What is an apropiate age for kids to be taken to the range

[pax]

I just have in theback of my head that I take my say 8 year old to the range and shoot a 22 or even a pellet gun and he or she is so intrigued by it when at home(which guns should be put up and will be but still) or at some friends house(where guns arent put up as well God forbid) they will see a gun and think "hey I know how to shoot this now" .

I understand that fear, but I don't think it's a realistic one. I say this because, if your kid has ever seen a gun used on TV or a movie, she already knows "how to shoot this now."

So if she does come across a gun, and you've never talked about firearms with her, never admitted to her that you have guns in the home, if she's going to be overwhelmingly curious. After all, that would be the very first time she's ever seen one in real life instead of in the movies. Who wouldn't be fascinated? Without education, without being taught that handling firearms is really rather boring when you follow all the rules. So she won't have any motivation at all to leave it alone in the first place. And she won't have even a rudimentary understanding of firearms safety rules (muzzle direction & trigger finger) which might put the brakes on tragedy even if she did deliberately disobey and pick it up.

Ignorance is really an ineffective strategy for keeping kids safe. It relies on adults to be perfect -- and we're not. We're human beings and human beings make mistakes.

On the other hand, if you show your kids your gun early on, and teach them the safety rules, and make sure they know that any time they are tempted to touch a gun all they have to do is come find you and ASK and that you will help them handle it and stay safe, then you have just removed nearly all of their motivation for picking up a gun when you are not around. Why risk a spanking or worse, when all they have to do is ask? There's no longer that aura of forbidden fruit to entice them to do something stupid.

And if you have taught them well, there is at least a thin veneer of gun-handling knowledge (re muzzle direction & trigger finger) which might prevent an outright tragedy even if you negligently leave the gun out and they deliberately disobey.

Humans are not perfect. Neither children nor adults are perfect. So any safety plan that relies on humans of any age to be perfect is a flawed plan.

Keeping the kids ignorant and trusting the firearms locks relies on adults to be perfect. It assumes that none of the adults around them will ever goof by leaving the safe door open. You might never, ever, ever leave your own safe door open -- but can you say the same of every one of your kids' friends' parents? Probably not.

Leaving the guns accessible, or just putting them out of reach rather than locking them up, relies on children to be perfect. It assumes that children will never be tempted to disobey, and will never be pushed by their peers into doing stuff they know they shouldn't. Anyone who's ever lived with a child knows how unlikely that is.

So instead of relying on adults to be perfect, keep the guns either under the conscious control of a responsible adult at all times, or locked up where a child could not possibly get it. And educate your children against the day when an adult goofs.

pax

 

[rbernie]

Children like animals generaly and doing something like "see the pretty bunny, BANG. Now see the pretty bunny's blood and guts" just doesn't seem very positive to me.

My five year old thinks that it's VERY positive - it means that he gets to eat rabbit for dinner.

It's all in the maturity of the kid and how they're raised to see things. My kids LOVE animals (we have fish, birds, herps, dogs, and cats) and they love to interact with them. At their present ages, they could no more kill an animal as they could kill a family member. But at the same time, from the time my two younger children first started eating meat they were taught that the meat came from an animal. As soon as they were old enough to grasp the concept of death (generally around age 3) they learned that Daddy probably killed the animal to get them the meat that they eat. They have seen dead animals, and they understand what it means both positively and negatively. They may not want to do that, but they daggone well know what it means (well, at least for the eleven year old and the five year old - the two year old grrl is still too deeply into toddler fantasyland for such things). They know that animals kill and eat each other, and they know that they themselves are animals.

My five year old will probably be mature enough to go shooting with me by the time he's six or seven. My eleven year old (being raised by my first wife) still isn't ready - he's too emotionally immature and I'll not force something upon him that he can't handle. My two year old - well, let's just say that there'll be heck to pay when she starts shooting. She'll likely outshoot us all and do it with a grin on her face.

 

[PlayboyPenguin]

rbernie

Nothing wrong with children understanding where meat comes from but we have to be careful. One of the most prominent signs of children that grow up to have anti-social tendencies is how they treat animals at a young age. Also, even though they know where meat comes from does not mean they have to witness a gorey event at an early age. Shooting a bull in the head in front of a small child is not necessary or positive. Then these parents wonder where all the hostility and anger is coming from when their kids or 15 or 16. I had to deal with it every day when I worked for CPS.

