, don't impose sort of 1 shot every three seconds rule on them, if you want to retain them.
As my current CO said to BN staff the other day "I know we're very proud of the job we're doing, but let's get out to the range and burn some ammo some time, because we do enjoy the HuaHua stuff, too."

Always going to back to the doctrinal "ALL NEW SHOOTERS I INSTRUCT MUST START ON A .22 UNTIL THEY CAN SHOOT GROUPS MOST CASUAL GUN OWNERS DREAM OF" is useful to someone who wants to be a great shot, but not to someone who is interested in the hobby, and likes fruit exploding, or zombieshooting, or emptying a mag or whatever.

Maybe it's because I go to "non-Ranges" and open ranges exclusively, but I find it very rare to see a casual shooter who truly and genuinely is interested in superior marksmanship. Most are there to have a good time first and foremost. Good shooting comes when they see someone else produce a one hole group at five yards the second time they ever touched that particular gun and say "Hey! I wanna do that!"

[edit]

Oh yeah, back on topic ... I think the best way in the OPs case to introduce your wife is to take a course with her. The two of you, some strangers, an instructor you like and if they offer it, like they do here ... a series, right after each other: The CCW class, the "tactical gun handling" flavour class, then a few weeks later, the "several hundred rounds class."
Builds a great legal, safety and then confidence base.

 

[rellascout]

And this is what I'm talking about. In some other thread we had a guy who wouldn't let people shoot anything other than a .22 until they could hit a 3x5 card at like fifteen yards every time. Now, granted, I may be misremembering this, but I don't see how this is going to help introduce someone to the sport who really loves watching fruit explode and is just kinda dipping their feet, in the first place.
We have to keep the end-goal of our instructee in mind. And let's face it, while good marksmanship is a very important aspect of shooting, if we have someone who is desperately itching to play USPSA or something along those lines, don't impose sort of 1 shot every three seconds rule on them, if you want to retain them.
As my current CO said to BN staff the other day "I know we're very proud of the job we're doing, but let's get out to the range and burn some ammo some time, because we do enjoy the HuaHua stuff, too."

Always going to back to the doctrinal "ALL NEW SHOOTERS I INSTRUCT MUST START ON A .22 UNTIL THEY CAN SHOOT GROUPS MOST CASUAL GUN OWNERS DREAM OF" is useful to someone who wants to be a great shot, but not to someone who is interested in the hobby, and likes fruit exploding, or zombieshooting, or emptying a mag or whatever.

There is a huge difference in my book between a causal shooter who like to see fruit explode and someone who is choosing to learn how to shoot a gun with the end goal of conceal carry. I do not see the skill of being able to defend your life with a handgun a sport. I consider it more of a life skill. Maybe that is where we are at odds on this one. To me the OPs wife is not looking to pick up a new hobby she is trying to learn how to defend herself with a pistol.

Now if you are talking about causal shooting without the roll of self defense then that is a different story. Some people definitely just like to hear the gun go bang and hope they hit the target so it can explode. However, I personally think your assessment of even these types of shooters is not accurate. Most people would like to be better shots they simply do not know how to improve or are not willingly to what it takes to improve. No one lives to be a poor shot. LOL

For these people a quick safety lesson is all that is required. Teach them how to operate a gun safely. Help them get into a decent stance. Show them how to grip a the pistol and let them shoot. For new shooters I often loan 1 round at a time until they are demonstrating proper and safe handling then I load it up and let them have fun but that isn't what really teaching someone to shoot is it? I have done this type of introduction to firearms so many times I have lost count.

OP states:

wants to learn to shoot. Im thinking on starting her with a 22/22wmr single action. Then let her work her way up to something bigger. Her goal is to get a carry permit. Do you think that this is a good route to go. Thanks

If I am going to be defending my life with a pistol on a daily I am going to take it a bit more seriously than I would shooting watermelons down on the farm. I took the OP to mean the wife has little to no firearms experience but whats to carry and is looking for the best path to develop the skills necessary to do that effectively and safely. In my book that ain't the same as wanting to watch fruit exploded.

 

[Nushif]

I would say at first it is ... coming especially from the Army ranges I've attended, the people who shot worst were usually people utterly aware of the deadliness of a weapon, and the fear of having to use it to defend their lives, without any kind of "comfort" usage, such as the proverbial watermelon.

I take my courses seriously, but I think what helped me in getting comfortable with shooting in the context of CCW training ... was that I was inherently comfortable with a gun before even thinking about carrying one daily. And that happened with a simple safety brief and some end of season pumpkins first.
It has been my observation that the "horribly bad shooting little petite soldiers simply not cut out for this" seem utterly unable to train come from the stock that has always viewed guns as tool to save or take lives, and not the personal enjoyment, so to me it seems exceedingly important to train comfort into someone before training marksmanship in any kind of serious capacity, ya dig?

 

[rellascout]

I take my courses seriously, but I think what helped me in getting comfortable with shooting in the context of CCW training ... was that I was inherently comfortable with a gun before even thinking about carrying one daily. And that happened with a simple safety brief and some end of season pumpkins first.
It has been my observation that the "horribly bad shooting little petite soldiers simply not cut out for this" seem utterly unable to train come from the stock that has always viewed guns as tool to save or take lives, and not the personal enjoyment, so to me it seems exceedingly important to train comfort into someone before training marksmanship in any kind of serious capacity, ya dig?

See there you go with the gender thing again.

If that works for you great. For me the serious nature of the task and responsibility that you have chosen when you choose to CCW is not to be taken lightly. There will be no joy if I have to shoot another human being in defense of myself or another person in immanent harm.

That does not mean I do not enjoy shooting guns I certainly do but the seriousness of them and what they can be called upon to do never leaves my mind. For me shooting is a skill which I am attempting to get better at. The enjoyment factor is the icing on the cake.

 

[Nushif]

For me shooting is a skill which I am attempting to get better at. The enjoyment factor is the icing on the cake.

Coming from me the statement would read:
"For me shooting is an activity I enjoy. The fact that with training and practice my skill improves is icing on the cake."

So I guess we're at an impasse of sorts, I think we can both agree quality training is an essential component of self defense via a gun, but I don't think we can agree on the context of the training.

 

[BCRider]

Rellascout, why do the two concepts of shooting for fun and shooting for defense have to be mutually exclusive?

From your posts you're obviously the sort that focuses on something like this very narrowly and wants to excell at it. Which is fine for you and many others. To you the handgun is a tool which allows you to be prepared. Or do you use it for competitive matches as well?

But a lot of folks will balk and loose intrest more easily. For them a program that is a blend of some skill progression mixed in with some "fruit desctruction" will highten the fun factor and keep them interested. They won't be any less capable when they come out the other end of the training. They'll just be more rounded and have some smiles.