Whats Your First Gun Experience?

[doom]

Shot my first gun when I was 7, a Sig P226. Saving money up for my graduation present, a .32 PPK

 

[bnkrtstk]

I was 10yo at Cub Scout Summer Camp when I took my first shot.

 

[Eb1]

Shooting soup cans with a .22 LR Single Action while wearing the holster as a bandeler @ the age of 4.
Then winning my dad money by shooting .410 shells at 50 yards in the gravel pit with a 9 shot Glenfield .22 LR at the age of 7.
Carrying the .45 Colt 1911 to the pond at the age of 10 in a holster to shoot snakes and turtles while catching bass.
Shooting rabbits and squirrels at the age of 7 or 8 with a single barrel Stevens 20 gauge, and learning to carry extra shots between the fingers for quick follow up shots. The stock was cut short so I could shoulder it. My favorite shot shell was a #4 Nitro Magnum for squirrels. The choke was so tight on that shotgun that I could shoot squirrels way up in the trees
There are many, many more.

Oh yeah. Shooting hoovering wood bees out of the air with my Daisy BB gun. This also won my father a lot of money.

 

[Maple_City_Woodsman]

Hard to say for sure, but the first one I can remember was back when I was 6 or 7 years old.

My father had an FFL back then, and was always getting cool stuff from the UPS man. I remember one day my daddy called me into the kitchen. He showed me a pair of handguns, and gave me the basic '4 rules' safety speech, and made sure I knew they were REAL guns, and that they were SERIOUS business.

He loaded the magazines (no round in the chamber), flipped the safeties on, and had me 'help' him carry the gun downstairs to the safe. The gun I got to carry was just a small .22 pocket pistol, but to me it was heavy.

I gained an important respect for firearms that day, and thanks to my fathers artful demystification of them, I largely ignored the guns until I was in High School. It was then that I joined the local '4-H' club, and began participating in their shooting sports program - on the firing line with an old single shot, bolt action, 22 was the first time I ever fired a "real" firearm. I was hooked for life.

 

[25cschaefer]

My first memory ever is riding down a dirt road behind a Wal-Mart in AR in a beat up Isuzu pick up, heater blasting, listening to a worn out Rush tape, and going squirrel hunting with my dad, I think I was 4 and a terrible retriever. I remember he let me pull the trigger on the old Winchester 62 my great granddad bought to shoot coyotes off his sheep on the family farmstead in ND. It is still one of my favorite guns and I am always looking for one of my own. Of course it wont have the pocket knife checkering from long days of watching over the herd or the crack in the butt from a run in with a mad trapped fox, but I keep my eyes open.

 

[Sharecropper]

My first gun experience? An interesting question. It was right around Thanksgiving 1964, maybe 1965--but I think 1964. We were living on what we called the Parker place, just north of Miner (or Miner Switch), Missouri. Behind our house was an old sandbar. People had been pulling sand from it for concrete.

On that day, two of my older brothers and I were lying at the foot of a slope created by the sand mining. We were playing D-Day: we were American GIs, and we were going to storm the slope.

Then there was an explosion behind us. I was stung hard on my right buttock.

We made it up the slight hill in record time.

A short time neighbor one of our neighbors came to the side door. He was an African-American man. He had been hunting rabbits that morning. One had broken from cover. He followed, then fired. And a moment later, he saw three white boys scrambling up a sandy slope.

So he was a black man in deep southeast Missouri who had just shot one or more white boys.

In the early 1940s, a black man was lynched in Sikeston, Missouri--the nearby metropolis. That happened almost a quarter-century before our neighbor shot me (and two of my older brothers). But the fact of the lynching was still well known. So our neighbor was scared.

Fortunately, we had nothing more to show than welts. And my parents were decent folks who allayed our neighbor's concerns.

Around the same time, one of my older brothers (and one of the two shooters) acquired a Damascus-twist twelve-gauge. I never shot it. I wish now that I owned it.

 

[wesessiah]

i was probably about 5 years old, or whenever i was old enough to concentrate on a gun long enough to shoot it. my grandpa had a marlin model 81 that he started me on. i must have killed every mountain lion, bear, wolf, and fictional monster on that mountain that was hiding behind the stumps, cans, and leaves i shot, lol.

 

[Razor]

Age 8 in summer camp. Single shot .22s.

When my Dad saw how excited I was about it, he drug out his own .22 rifle and a Colt Trooper MkIII.

He gave me the Trooper when I left the USAF. I still have it.

 

[Nar]

First experience would be when i was about 7 and my dad showed me and my brother the 2 pistols he owned at the time (a PPK and a CZ75 both acquired in his army days) and though us basic safety, but i would say the first real one was when i was 10 and worked my ass off all summer to earn the 110 dollars to pay for a savage .22 that i wanted, which later became the first gun i ever shot, and is still strong in the line up.

 

[PreMod70]

My paternal grandfather bought me a Savage .410 single barrel shotgun on my tenth birthday, placed a tin can on a fence post at about 20 yards, gave me a shell and told me to shoot it, I hit it. The gun was carried by me only when we went rabbit hunting and it was empty, the shells were kept in my pocket just like Barney. When the rabbit made it's circle and Granda was nearby he would come, tell me to load and shoot with him watching. I was 12 before I was allowed to carry the shotgun loaded and during those two years I was scolded several times for mishandling the gun but they were all good lessons, I will never forget the good times we had, he passed when I was 16. Next to my Dad he was the best hunter I ever knew.

 

[millertyme]

Well, never had to wait for a gun I wanted.

First time shooting with grandpa and dad while relaxing in the cool pines of northern AZ when I was four years old. Dad brought out a Sears .22LR with a Tasco 4x scope and grandpa grabbed his RG66. I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to shoot the tops off the wild daisies around the cabin and hit myself in the eye with the scope for the one and only time in my life. Lesson learned, love for the outdoors and firearms garnered.

