What got you into owning guns??

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I hated guns growing up but since I was a kid all I wanted to do was be a police officer. I joined the Navy and went to basic training 3 days after graduating high school. Went through basic training, and reported to my boat for duty and was waiting to go to "A" school. I got lucky and instead of being assigned to deck dept, I got to be the Master-At-Arms Yeoman. My roommate was an MA and we moved out of the barracks and got an appartment together so that he could have his guns. Finally convinced me that if I was going to graduate from "A" school that I'd have to learn to shoot before going so that I could qualify for the class. After "A" school I got to go to the Army's SRT, the Navy's SSET, and I was totally hooked. Never been a day since that I havent had a gun on my hip.
 
Well, I grew up playing with guns. On my 10th birthday, my father bought me a BB rifle. Then, I got a pellet pistol. In high school I was on the JROTC rifle team. In college, I joined the pistol team. After graduating college, money was tight and I didn't buy a firearm until I bought my house (1911). Then I bought a pistol for my wife (HiPoint Comp9). Then a friends Star BM. Then a SKS. Then a Savage 30.06. Got into reloading. Bought an AR15. Bought a Marlin 60. Bought a S&W 64. Bought a Taurus 455 (so I could practice and keep the 45 brass). Bought a Marlin 1894c. And, it still going on.
 
I found my way back from the wilderness

I grew up around guns. My father was (and is) an avid collector, particularly of military firearms and memorabilia. In fact, he promoted one of the first "military relic" shows (gun shows restricted to military firearms and accoutrements) for many years, and I earned extra money as a kid by helping him with the mailings, setting up and taking down the shows, running ticket sales, etc. My first job, at age 13, was "pit boy" for the local gun club on trap nights. I'd sit in the pit and reload the trap thrower, and at the end of the night would restock the skeet houses and sweep up the range, all for $2 an hour cash. For my 16th birthday, my dad gave me my very own rifle.

Then I went away to college, and became a liberal. My rifle sat in my dad's gun cabinet (remember when everyone had glass-front gun cabinets instead of safes?), and I started to buy into the leftist rants about guns and gun control. I became convinced that the NRA was evil, and the 2nd Amendment was outdated and probably didn't guaranty individual rights, anyway.

Around my senior year of college, I got involved with a group of real outdoorsmen. These were guys (and some girls) who really believed in the indepedendent, frontier spirit, and lived their lives in accordance. Of course, most of them hunted. I lived for a year in "the cabin" -- a rather primitive structure whose main source of heat was a stone fireplace. I split my own firewood. I got an honest job doing real labor, and learned to take pride in my accomplishments.

I went to law school, but stayed plugged in with my outsdoormen friends. In law school, I actually read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the first time, and important other documents like the Federalist Papers. I learned critical thinking and reasoning, and started to develop my own political philosophy. In short order, I rejected alot of the liberal/communist crap I'd swallowed.

Following law school, I took a job in downtown Detroit, and rented a loft not far from my office. I heard gunfire most nights, usually around 2-3 a.m. after the bars let out. I had a few tense moments with the local elements while walking home from work late at night, and some incidents in my building led me to conclude that I needed some protection handy. I mentioned it to my dad, and he showed up at my door the next day with a Remington 870 Express and several boxes of shells, including some police buckshot loads he got from a friend of his who ran the state police range. He told me to load two of the buckshot in the tube, followed by two birdshot. If I needed the 870, the sound of the action being worked might just send the bad guys running. If it didn't two rounds of birdshot would be a pretty effective dissuader without much danger to neighbors. If that didn't do the trick, I'd still have two shells of 00 buck at the ready....

I only pulled out the 870 once while living there, but thankfully never had to use it. One night a cop was killed in a shootout right outside my window, though, and it was time for me to move.

A few years later, I was married and expecting my first child -- a son. For some reason, I had an overpowering urge to buy a gun for him. The first pistol I had ever fired was a Ruger 22, and the year was 1999, so I went out and bought a Ruger Mk II 50th Anniversary model pistol for my son. It sits in the safe to this day, waiting for him to be old enough to have it.

