Were you an armed child?

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blkbrd666

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All the age arguments about 18 vs 21, responsible people, and the right to carry on campus made me think of something.

How many of you grew up on a farm, ranch, etc. and carried a rifle or pistol with you all the time as a kid(not goat) but a pre-teen? Did anyone's parents or grandparents view them as responsible enough to carry a gun out checking fences, feeding animals, squirrel hunting, etc. at a young age? If so, how young?

Example: I went straight from spring operated BB gun to .22 lever action and missed out on the pellet rifle stage that all my friends went through. I am trying to track down the exact manufacture date of my first .22 to determine when it was given to me...I remember being very young.
 
Didn't own a firearm until I was in my late 20's but grew up with a Crossman 760 (that I still have). Spent my childhood with my buddies running through the woods all day, sharpening my aim. Wouldn't have traded that for anything.

I feel sorry for the Nintendo generation.
 
I didn't grow up with guns, but dart pistols, rubber band guns, and regular toy guns were all over the place. Dad being a Marine, I still wasn't allowed to point anything but a supersoaker in an unsafe direction, because even toy rifles are always loaded.

I inherited my first guns when my grandmother passed away when I was 16, bought my first firearm at 19, and at 22, i've already bought 8 guns and sold 1, and I'm getting ready for another when my tax refund comes!
 
I got my first gun at age 6.Been hunting on my own since I was 11 years old.Always had a gun handy as a teenager.Been carrying a handgun full time since i was 18.
 
I've been shooting/hunting since I was about 10. (40 years) Didn't go solo for a couple of years after. I still have the old Winchester single shot .22 I learned to shoot with.

I didn't grow up on a farm but there was plenty of hills and hollers behind our house.

... didn't get a BB gun until I was 12. Never did have a pellet gun.
 
You could say that ... shootin' BB guns at six years of age or so (trusted by dad to do so unsupervised by nine or ten years old), first .22 rifle at age 12, first handgun at age 16 ...

I grew up back in the day when the sight of three or four adolescent boys carrying .22 rifles on the outskirts of town or along the railroad tracks, just plinkin' away at cans and such, didn't alarm anyone, wouldn't get the SWAT van mobilized, the police helicopter (and the Channel 7 news chopper) overhead ...

Heck, it was common for us to keep our deer rifles or shotguns in our cars in plain sight or in the gun racks in our pickups in the high school parking lot during hunting seasons.
 
Was I an armed child?

Yes, I was.

At the age of 13, on my own authority, and by my own power, I began carrying with me everywhere I went the folding knife I had purchased with money that I had earned.

It was both a tool, and an unapologetic lethal weapon.

I retired that knife with honor a few years ago, I still have it.

I also shot sporadically as a pre-teen.
 
I started out shooting with my dad and 5 older brothers. He would take us out to an old bridge to shoot paint cans a couple of times a month.

Then the parents decided I needed a bb gun to shoot while we were at the deer lease. I don't remember what kind it was, but it was a lever action.

Also, they bought a youth bow set for me that I stayed in trouble with...(The brothers would have the deer hanging in the tree for cleaning and I would ambush the deer) The bow eventually got taken away.

I then moved up to a pellet gun. I don't recall the brand of it either, but I got it when I was 7. It was lethal on squirrels, and I kept the population down. A seal or something finally broke on it when I was about 12.

On with the Benjamin Sheridan. I got it shortly after the other rifle broke. Extremely accurate and fun to shoot. Had it 'til I was 14, then got bored with it after my mom gave me the J.C. Higgins 101.7 .410 SXS. All of the sudden, the pellet rifles weren't as fun anymore. So I traded the Sheridan in at the pawnshop when I was 18 and added 40 dollars with it and got a Winchester .22. It was semiauto, but I don't remember the model number, 60 or 90 or maybe 190. I do remember it was priced at 80 bucks.

I was also pretty destructive with a screwdriver...Just ask the older brother who took the nintendo control away from me while I was playing Tetris...
 
