"How Did You Become a Gun Enthusiast"

Well, I got into guns after my bloody skirmish with a 2,000lb grizzly back in '98. As soon as the big grizzly stood up on his back legs, that was my chance so I kicked him in the nuts as hard as I could. Then as he fell forward towards me I cracked him in the honker as hard as I could. Big fella was out cold n' seeing stars. And then all I had to do was whip out my mean lil' polymer 2" bbl .380 and it was lights out for Mr. Bear. After that triumphant day in Alaska I decided pocket .380's are the only caliber I'll use for big game. If I run out of ammo, you know if I'm up against multiple bears, I can use the frame as an impact weapon. Hey, If it works... it works. :D

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It started in the early 1950's,,,

It started in the early 1950's,,,
I fell in love with anything that launched a projectile.

All the TV shows about cowboys,,,
And the Adventures of Robin Hood,,,
And the war movies I grew up watching,,,
I was taught by popular culture that a man went armed.

At 5 years old my first "firearm" was a Davy Crockett muzzleloader,,,
It used a paper cap to launch a cork ball across my living room.

The first handgun I ever fired was when I was about 4-5 years old,,,
My grandfather let me shoot a few rounds from the snub-nose he always had in his jacket pocket.

The first rifle I fired was also with my grandfather,,,
It was a .22 of some kind and we shot rats at the dump.

The first time I fired a high-power rifle was a sporterized 8mm Mauser,,,
Old Joe Something-Polish let me fire one round at a range,,,
With a scope and sandbags and I hit a bullseye at 100 yards,,,
I still have a box of childhood treasures with that cartridge.

By the time I was 10 years old I had devoured every gun book in the local library,,,
Very limited finances as a kid meant my guns were mail-order mil-surps,,,
$14.95 got a British .303 delivered by USPS to my door.

A three mile ride on my bicycle got me to an army surplus store,,,
The crotchety old-phart who ran it sold me ammo for 10 cents a round,,,
That meant I could shoot 5 rounds a week with my weekly allowance money.

My Dad trapped and hunted when he was a kid,,,
But he never looked at guns as a recreational thing at all,,,
As far as he was concerned a single-shot 22 was all the gun anyone ever needed,,,
And as for going to shoot at targets he couldn't think of a bigger waste of his time or money.

I've always had some kind of gun to shoot,,,
But never anything nice and even then ammo was a dear thing,,,
With a wife who had to keep her horses in high style a 50 round box of .22 was a luxury.

I didn't really get to indulge myself until much later in life,,,
I split from the horse loving lady and went back to university,,,
It's only in the last 10 years I have been able to truly indulge myself.

I've been making up for lost time ever since then.

Now a major pastime of mine is taking young men and women to the range,,,
I get a thrill when one of the students I take shooting shows success,,,
So I get to indulge my passion for firearms and promote the 2A.

I'll keep doing this as long as I have an income that allows it.

Aarond

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when I was really young, there used to be no such stuff as mp3, youtube and the like. We had some LPs, though, one of them was this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k76bmeS1nT8

Both the music and the title virtually breathed the air of freedom, self-determination and manhood. It got me into Westerns, and Westerns got me into guns.

I used to be a wheelgun fan all of my youth, it was later (when I was actually allowed to own, a mighty day to think back to) that I switched to semis.

Did my PhD thesis on Western movies and put something very pro-gun in it. The professors didn't like it at all, I tell you... :D
 
Grew up around them, always loved shooting, turned my first hobby in computer programming into a tedious career, so I needed a new hobby...

Now shooting holes in old computers (Office Space printer style), keeps me sane :D
 
I was born into a family of gun people.Owning firearms is a tradition that goes back probably a couple centuries as of 2014. My dad is a Vietnam veteran and was a career police officer for 24 years. He started me shooting when I was 12. That was 1980.

For many years I never owned more than five or six guns, but in the late 90's I began to get interested in the older models. It started with British milsurp rifles but quickly went over into revolvers.

I'm also a veteran (U.S. Army) and I've been a police officer for approximately 13.5 years. My sixteen year old son is now becoming invovled with shooting and now owns two 22 rifles. :D

The family tradition continues.
 
Childhood and law enforcement played a huge role. My uncle took me out of school one day and took my cousin and I shooting at an outdoor range when I was 12. I got pellet guns with CO2 and some that were pump action. Etc....

Pops and my uncle would take me to gun shows too... that really sparked it.
 