Not long after that, a buddy of mine invited me to go with him to a cowboy action match. I went, and had a blast. I hadn't been shooting in more than 12 years, but it all came back to me. I was hooked, and quickly got heavily into the CAS game (I still am). About the same time, the "shall issue" concealed carry wave swept the nation. I was living in Tennessee then, and got my carry permit. My dad was so pleased that he gave me a Glock 26 to use as a carry gun. I've since gotten back into trap and skeet, taken up sporting clays, and dabbled in IDPA. More importantly, I joined the NRA and got active in politics on the "right" side.
 
Father Knows Best >> good story!

I grew up around firearms, hunting and fishing. We lived in the country and it was perfectly natural to grab the BB guns had head to the creek when we were young. Later we grabbed our 22 rifles and did the same.

In my teens, I bought a 22, 243, 270, but no shotgun. Shotgun came after college when life settled down. That is when I started buying and shooting handguns. At first, handguns were a way to have a gun that was not easily seen as I was on the road a lot and worked in the country. Shooting was great recreation then. The handgun thing continues to this day and I still love 22's.
 
Well...

I'm the odd one out of you guys. My whole immediate family has not fired a gun once. And my grandfather was in WWII, but that's about it! I was just fascinated for some unknown reason and I became knowledgable without any hands on experience about different firearms and cartridges. Until my M48, I had not fired one rifle. What a rifle to fire first :D I've been going shooting once every week since May or so (1 month after my 18th bday). I see no reason to stop buying firearms so I think this trend will last forever :evil:
 
As with most of the post here, I grew up with guns. 22's, 410, and 12 gage when I was 8 or so. After I married, started buying larger. 7.62x59, 30-30, 30-06, 300 mag and so forth. Loved my Pistols even more.
 
I did something very, very stupid one night not quite a year and a half ago. About 10:30 at night, after I'd gone to bed (had school in the morning), I heard a knock at my door. And what did I do? Answered it. I haven't the foggiest idea as to what I was thinking. Lucky for me, it was just someone who wanted to know where a friend of his was, who apparently lived in the apartment I lived in before I moved in. Later on, I thought, if that had been someone intent on getting in, taking my stuff and leaving me at room temperature in a crumpled heap on the floor, there would have been very little I could have done. God only knows how many home invasions happen just like that. Tax time was coming up, so I started doing research, and about a week later a family friend put me in touch with an old school friend of his who had an FFL. April 15 rolled around, and I went and picked up a Ruger P89, went and shot it that weekend, and I was hooked. Been to the range every week since then, almost, with maybe four missed weeks due to Hurricane Rita and, more recently, my car acting up. I don't see me ever getting tired of it...in fact, I am about to pony up for a bigger safe to store all my guns. The one I have now is getting crowded. :D
 
I grew up with guns, but left everything with my parents as I bounced around to various locations with the military.

I eventually purchased a Springfield .45 ACP for CCW and soon discovered it was expensive to shoot. So I bought a 9mm (CZ75B). Then a .22 (Browning BuckMark).

It wasn't too long after that, that I discovered a 1911 forum, and delved into organized shooting sports. Then it was just all downhill from there....

:D

Mike
 
Like TallPine I started watching old westerns as a kid and when I was old
enough my first was a Colt SA 22 chrome plated with walnut grips.
That was the first of a long affair with guns
 
Shot .22's at Boy Scout summer camp, 16-ga skeet, and once our Scoutmaster let us shoot his S&W revolver, a .357, on a camping trip. Big difference between that and a .22! It fascinated me. Me Want Big Boom!

I realized that the world is not a nice place and good guys don't always finish on top at the end like movies show. Sometimes you got to fight when you're a man, to quote Kenny Rogers. There are three types of people: Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs. Sheep bleat all day about wanting to be protected from being victims. Wolves prowl the herd of sheep and take out the weak ones. Sheepdogs keep the wolves at bay and are not victims unless overrun or caught by surprise, and usually, the wolves move on to a sheep if they discover a Sheepdog.