Armed Early

Received a Winchester Boy's Rifle .22 for Christmas when I was eight. That would have been December 1952. I still have my first Daisy air rifle and the Winchester. Got a handgun before a driver's license, was an Iver Johnson Trailsman 66 breaktop .22. Traded it for a Ruger Single Six after the IJ went back to the factory twice for timing issues.

When I was in junior high school, I could check out a .22 rifle from the Science Teacher and take it home for the weekend. On the school bus. And he sold .22 standard velocity for $.50 a box of 50.

Times has changed some...

Coyote
 
I grew up in a rural setting. I got a BB gun for Christmas at 5 years old and a SEARS pump .22 at age 8. I didn't carry a weapon all of the time but I had access to firearms all of the time. It wasn't uncommon for me and my friends to carry .22's unsupervised in the foothills at age 9 or 10. I look back on that now and even as well as I've trained my son (far more formal training than I received) I would not allow him to do the same thing. In retrospect Child Protective Services would have take children from parents for doing as mine did this day and age. My parents were good parents and none of this was abnormal back then. I did lose a friend at age 14 while spinning a .22 pistol (hammer back) on his finger. The gun discharged into his heart and he bled to death before an ambulance could arrive. I wasn't there but another friend was and witnessed it happen. It affected him for the rest of his life (he's now gone also). My father used to take me shooting quite a bit. He was an amazing shot and could routinely shoot a thrown bottle out of the air with a pistol and I even saw him shoot a penny out of the air with a .22 rifle. Once I saw him take a hen pheasant at 75 yards out of the air with a .22 rifle. This is the old my dad is better than your dad but seriously he could do it. He used to tell me that they didn't have anything else to do when he was growing up. He either worked on the farm or was shooting .22's Funny thing is I don't remember doing anything really stupid with guns once passed I got passed the BB gun stage. We were taught how to use firearms and used them they way they were meant to be used. We took hunters safety at 8 or 10 years of age (required to get a hunting license at age 12) and had to qualify with .22's to complete the course. We were carrying weapons and hunting pheasant at age 12 and deer at age 16 under adult supervision. I bought my new first semi auto pistol (in my own name and without dad) at age 18, I've never stopped since that day. It was a S&W 9 mm model 39 (as I remember) that had a trigger slop of about an inch. It's the only gun I've ever purchased that I've sold. My how times have changed.
 
Was I an armed child?

Yep.

I was born in 1955 and upon being brought home from being born, a .22 revolver was placed in my dresser drawer crib, along with a Case Peanut, and other items a Southern Boy should have.

I shot my gun at age 3.
Handguns age 3, rifles age 4 and shotguns at age 5.
I was given a gun to CCW at age 8.

I wagged a gun everywhere, granted in the early years, my revolver rifle and shotgun - had adults assist, still I wagged them going places.

Get bigger, and no problem for me, and other kids, to head out to shoot by ourselves.
One was not dressed without a knife in the pocket.

We took guns to school, even in the first grade, for show and tell.
Heck in elementary school we had BB Guns we shot indoors on bad days and outside when the weather was nice.

Jr High, same deal. Heck we brought guns to school to mess with in Shop classes, both wood and metal shop.

Sr High, same deal, plus we hunted before school, had guns in vehicles as we were going to hunt after school, or be heading out for the weekend on Fridays

We had Vietnam going on and all sorts of events happening, and nobody ever shot anyone.
WE did have one gal get attacked during a civil unrest by 3 non-students, and she fended them off with a straight razor, until I and others come a running to assist her.

Was I armed?
Damn straight I was, as was others, as that was the way kids were parented and mentored in my day.

So I do not cotton to the ideas folks today have, in regard to guns, schools and I don't care if they are anti's or pro gun with kids and go on about locking up guns and all they do sometimes.

I and my kind were raised, that gun was serious, deadly tool. WE knew it was, and when time to sweep / mop behind the kitchen door, we got a bigger person to assist, or we used safety to move it so we could sweep or mop.

We knew loaded guns were in the house, and business and we knew how to act responsible around firearms.