I grew up in the inner city years ago. No green grass, no place for baseball or football. And no guns at home, nor any discussion about guns. I wasn't much of an aggressive athlete either. So my parents shipped me off to a summer camp that focused on basketball and swimming.
I totally failed at basketball, excelled at swimming but I discovered two things that just 'clicked' with me for a lifetime. Sailing and shooting.
The shooting was typical kids stuff. .22LR single shot rifles. Each kid prone and got 5 cartridges at a time. Lots of safety skilling and drilling, relaxed but focused shooting and I had the right stuff to get the highest scores in camp.
It had been years before I was able to recreate that feeling. I've shot 9mm handguns for twenty years and a semi-auto rifle here and there but just recently bought a Tikka in .223 and went to the range last week. The first time in forty five years that I've had a bolt gun on a target. It was just as satisfying and memorable as it was all those years ago. I loved it and will keep going.
B
 
Sparks1957 said:
Well, someone had to be an Indian, and since I am one, I usually played the role (with pride).
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:D Me too! It usually ended up with me asking, "What, I gotta be the whole tribe?" That's alright though, my rubber-tipped arrows actually hurt (and I was a pretty good bowman) while their stinkin cap guns never did. Whenever they cried, "I got you!" I always said, "I didn't feel it.":p

Only gun in the family was Dad's 1903 Colt. It was cool, but I never actually shot it until I was in my 30s. Far as I know, Dad never did, either. It was handed down to him from his father and is now mine. But my brother-in-law came along in 1965 and was into guns. He had only a .22 rifle and a shotgun then, but once he got out of Vietnam, he bought several more. It was mostly he that stoked the fires of gun enthusiasm in me. Nobody else in my family has taken to guns the way I did. I must admit though, I still group with a bow better than any of my guns.:(
 
I didn't grow up in a gun-friendly environment (New Jersey). I was looking for something extra-curricular to do in HS and decided to join the skeet club (honest, back in the early '60s schools actually let students handle guns!!!) We shot .410s and it was a lot of fun, but still, it didn't pull me in to where I wanted to own a gun.

In fact, I bought my first gun about 25 years ago after somebody was murdered in the house behind ours in a suburb of San Francisco. It was a Taurus 85 and I still have it. I shot it, but not often, since getting to a range in the area was kind of a haul. It wasn't the greatest, but it was fun. Then I got a Mossberg 500 and hired a police trainer to teach my wife and I how to use it. At that point, with a black-and-blue shoulder from shooting full-house 00 rounds, I was hooked. Since moving to Texas, I've added a bunch of handguns and love shooting. I carry concealed every day and am already looking for my next gun (I've haven't acquired a new pistol in about 8 months!!).

To paraphrase a popluar bumper sticker (popular in Texas, anyhow) ... I wasn't born a gun enthusiast, but I got there as fast as I could.
 
I grew up around guns and have owned at least one since I was twelve. Why do I own (collect) guns you ask, because they speak to me.
 
I shot a couple of guns at a range about 3 years and promptly thought "Right then! That's my money pit requirements met for the next few decades"
 
Absolutely zero influence from family, friends or acquaintances. Had BB and pellet air guns as a kid and can’t recall ever having a cap gun. Wore out or broke most because of poor round count durability. Western type TV shows weren’t to my liking except “The Rifleman”, probably one of my most favorite TV series ever.

Got my first real gun at about 13, a 30-06 Remington BDL bolt-action rifle from White Front, a discount department store as I remember. Took a good deal of effort to get a parent to the store. Got stolen before I got a chance to fire it. Most likely shooting the BDL would have scared the bejesus out of me.

Next gun was a High Standard Citation auto pistol having military grip with 5.5” bull barrel from Pachmayr Gun Works.

The Remington BDL was replaced with a Sako Finnbear (long action) 30-06 bolt-action rifle that I eventually sold. Years later bought and still have a Sako Deluxe 85 bolt-action in 308 Win. (medium action).

First firearm bought on my own, 18 years old, was a Remington Nylon 66 22LR rifle.

Over the years handgun accumulation grew faster than long guns. Currently my handguns out number the long guns by a factor of two, I think.

Outside of gun shows I find very little genuine interest in firearms by most.
 
I grew up with guns in rural PA. I wasn't an enthusiast then,..they were simply tools to control varmints and for hunting (pheasants & deer were plentiful). Just a fact of life. Later I attended a private high school and I joined the rifle team (yeah....imagine that nowadays!) and shot .22 competition.

I became a bit more interested in the different varieties when I was in the military. On my first fire team I was the grenadier and was issued a 45 auto as a sidearm to the M79. Later, my issue firearm was the original M16, and later yet back to the 45 as the gunner on a mortar team. I qualified expert with both the 45 and M16.

My dad was a bit of a collector, and when he passed away, my two brothers and I inherited his collection, divvying up about 60+ guns... rifles, shotguns, mil surps, and handguns, and my interest increased more. Plenty of guns to shoot, so I joined a range.

Now, lately, the past couple years, since the evil guns are becoming harder to buy (here in NJ), I figure I better get 'em while I can, and I seem to have morphed into more of an enthusiast, thanks to the gun grabbers.
 