 

[JShirley]

negative reinforcement

PP, you're hurting me here. After the lecturing about not understanding Psychology, you've made an extremely common terminology mistake- one I would not expect, given what I believe you're presenting as some reasonable knowledge of the subject. (Most people confuse negative reinforcement with punishment.)

Here is the first result that popped up re this. In brief, negative reinforcement is removing something unpleasant from the environment.

Shooting the bull would only have been negative reinforcement if the bull were threatening or painful- - and the child completed some action the parent wanted to reinforce.

John, not a Psych major...and thinks most Psychology is soft science.

 

[LAK]

For actual firearms, somewhere around 7 - the age of reason. Some people shoot their first much younger, and I do not have a problem with that. But it makes sense to me that an understanding of all relevent subjects is possible.

----------------------------------------------
http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

 

[cracked butt]

You wouldn't want the kids to know how meat gets to the table, its much better to lie to them and put them in front of a Disney movie with talking animals that have human personalities.

 

[rbernie]

One of the most prominent signs of children that grow up to have anti-social tendencies is how they treat animals at a young age.

That's a fundamentally correct statement. It is a clear marker (although, as with most of this stuff, nothing is ever cast in concrete).

My kids LOVE animals (we have fish, birds, herps, dogs, and cats) and they love to interact with them. At their present ages, they could no more kill an animal as they could kill a family member.

And this was my statement on that.

Followed by:

But at the same time, from the time my two younger children first started eating meat they were taught that the meat came from an animal.

In my household, responsibility is defined as a balance between an appreciation for the life that surrounds us and a willingness to understand and accept our innate need to consume and destroy some of that to further our own existance. That is why I choose to hunt, and I want my children to understand their own nature even if they themselves never choose to hunt.

My kids get to see their parents care for the household animals and they are responsible themselves for much of that. They see us perform 'catch and release' on common house pests, and from that they learn that all life has value. My kids also get to confront, in a lighthearted kind of way, the fact that their existence is predicated upon the taking of an animal's life - I let them choose which dead animal's meat gets eaten for dinner and we often talk about how Daddy killed it.

And all of this gets back to the original question in a roundabout way. My kids are being raised to value life, and they're being raised to understand the death that firearms cause because they get to see it (and profit from it) from the time that they start eating solid foods. When I believe that they're old enough to begin to handle the business end of that, they get to go to the range. But I'm not overly concerned about them not understanding the consequences of shooting firearms since we've been consciously and subconsciously working on that since their birth.

 

[PlayboyPenguin]

JShirley-negative reinforcement

If you read my post carefully you will find that I did not use the term incorrectly. I did not state tha shooting an animal is negative reinforcement. I was making a correlation between people that would do such a thing as brutally kill a bull in front of a child and the type of people that believed that the best way to teach someone is to hurt them until they do it right. That is why, if you notice, I put the term in quotations.

 

[CAPTAIN MIKE]

Start with the Rogue River Arms "Chipmunk" for their Size

My # 1 job is "DAD".
Everything else comes after that.

I learned firearms safety and how to shoot in the Boy Scouts of America.

My suggestion is that in order to help a child get the "Hey, I Can DO THIS" feeling, they have to feel confident and NOT overwhelmed by a big scary gun.

So, start 'em with a bb-gun then a 'Chipmunk' .22 made by Rogue River Arms.
The bb-gun should be the shortest stock you can get. I believe it's called the Red Rider. The 'Chipmunk' is a nice little single-shot .22 that has a stock short enough for the little guys.

I think you'll be pleased at both the price and the enjoyment your kids will have. Mine certainly have enjoyed it a great deal....and now they have learned to be respectful not afraid of firearms.

 

[PlayboyPenguin]

WayneD

Is that your kid. If so you should be applauded. That is the kind of young man that will be able to be a good representative of RKBA.

 

[BlkHawk73]

Age shouldn't be the determining factor. maturity and responsibilty should be the deciding factors. There's grown adults of all ages still not mature enough to safely handle firearms so again, age isn't the determining factor. the ability to understand the safety issues at hand, maturity and responsibiltiy is what's needed.

 

[sturmruger]

I was reading some of my old posts when I cam across this post.

