44 AMP said:
Seriously, someone with no firearms experience needs more than just a quick and dirty safety lesson.
How true.
A couple of weeks ago, the owner of the range where I shoot had scheduled a family of four for a "First Steps" type of introduction to handguns and shooting class. He had a family emergency and had to scram, and when the family showed up and found no instructor the woman was not a happy camper. I'm certified to teach "First Steps," so I volunteered to play instructor rather than have prospective customers go away mad and probably bad-mouth the range for three towns in every direction.
We did almost an hour in the classroom, going over safety, types of guns, and such. I very clearly explained about sight picture, and used the range's show-&-tell props to illustrate it, as well as a real gun. They all said they got it.
So we went down to the range to shoot, and Mama's shots were all over the map, and all high -- VERY high. This persisted for several cylinders' worth of .22 ammo. I could see from standing next to her that she was aiming way high and I kept telling her, but it didn't seem to make any difference. Finally I reeled in the target, took the gun out of her hands, and put the muzzle right on the bullseye, and explained again about aligning the top of the front sight with the top of the rear sight. The light bulb finally lit up in her brain. When I explained it upstairs, she
said she understood (and she perhaps thought she understood), but in fact she had no idea that there was any relationship between that thing on the front of the barrel and the sight at the back. She thought you just looked at the bullseye through the notch, and you were done.
The time to be teaching and learning the basics of shooting is NOT when the zombie hordes are breaking down the door ...