When I was growing up I was surrounded by guns, especially the hunting kind and they were everywhere so I never thought them to be a big deal. Kids would bring ammo to school for show and tell and many started hunting at a fairly young age. My Dad rarely hunted because he frequently worked 7 days a week and when he did go deer hunting he borrowed a rifle as the only firearm he owned was a single shot shotgun to shoot varmints trying to raid our garden. As a result I never really got into hunting except to occasionally shoot rats at the dump.
As a kid I did own my fair share of toy guns which were on my Christmas list every year from the age of 5 to 10 or so. The Sears Christmas catalog (Wishbook) was full of them and I had Cowboy cap guns, Civil War replicas, WWII M1 Garands, 1911s, a German Lugar, various machine guns and a James Bond attaché case with a pistol inside that you could mount a stock and silencer onto. My friends and I had great fun running around in our back yards playing war.
Throughout my life I always shot guns for target practice and plinking as well as taking care of an occasional nuisance squirrel or something. I just didn't own too many until fairly recently since I paid off my mortgage and the kids moved out. It's amazing how many guns you find desirable when you can suddenly afford them. THAT'S what turned me into an enthusiast!
 
Had no gun enthusiasts in my family, though my Dad had been somewhat of a minor enthusiast many years before I was born. He was sick for almost all of my life, and he had intentions of getting me started in shooting, but we didn't make much progress. He did support and assist me in getting started with an air rifle, which I spawned in to a ridiculous volume of pellet & BB gun shooting in the basement. I believe I built a foundation for shooting handguns... with BB and pellet guns in my basement.

From the earliest age I could recall, Dad would always let me get the .22 rifles and couple of 12ga shotguns out to inspect and ask questions about when I asked. Inevitably, I would also ask when we could actually shoot them and his answer was always "when you are ready..." and I would come back with, "well, when is that?" and he would reply "when you have grown out of running around the neighborhood with toy guns, shooting at your friends and playing 'war.' " He had no problem whatsoever with my desire to run around with toy guns as my friends and I did so often, but he felt the two wouldn't mix. I truly don't know if he was right -- but I can honestly say that I was not ready to give up my gaggle of toy guns and the crazy fun we had running around the neighborhood for the chance to go shooting a .22 rifle. :p

It was in May that he passed away and perhaps a couple of weeks later that my Mom took me out to some friends of the family just outside town and asked that the gentleman get me started shooting. He was an avid hunter and kitchen table FFL. We brought our rifles, our ammo, and he got me rolling. Near the end of the day, he brought out two of his handguns to close out the session, and offered each for me to try. A Ruger Single Six (.22LR) and a Ruger Security Six, with .357 Magnum ammo. I asked him to shoot the .357 first, so I could see the action :eek: as I was hesitant. He refused, told me that I didn't have to shoot it if I didn't care to, but that if I wanted to see it make noise, I'd be the one to do it.

So I did it. :D

I was hooked, full-boat, and right off the deep end. :D It couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks after that... Mom joined us both up in the Sportsman's Club in the next town over. (closest one!) She got involved with the joint, giving them the desperate help they needed running their finances... and I got on the smallbore rifle team, we both began shooting skeet on Sundays and within months... I was shooting some kind of firearm on 4 or 5 days out of every 7 day week.

For Christmas that year, 7 months after my Dad was gone, Mom bought me a Smith & Wesson Model 17-6, a gorgeous K-22 with the three T's. I've been a hardcore handgun enthusiast for what seems like forever, though I started shooting actual handguns later in life than many. I was 15 years old when I squeezed the trigger on a live round for the first time.

My Mom put a lot of heart, energy, MONEY & effort in to getting me in to shooting, no doubt. She has zero regrets and just loves to hear & see whatever new fun handgun I've recently come up with. I've thanked her many, many times. :)
 
Thank you, and YUP! Back then, she worked at a bank and had a lifetime before that of running a retail store, so handling the finances of a Sportsman's Club was something she was skilled at, and they needed it so badly that it's not even funny. In addition to that bit of headache, she also helped in the kitchen for the pancake breakfast they made EVERY Saturday morning, which fed all the PPC shooters (pretty much all local cops.)

While she cooked & such, my cousin & I would be range rats on the outdoor range... shooting our stuff, but even more fun was hanging out down there and having almost anyone who visited the range offer a shot here & there to us from their guns. :D There was a lot of self-confidence building when you could take some handgun that was pleasantly offered for a couple shots and impress the owner of it when you're a 15 year old guy. It was more than once or twice that I could shoot their handgun better than they could... but many of these folks were visiting our range for the first time.

On Sundays, back to the club for four rounds of skeet. Did that on Wednesday evenings also. Monday night was rifle practice, and one Sunday a month was rifle matches that we'd have to travel to if we didn't host them at our club. On Friday it was typical that my older brother would zip in to town, pick me up from school at the last bell and we'd drive directly to the range, gear already loaded up. Great times.

Many life long, hardcore gun cranks start shooting when they are 4 or 5 or 6 years old, and I started at 15. But I spent the bulk of my time making up for it during my high school years.

Mom's got horrendous rheumatoid arthritis in her hands now, but REALLY wants to get to a range for a short session. It's probably been a good 6-8 years since she's had a chance to shoot. Just turned 74 years old.
 
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