My son is now 5 1/2 and I bought him his first gun. It is a Red Ryder BB gun that is really the perfect size for him. The downside is at 5 he just doesn't have the coordination to shoot it yet. Even sitting on my lap he just could get everything together enough to look down the barrel and use the sights. I put it back in the gun safe and told him will will take it out later in the year or maybe next Spring.

 

[drsfmd]

Mine already come to the range with me from time to time, but they won't get to shoot until they are at least 12.

 

[jrdolall]

I have three kids and all of them started when they showed an interest. My "Range" is in my front yard so the kids saw and heard guns well before they could walk. I made it a point to leave guns, usually hunting rifles, laying on the couch or a chair while I was watching tv. This acclimated the children to the sight of a gun which, IMO, took away the "wow" factor. I taught gun knowledge and safety before I ever allowed them to shoot anything. Each one had a small BB gun, Daisy cheap-o, by the time they were three so they could shoot targets with mom and dad. This kept them interested for all of two minutes usually. My daughter could shoot a 22 and an AK-74 at 7 years old from a sandbag but my middle son was 10 before he would shoot anything other than a 22. My oldest son killed his first deer at 10 and my middle killed his first at 14.
I think it is important to allow them to progress at their own speed. Teach them gun safety, preach gun safety, use gun safety. My kids will all take a gun that is handed to them and immediately verify that the gun is unloaded even if I unload the gun in front of them and then hand it to them. I handed my daughter a semi pistol a couple of weeks ago that she had never been around. She could not rack the gun so she ejected the mag and started looking for a manual safety. It was DA and has no safety so she handed the gun back to me and asked how she could make sure it was not loaded.

I also feel that it is important for kids to understand that we are meat eaters and an animal dies for us to eat meat. That does not mean we should take them to a slaughterhouse or make them drink deer blood at 10 years old but they should understand that there is nothing wrong with an animal dying to provide food.

I sat next to a young woman, 30 or so, on a trip to Chicago a few weeks ago and we were talking about general things before I brought up guns. She has never held a gun and considers herself anti-gun because all she ever reads is the bad things that can happen. She has lived her entire life in an apartment building in Chicago. Never owned her own home or even lived outside an apartment and she thought that was perfecty normal. I wonder why there are so many anti-gun people? I try to educate them every chance I get.

 

[mortablunt]

The best answer is whenever they are mature enough to understand that they are handling deadly weapons, follow instructions without complaint, and handle the excitement. My elder twin brother is my age (19 when I posted this), and I would not trust him with guns. Why? Because he's spent more than half his life being physically violent and extremely abusive towards me. And it would happen without provocation because he was bored, because he wasn't winning at a video game, because I disagreed with him, because he could. How does being kicked for 30 minutes with Timberland boots over a can of Doctor Pepper being a bit too energetic when he opened it after shaking sound? And he did worse; stuff that would outrage human rights advocates. It's going to take a long time and a lot of good behavior before I'd trust him with a weapon.

 

[Ryanxia]

There's no set age, it depends on their maturity level and ability to follow the safety rules.

 

[rajb123]

I was given my first gun, a Remington 22lr rifle in 1962 at age 6. I was given instructions on safe gun handling and sportsmenship.

Because children grow up faster today, I beleive a first gun could be given much earlier. However, it depends on the child. Some mature early and some do not.

 

[earplug]

My major concern was hearing protection. Many earplugs would not fit or muffs were not small enough. Kids have to get big enough to be able to have the protection needed.
With the right targets shooting can be fun at a early age.

 

[Teachu2]

My stepsons were 6,7 and 12 the first time I took them to the range. Each got a safety discussion and got escorted to the firing line, where they got to fire a mod 66 2.5", .38 WC load. The oldest then got to fire a .357 125gr JHP - and none of them ever thought of a gun as a toy again. I married their mother shortly thereafter, 24 years ago in June. The boys (men) still shoot, and are safety conscious. Once they had shot one, they were able to control their curiousity. As wild as they were, none ever got in trouble with a gun.

 

[ErikO]

I voted 8 as that was my son's age. We will probably have his 16th at this range as well.

 

[SFC Ed]

Mature enough shooter

I took my oldest Grandson, age 10, to the range two weeks ago with a Winchester 72 bolt action, tube load. He is a real marksman and can't wait to go back and I can't wait to take him again.

 

[TanklessPro]

Depends on the child. My daughter was 3 on her first range trip. Now every time I go she wants to go too. It maybe because all of her safety equipment is pink. I really don't care why as long as she wants to go.