Bought my first gun the day after my 21st birthday (once the hangover had cleared enough to drive to the gun store). Been buying steadily since then. Started carrying on a Florida nonresident. Not any of my family to this day knows I had been carrying for a long time before my OH CCW. Now I have a legal CCW so I carry everywhere I can legally or without losing my job.

First learned to question the media at a young age; what finally got me thinking for myself was the whole furor about Glock pistols, "The Plastic Gun" that slips through Xray machines, etc. Once I realized that about 99% of what was being cried out about Glocks was total utter bullshize, I started checking other "facts" of the media and finding out that the editorial pages of my newspaper carried more "factual" news than most network stories. So I bought my first Glock. (Don't get me started about NBC's "GM Truck Sidesaddle Gas Tank Inferno" story, or the "Tippy Suzuki Samurai" story!)

Problem was, I still had an unfinished personal philosophy so I filled it in as I went; I initially did not like the NRA because I felt they were too unwilling to compromise; after all no hunter needs "EBR Assault Weapons" so why shouldn't they be banned? I was the budding liberal gunny back then. I once felt that there was no need for any semiautos pistol or rifle. Revolvers were fine, everything else, maybe we should compromise on this? Ban semiautos. Fine. I only kept a single box of ammo around, locked up, away from the gun, kept gun in a locked box in the bottom of the closet. Who needs a gun? It's a hobby like owning horses.

Wow was I screwed up back then. After a few incidents where my possession of a firearm kept me from being left to die out in the desert or in a back alley, long reading of all of the articles of our government, and opening my eyes to the world as it is now, I am 180 degrees reversed. I won't join NRA because they are TOO likely to compromise! 2A means, all arms, no BS! Got into EBR's because, I wanted to eventually, and now that AWB is outa here, best time, before 2008 politics makes it impossible to get them.

Oh as for ammo. My ammo dump twenty years later is large enough that I would need a pickup truck just for ammo if I moved. My neighbors joked that if my garage ever caught on fire they are fleeing the county.


Molon Labe, dude.
 
I grew up in a hunting family. That is, hunting - not shooting. There were guns in the house, and they were for the various hunting seasons (Dad had one .22 pistol for shooting possums in the grain bin). We took out the ones we intended to use for hunting shortly before said season, fired several rounds at paper plates. Then we went hunting. Then we cleaned the guns and put them back. I enjoyed hunting, and the guns.

Then came the Marine Corps and that abso-freakin'-lutely wonderful rifle marksmanship training. After a couple years in the Corps, I realized that I really really really liked the range. If one focused, and did the simple things right, one shot well. And the more I shot the better I got.

I bought/shot/sold a couple of pistols my last year in the Corps (always needed the money - young sergeants need a LOT of beer).

When I got out and moved in with my (now) husband (also a Marine, but grew up urban), my dad sent a .22 and my old 20 gauge to live with us. That first fall (in MN), I realized it was almost DEER SEASON. So we armed ourselves appropriately (I borrowed Dad's Model 88 .308, bought hubby a Model 70 in same). And we had a blast. For two fairly competitive people, we found we had a HOOT hunting together.

So we bought 10/22s (for squirrels). And some pistols (for the heck of it). And it's been downhill from there. Someday, when the Marine Corps stops moving us around, we can buy even MORE guns without thinking, "are we getting to the point where the movers are going to call the FBI about us?" :evil:

Honestly, although I deeply enjoying hunting and shooting of all kinds, I probably wouldn't enjoy it half as much if it weren't something Mr. Abby and I had so much fun doing together.

(And yes, I gave Dad his .308 back. But told him not to trade it for a chainsaw or anything, as I intend to "borrow" it again as needed)
 
Was in the army, fired everything under the sun. then when I got out, i didn't even think of a weapon for 10 or more years. Then our company sold a register system to collector's firearms here in houston. they said to my boss, "hey, instead of us paying you, how about taking it out in trade?" My boss said yes, I got a keltec P11, and that was all she wrote.
 
i grew up hunting and fishing. guns were always a part of life.

guns for hunting and shooting, not for self defense.

a lot of saturday afternoons were spent busting clays with dad's old 20 ga SxS or making cans jump with his Henry .22.

