What's your shooting background?

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L

Lucky Devil

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Having grown up in a liberal democrat household, guns were never allowed in our home. How I became interested in firearms still amazes me a little bit, given the years of anti-gun propaganda I was exposed to. (Forbidden fruit perhaps? :) )

Anyway, my question is...Did you come from a gun-friendly family? If not, how did you become interested in firearms? For me, it was the classic case of the liberal who gets mugged and suddenly wants to buy a gun and get revenge for having his feelings hurt. (Fortunately, my change of heart came without the mugging :) )

Cheers! LD
 
I come from a pretty rabidly pro-gun household. As of now, I am the only member of my imeadiate family who is not a lifetime member of the NRA. I would be except I spent the money on making my son a lifetime member. My father is life, and even my ultra-left sister is a life member. Her membership was bought as a gaffe from my dad. She of course has to be liberal as she is the publisher of a newspaper. While she isn't a rabidly anti-gun person, she is just moderately pro-gun.
We were raised around guns, and spent a lot of time shooting, and cleaning them. Next to Jesus, firearms hold a dear place in our lives. Once purchased, we never sell our firearms. We have guns from four generations back. I'm sure there are a bunch of folks like me out there, and we're always welcoming of newcommers! I hope your shooting days are long, and pleasant, and that you are able to spend many happy hours with your kids teaching not just self defence, but also to appreciate and respect firearms. Kids just take to a rifle like it was born to them.
 
Dad was from waaaay back in the boonies in Northeast Oklahoma and Mom is a North Texas ranch girl.

They raised us in Africa amongst a horde of oilfield engineers/Vietnam/Oman vets.

We weren't rabid about guns, guns were simply a part of the landscape--notable only if they were absent.

LawDog

[This message has been edited by LawDog (edited July 16, 2000).]
 
I grew up shooting since I was knee-high to a short duck. started with my dad at the age of 3...got my own .22 at 6...so on. I've had a lot of guns over the years. Now I'm down to 3...the one I got at 6 and two recent purchases. I had to sell and hock my other guns [including the one my dad gave me he got from his dad. :( ] due to being disabled and getting f*cked by the gov for the last ten years or so. I am now to the point where I hate my country and the gov. They want what I got? come get it bullets first-I'm so damn mad I don't sleep much anymore. I want my life and my dad's .22 rifle back!

sorry bout the rant...it's one in the a.m. and I'm wide awake because my feet are killing me and I've slept 4 hours in the last three days. anyway...let's hear some more GOOD stories bout family guns and generations before I spew.

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Satanta, the Whitebear
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How my father became interested in guns is beyond me. Both of my grandparents (his parents) are (were) pretty anti-gun. The only ones in the house were family heirlooms.

Still, he started hunting, started buying a few shotguns and rifles, and passed on the bug. I'll have to ask him about that sometime. It MIGHT have come from his grandfather, a farmer.

My mother grew up in a home with a couple of guns, including some heirlooms and some working guns. Mom's a really good shot, though.

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Beware the man with the S&W .357 Mag.
Chances are he knows how to use it.
 
I don't really remember not being around guns. My Dad and uncles and the preachers all hunted birds, in NE Texas, of course.
The enjoyment has always been present and from the first time I pulled the trigger while someone else held the gun, I have been hooked.

I don't believe in addiction, but if there really is one, I'd just as soon be addicted to shooting.
 
Seems to me that guns are only a big deal if you make them a big deal. I get the sense that those who grew up around them are not the ones mishadling them and shooting up their place of employment/school or whatever.
 
I grew up in a gun-free household. Understand, my father was under duress; he loved guns but my mother most emphatically did not.

Just like with everything else, I became exposed to guns through books. They are wonderful to look at and know about.

Only much later did I become steeped in the culture and begin to truly understand.
 
Satanta,
Hang in there. Are you dealing with the VA, or is it some other Govt. Agency? I've had pretty good luck with the VA, but others I know have been screwed. I hate to hear that someone had to sell family guns. I would hock everything I own and even sell my house before selling some guns, so I know you must be in a bad way. If you need help navigating the VA, let me know via e-mail.
 