Just like school, because not only did we take guns to school, had them in vehicles, as did teachers, the schools themselves had guns for us to shoot.
Yep, we had .22 handguns and rifles at school as part of our school "equipment" and curricula.

Not one damn time did anyone ever run into a school and start shooting up the place when I was coming up.
Never!!
 
I shot my first gun when I was 6 in at my uncles range. I have a mossberg 22 I won at a raffle when I was 8 (well dad got it but it was my number) and have been shooting ever since (35 years since I won the Mossberg)
 
I had my own .410 single shot shotgun at 9, my first rifle at 10, it was a Marlin Golden 22A, and my first pistol, well revolver at 12, it was a Ruger Single six. I still had them all till I was about 18. At that time I got my first carry handgun, a Colt Dimondback in .38spl. Had it till I got my first 1911 at 21. After that it was all about 1911s and a bunch of other guns.
 
Got my first gun at 13 and always had ready access to it and the ones that followed.
 
Born in '62, I must have been in the very tail end of the good days. I can't believe some of the crap today(Child Protective Services, etc.). Yeah, they probably would have taken me away...and I would have probably grown up to be a useless criminal if they had. That's one thing that's wrong with society today, other people(sp. g'vment) sticking their nose where it doesn't belong to "protect" someone..."protect the idiots" rather than let the strong and intelligent survive. I must have been the next to last generation that knew your jeans were supposed to be fastened and belted "above" the a55 and not "below" it. If I knew of a small town where life was like it was when I was a kid, I would move there and spend the rest of mine...chances are, I could go shoot in my back yard too rather than having to drive to the range(had to throw "something" gun related in my rant). :)
 
Yes - very well armed thanks to my father and grandfather. Started shooting when I was knee high to a grasshopper :) And now my kids are well armed - when I'm around.
 
As a kid growing up in Montana, these are the weapons I actually owned:
6 - Daisy "Red Ryder" style BB gun
11 - Daisy Powerline 770 BB gun
14 - 22lr/410 break action rifle/shotgun (Don't think I ever knew what brand it was.)
15 - crossbow (cheapie)
17 - Ruger mini 14
17 - compound bow (90lb Bear)
18 - Sig P220
This is in addition to the myriad folding knives, hunting knives, throwing knives, swords, machetes, blowguns, shuriken, nunchucks, atlatl-thrown spears, bagh nagh, knuckle-daggers, and all the other stuff that I forget. We even fabricated evil blowdarts out of porcupine quills. Me and my crazy friends were the best equipped ninjas in the whole high school. (PS None of our weapons were ever used in anger, except perhaps the RPG-inspired bottle-rocket cannon.)
 
Starting at age 11 on my granddad's Sussex,N.J.farm,I carried a .22, snuffing out varmints like gophers and groundhogs.
Picked off a lot of rabbits and squirrels for the cookpot besides.
NJ was a little different in the 1950's.
 
No. I only really got into shooting about two years ago. I had toy guns as a kid, but never the real thing. I was 17 when I fired a gun for the first time, didn't touch 'em for a while after that. Bought my first gun two years later, a SKS.
 
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In fact, we used to all get together (at ten about 9 or 10 of us) here in Albuquerque and all grab our .22s and walk up Menaul. That was one of the bigger east west streets here in Albuquerque. We would walk up the mile or so to the foothills of the Sandia mountains to shoot rabits and what not....cops woud drive by and wave or stop and ask what we were going to shoot rabits or vbirds! Shoot, now if we did that at ten years old the SWAT guys would respond!

BTW, this was 1968~69..... the good old days of gun ownership!
 
Were you an armed child?
Click to expand...

Yes, I was born with two of them! Arms that is. They got their first gun at age nine and were allowed to hunt on their own without an adult watching over their shoulder at age 12.
Now days they are old and flabby but they have way more guns to play with!
 
Dad gave me a bb gun when I was around 7 or so. I was maybe 10 or 11 when I started carrying a marlin 60 .22 around. Then he gave me a youth model 870 around 12 or 13, been shooting like crazy ever since.
 
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