we lived in a nice area, somewhere between the suburbs and the country. we never worried about safety, and never needed to.

then i grew up and joined the navy. a few years later, i returned to my home state and got a job in the city, and an apartment in a decent neighborhood. I didn't own any guns because my budget was tight, and my dad had more than enough hunting arms to go around.

within a year, that decent neighborhood entirely changed. the nice families that lived in my apartment complex mostly left for the newly built cheap housing in the new suburbs springing up on the outskirts of the phoenix area. the apartments around me filled up with a worse element of humanity. it only got worse, but i was working too many hours to look for another place, so i stuck it out for a while. police helicopters circled the neighborhood almost every night. i'm a big guy, i figured i could take care of myself. i bought a good folding knife and started carrying it, and a baseball bat to hang out next to my bed.

and then one night i woke up to the sound of broken glass. i ran into the living room with the bat, and sent an intruder running. i considered myself lucky, because after reporting the incident i found out they had caught the guy breaking into another apartment on the street, and he had in his posession a bag of methamphetamine and a handgun. i realized that i should not bring a bat to a potential gunfight.

the next day, i traded in the baseball bat for a 12 gauge Winchester 1300, which still hangs out next to my bed. less than a month later I had a Ruger GP-100 and a CCW permit, and piece of mind. i went to the range at least three times a week to gain back the skills i had lost after years of not shooting.

this year i moved to a nice house in the suburbs, but i still keep the Winchester next to my bed and a pistol on my belt.

oh, and somewhere along the road i was introduced to THR (thanks, Britton), and realized i didn't have NEARLY enough guns :D
 
Never cared to own a gun - never felt the need for one for 67 years.

Having an open mind, the rise in violent crime in general and what happened during Katrina specifically, showed me the light!

I now carry 24/7, hit the range twice a month, and dry practice every chance I get.
 
I was raised in countries that banned guns. Can't say that firearms were the only things that facsinated me, but I did enjoy all those stories my dad told me about his M1 Garand while serving in the Taiwan Army.

When I came to the States, I set my goals at getting into flying and shooting (not necessarily at the same time). Flying is still out of my reach financially, but thank God I can afford to buy guns 'n ammo. :)
 
I seem to be in a minority here. I grew up in a household where anything beyond a cap gun was taboo. My dad wouldn't allow real guns in the house. (My mom, on the other hand grew up on a farm, and has a story or two where she had need to grab her father's old shotgun.)

I got a pellet gun in college, but don't really count that.

Fast forward to a year and a half ago, and my wife was pregnant with our first kid. While she was getting the nesting instinct, I was feeling the instinct to do something about home protection.

Since I live in a two story house with the master bdrm downstairs, and the to-be-kid's room upstairs, I figured a pistol would be better for grabbing and running upstairs versus the shotgun option in case of a nighttime break-in.

So, I went to the local indoor range with a buddy, and rented a snubby revolver (S&W .38sp), having never shot anything stronger than my air rifle. Impressed by my beginners' luck, I felt ready to try out a semiauto. I went back a couple of weeks later, rented a Glock 23, hated it, and settled on 9mm, after shooting a Ruger P95. I was set to buy the Ruger, when I saw a Taurus 92 on sale for just a little bit more.

I got hooked, managed to convince my wife that I "needed" a shotgun to compliment the pistol. Being invited by her brother to go dove hunting didn't hurt in that conversation, either.

After that, it's been quite the slippery slope... I got a Ruger 10/22 from my father-in-law for Christmas, bought a .22lr pistol with birthday money, went to my first gun show, started visiting THR on a regular basis, and have taken at least 3 people who have never shot before to the range to introduce them to shooting. And that doesn't even include my incessant window shopping for an SKS, AR-15 and 1911, much to my wife's *delight*.

My wife, having grown up in a hunting family, half-jokes that since I never had that "gun phase" growing up, I'm having to cram it all in now.
 
Growing up, my exposure to firearms was quite limited. My Grandfather had a few guns, and my Dad and I used his .30-30 rifle a few times on groundhogs.

