Youngest Picture of You With a Gun

Where’s that old picture of you as a child carrying a gun? Real gun, cap gun, toy gun, any will do.

Here I am, the fastest gun in the West (Bronx).

 

As I child It's pretty common to see me with some type of gun in old family photos. Just like with a lot of kids in the 1950's. Only have a few here on the computer and they were screen shots of old family home movies my sister had put on DVD a few years ago. Didn't come out great because the movie quality wasn't exactly Hi-Def to begin with and it's a picture of my TV screen but you get the picture.: .... Always did like those silver colored revolver style cap guns and I recall them still being around when my younger, ( by 7 years) brother took them over after I outgrew them. Those silver cap guns must have had a lasting effect on me because although I outgrew them I still enjoy playing with silver revolvers...... .

 

My mom always said I was born with a rifle in my hands.
I don't know about that, but I know there's a picture of me somewhere around here that was taken when I was only about 4, and I was dragging a BB gun behind me. Of course the whole story is dad had taken the tube out of that BB gun so it wouldn't shoot - even if I had BBs, which I didn't. Besides that, I remember not being strong enough to cock the gun anyway.

 

1955 ......Brother (L) and I never missed watching Roy Rodgers, Sky King, Hoppy, and others every Saturday morning.

 

For whatever reason, my family never took photos of any of us with guns.

My "youngest" and only gun photo I have of myself is from 2004 with me wearing some AC/DC eye protection.

 

I’ve shared this before but it’s cool enough to put it up again. This is me sometime in the mid 70’s with my grandad’s old squirrel gun. He’d long quit using it by that time and it only came out once in a while for show and tell. Story is it was his fist rifle and he worked and saved up the $6 or $7 (can’t remember which) to pay for it. He grew up in the mountains of West Virginia and used it to put food on the table.
I’m sure that holding that rifle in my early years helped fuel my love of firearms.

 

Chicharrones, you’ve got to tell us the story about that Thompson! That’s no 16” barreled modern semi auto version is it?

 

That was a rental M1A1 with the fun switch and it would empty a 30 round mag in about 2.5 seconds, if my memory is correct. What a mighty fine bullet hose it was. Good times, good times.

 

I was right there watching with you, don't forget the Lone Ranger. Also enjoyed Lash LaRue, the Cisco Kid, Gene Autrey, Wyatt Earp, Yancy Derringer, Rin Tin Tin, etc.

Later, Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel. There were a lot of cowboy/old west shows, weren't there?

 

My Dad has some of me as a kid, the earliest one I have in my possession is from when I was in the Army, shortly after getting to my duty station as Armorer for HHD 56th Md. Bn., BCSB, 7thID(L), Ft. Ord, CA., in May of 1986.

 

Old Infantry Post Road, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, 1947. That is me on the left with the three year old’s interpretation of trigger discipline....

 

My mother didn't like guns, and though I did have a couple of toy guns back then, but she would never ever have immortalized it with a photo.

 

Didn't have one of me but I did have one of my daughter. She was about 3 back the and now 40. Still have that .22 Marlin.

 

Looking back on this I probably only have a couple dozen pictures of me over the years and none with a firearm. We used them as a tool to fill the dinner plate or protect the livestock on the farm. Certain things were expected of you and wasting money on pictures of a sucessful hunt were not something we could afford.
As for these days I am the one taking the pictures and thus on the wrong side of the camera.

 

My dad and I shooting, while dumping the trash. Food scraps were given to the animals. We burned everything that we could and buried the rest of the trash on the back of our property. I think I was about 10 or 11.

 

Not me, but my #1 Daughter. When she was about 1 month old I staged a pic of her with her head resting on the stock of my SA (3/1944) M-1 along with my copy of the BSA merit badge booklet for rifle & shotgun in the frame.... *I HAVE IT SOMEWHERE* and if I find it, I'll share it. For now, here is Kate holding what is now her M-1 (which I named the "Bad Bitch" 30+ years ago) after shooting her for the first time at age 17 last year.

 

This is not the youngest but it is of scanned photos. My border collie, Smoky, and I (14ish) with my Central Arms .410 were about to head out for a multi day solo hike through what is now mostly the D'Arbonne NWR. My parents home at the time backed up to a lake that drained to the area. I could pull my pirogue over the dam on skid logs into a little bayou and then access miles and miles of woods and bottoms, cane breaks and piney hills.



And 53 years later playing in the backyard:

 

Garland, Tx @1966
I loved The Lone Ranger and still do.

 

And who could forget the William Tell Overture.....

 

Pops has one of me holding my then brand new 10/22 ('72).
Got one of a chuck shot w 660 in triple deuce. That '77 or '78.

150 yards, no bipod.

Sporting a Jones cap over a John Wick hairdo.
LOL

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There are cap gun pics w western hat, w me and my cuz still in diapers.
We hunt together, now both of us almost 60.
Proly be some diaper gun pics in the near future LOL

 

Since my left eye doesn't turn left, I grew up hating getting my picture taken.
Still avoid it as best I can.
Of course going through a drive through I look like a dumbazz since I have to look left.
Shades help.
Then I look like a cooler dumbazz LOL

Oddly, I was able to date some hot chicks even w a screwed up eye.

Maybe they just wanted to shoot my guns. Makes sense.

 

My oldest kid posing w critter....

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