 

[FourTeeFive]

Grew up in a no-gun household. Bought a Weihrauch HW 70 air pistol when I was 17, followed by a Ruger 10/22 when I was 18. Then a Smith & Wesson Model 39 9mm when I was 21.

Funny, my dad did a little hunting before I was born but we just never had any guns in the house.

 

[TCU]

my buddy's dad let us shoot the 2 bb guns when we were about 10. That was great. I used to go there after school just for the chance that his dad might let us run wild with them. Well i finally got one for my birthday, and it was better than his, plus it was scoped. We even set up a target in the garage that i could shoot at. They didnt like me shooting much anymore when i would go into the street or my neighbors house across the street to take some long shots haha.

 

[B33fC8k]

It was New Year's Eve of 1999 and my uncle got a PGO 12 gauge in case things went all Y2K. He stressed me learning how to shoot it (I was 12) in case I needed to defend the family. Haha it was a little paranoid but a cool memory.

 

[cavman]

Shot a .44 Magnum single action when I was eighteen with a couple of friends from Yarmouth at the gravel pit in Gray at an orange skeet placed in the wall. I got to shoot 12 shots from about a dozen paces away. Missed with all of them.

Not until 20 years later did I shoot again and as fate would have it, Bullseye.

(I should go back to that pit and try to hit that skeet again this Fall. I bet I do better

 

[Seanpcola]

My dad worked a LOT of hours when I was little. Adding to that was the fact that my mom decided to "Do her own thing" and left when I was 7. Dad won custody of me and did his absolute best to raise me well and give me the opportunity to experience everything life has to offer. (Pop is an amazing man, now in his 80's) He was always so busy with work and we lived in the suburbs so firearms were just not practical. He did buy me air rifles as a kid and later on, finally, when I was about 14 the company he worked for built a really sweet skeet range with three houses. Dad would take me out once a month or so and let me blast away at the clay. I had many good days with dad and that Remington 1100.

 

[hey_poolboy]

May earliest gun memory is of shooting with my Dad. We used to sit on the back porch and shoot tin cans off of the edge of the sandbox with his Ruger single six.

I had such fond memories of those times that I went out and bought a single six several years ago. Now I take my kids out to shoot with it when I get a chance.

 

[Strykervet]

Daisy red rider at 8, a real pellet rifle at 8.5 (when they realized the red rider wasn't accurate) and a shotgun at 9. A 12ga. Winchester (70?) single shot upland game gun. HARD recoil.

 

[Jurist]

First gun experiance?.

Coney Island 1955 0r 56.The arcade shooting gallery,Winchester 62 22 gallery gun shooting real bullets at real flames on candles.Oh the sounds and smells.Where has the time gone ?.

 

[38sp4life]

My first gun experience. It was 1987. And I turned 18 years old. And I bought a High Standard 357 magnum with a 5 1/2 " barrel and 6 shots. The first time I pulled the trigger I was hooked on " hand cannons ".And now many years later I own a Ruger super blackhawk 44.And still love the kaboom.

 

[sansone]

childhood in suburbia meant only pellet guns. Quickly noticed the thrill of accurate shooting. My high School had a shooting team, which at only 30 miles from NYC is unheard of now. Trying out for the school rifle team was very important to me and my dad (army) and I expected to do poorly since experience had ONLY been with air-rifles. My dad new the "real" guns were intimidating me and kept reinforcing the idea that they were only louder. He was right.

 

[mortablunt]

Well, the very first time I used a gun that actually launched anything, I was 4 years old and I was being shown the very basics of shooting on a pump up airsoft gun.

I didn't really shoot until I was 11 years old in a summer camp. One evening, there was a call for skeet shooting. I thought it sounded fun, so I went. The rifle range master had a 12 gauge shotgun and some skeet equipment. I wasn't yet 5 feet tall at the time and the gun came up to my chest. I somehow got my target and shot it on the first try, even though the weapon nearly leapt out of my arms and hurt a lot because I was wearing a light shirt and hadn't been instructed in how to properly hold it.

I did not really start shooting until I was 16 and got myself an AK. Up until then, my experience had consisted of irregular boy scout trips to a skeet range and semiregular lessons from a Vietnamese man who owned a FAL.

I have always been interested in weapons and firearms. As I say: some men love sports, some men love cars, and some men love adventuring. Some men love guns.

 

[LibraPMC]

My dad worked a LOT of hours when I was little. Adding to that was the fact that my mom decided to "Do her own thing" and left when I was 7. Dad won custody of me and did his absolute best to raise me well and give me the opportunity to experience everything life has to offer. (Pop is an amazing man, now in his 80's) He was always so busy with work and we lived in the suburbs so firearms were just not practical. He did buy me air rifles as a kid and later on, finally, when I was about 14 the company he worked for built a really sweet skeet range with three houses. Dad would take me out once a month or so and let me blast away at the clay. I had many good days with dad and that Remington 1100.

That sounds like a fond memory. I wished my dad would take me for shooting since I was young. Instead my parents are antigun while I am pro gun so we have problems here

 

[AZ_Rebel]

When I was 12, my first "paying job" in Canada was to guard a large corn field against raidng flocks of red wing blackbirds. I was "issued" a Cooey .22 bolt action repeating rifle and a box of Canuck .22 Short ammunition. I slept with that rifle under my bed all summer
The year would have been 1956!

 

[243winxb]

When very young, uncle & dad let me shoot a 12ga double barrel. Told me to pull both triggers at the same time. Shot at a turkey vulture about 300 yards away. They thought it would sit me on my butt, well it didnt. But the recoil is something i won't forget now, even at age 66.