In Boy Scouts, my Scoutmaster had an AR and several of us shot it on a few occasions. Summer Scout Camp, we shot 12 gauge trap and .22 rifles.

The '92 L.A. riots got me my first gun.

Wife (then girlfriend) and I were living in Maryland, and I was taking night classes in college. She was getting increasingly antsy being home by herself at night. The riots settled it. She wanted a gun. We ventured out to a local gunstore for her first gun. A month or so later, I bought my first one.
 
Utah again. To give you a point of reference, in the '92 election, more people voted for Ross Perot than voted for Bill Clinton. Utah is the only place Clinton ever came in third.

I am in the process of re-joining the National Guard, and I will be drilling at the armory that bears the name of John M. Browning.

When I was 4, I went out with my dad, and he let me shoot his Ruger Mk II. I remember him telling me, "you can't put your thumb behind the bolt, it will get broken when it comes back."

I can't ever recall not being armed, with the exception of two years in Denmark on a religious endeavor. I suppose I was really unarmed most of the time I was in the army, because they treat you like children, but in my dad's car, and later in MY car, there was ALWAYS a pistol under the seat.
 
I also grew up around guns. Up untill a few years ago, my dad was an avid hunter, he got a nice bull elk a couple years ago, out here in Colorado. Anyhow, my dad taught me how to shoot a single shot 22 rifle when I was 10 years old. By the time I was 12, I got my own remington nylon 66 22 rifle, what a great gun that was.:D Even back then I really enjoyed shooting, my dad taught me the safety rules right up front, they were strictly enforced. If I screwed up, no more shooting. On my 18th birthday I recieved a 12 gauge shotgun, I enjoyed that also. When I turned 21, my dad bought me my first handgun for my 21st birthday, a taurus 669 357 magnum, 4" stainless.:D Thats when I really became hooked, I really enjoyed that pistol. Since that time, I have bought 2 40 cal semi-auto's, an XD and a Taurus mil-pro, plus a ruger 22/45, I upgraded my 357 to the Taurus tracker in stainless, and my most recent purchase is an SKS. Going to the range on weekends and popping paper is a lot of fun, its good stress relief, its an adrenaline rush, and its just good harmless fun.:D If only all the anti gunners could understand this concept!:banghead:
 
You know, I'm not too sure how or why I got into firearms myself. I come from an Army family, but my parents weren't really "into" guns (my Dad did own a 1911 and my Mom had a .410 singleshot). I'd had BB guns, but the first time I ever shot a real gun I was twelve. My grandfather took me out with him to a friends farm so he could sight in a rifle. He also took his 12ga Remington 870. He set me up with the shotgun and let me fire a few rounds of birdshot through it. I thought it was incredible fun. The next week he and my father took my brother and I skeet shooting. We also had a little fun on the pistol range.

It was another seven years before I even picked up another gun. Sure, I knew where my Dad's were, but I never messed with 'em. One day I was chatting with my Dad and I asked him if I could take an old rifle that his father-in-law gave him out to the range. He said yes, so I went and bought forty rounds of ammo, went out to a DNR range a friend had told me about, and shot a gun for the first time seven years (and my first real rifle, to boot). After that, I went out every other week. Another friend of mine started coming with me, along with some rifles his father loaned him to take with us.

I bought my first gun, an M14 built on a Norinco receiver with Springfield parts, in 2003. Since then I've bought and sold a few more, and spend more money than I probably should on ammunition. I just can't get enough of target shooting. Every opportunity I get I'm out at the range.
 
My best friend's father, a UN-lebanon vet, took me and my best friend shooting when I was 12, teaching us with .22's.
Hooked ever since!
 
My whole family is either anti gun or just not interested.
I have always been interested in History and Martial Arts and have a house full of swords- I have even seen off BGs with a sword on occasion.
I originally got interested in shooting as I began to work more inside jobs around computers and wanted something to focus on that was out of arms reach.
Now I live in a somewhat dodgy neighbourhood and appreciate having 12ga insurance just in case.
I have not yet been hunting but intend to first chance I get- just haven't met the right people yet.
I have a small collection, pride of place is my 1941 Lithgow SMLE
 
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