Hi Kjm...thanx....no, it's regular SocSec/disability....read the petition or on my website gt my personal bio in there somewhere...kinda long to get into here

I just get these 'moments' occaisionally when I'm really pist or kinda sad...the gun thing made me sad.... but I stopped playing the violin an hour ago. :)


"Better to bury the corpse than be tried by 12, saves money on lawsuits and fertilizer." Satanta.

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Satanta, the Whitebear
Sat's Realm: <A HREF="http://SatantasRealm.tripod.com/Entrypage/entrypage.html

My" TARGET=_blank>http://SatantasRealm.tripod.com/Entrypage/entrypage.html

My</A> Disability petition: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/DisbHelp/petition.html

[This message has been edited by Satanta (edited July 16, 2000).]
 
I came from a family that did not even understand the word anti. We had guns in every room of the house. When I turned 21 I bought an S&W 686 and got a carry permit. I didn’t even know that I wasn’t allowed to buy a handgun before I was 21. I also didn’t know that you could not get a carry permit everywhere. I was so immersed in shooting and hunting that I had no clue there where people out there trying to take away my guns. It took a few years before I ran into an anti-gun person. I looked at them like they were for another planet.
 
I grew up around guns. When my Father was a young man ( 1890's ) he was the senior male while Grandad was at sea; if he didn't hunt, the family didn't eat, so to him guns were a tool-- for getting food. He was a very fine shot with pistols, but regarded them as "toys"-- if you were serious about shooting something, you got a long arm. My Mother was a Master Sergeant in the WWII WAC's, and also quite good with anything that could shoot. I got my first .22 single shot rifle at age 6-8 ( not quite sure when ).
I grew up on the ocean, and can't recall when I couldn't swim--my folks response to "fear of drowning" was teaching me to swim.
Ditto with guns--rather than try to make "the guns safe-for the chillun"-- they made the child safe around the guns.
 
I grew up on a farm in Kansas where we hunted plenty. My dad kept a loaded semi-auto shotgun in his closet. I remember the folks having a .22 revolver in the glove box of the car. No gun locks or safes. We had other guns and ammo around the house. I was impressed with what a good shot my dad was. I enjoyed shooting the M-16 in the service but not the 1911 45 cal. handgun. For about the first 20 years of my marriage, I did not have a gun in the house. Then we moved to the farm and I started aquiring some. Except for our youngest daughter, the other four children are interested in handguns because of crime. I now have a carry permit since we moved to Tennessee, but feel that it is not really Consitutional to reqiure one. However, I don't want to be plundered by the gov't, so I have it.

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Alexander Solzhenitzyn:
"Freedom is given to the human conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility."
 
Well I guess to understand how I got into guns you have to know about my family. My Grandfather (mother's father) was a WWII/Korea vet (Navy). When leaving the service he became a Door-to-door salesman and a part-time preacher. He never had that many guns, but he did have a few over the years so my mother was not brought up in an anti-gun house. When my parents got married she bought my father a shotgun.
My father was a country boy. His father bought him his first .22 single-shot bolt-action at an early age. My father enters the family business by driving trucks for my Grandfather's (father's father) lumber business. After they move to the town they live in now my father works part time for the Sheriff's Office for free, he has always wanted to be an LEO. Sometime before or after I am born he goes full time, can't remember which right now, I just woke up.
My father once built a firing range at the lumber yard which he used to take us boys to every weekend to shoot .22's and occasionally something bigger. One time the local hotshot marksman in the Sheriff's office came by the range and was boasting how good he was and thought my mom couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with her S&W .38 Special. Well when she outshot him he left and never came back to our range.
My Grandfather (mother's father) would also take me out back at his house and let me shoot his Daisy BB gun. Then when I turned 8 my parents bought me my first .22 bolt-action rifle. When I outgrew that one, they got me another one and gave my little brother my old gun (I like those kind of hand-me-downs). After I got my CCW at 22 years of age, my father even let me carry his S&W 6906 until I could get me a sidearm of my own.
I can still remember all the fun I had with my entire family on the range and going to gunshows. The only thing I can't figure out is how my Uncle (mother's brother) became an anti. But then again he does consider himself a democrat, far left. The rest of my family is either pro-gun or they just consider them part of life, a necessary tool. I think only myself and my father are in the NRA though. My father is life and I am about to do the $25 per quarter thing to become a life member. I think I would also say that the anti's are a small minority where I live, and I bet even they have at least one gun in their homes/cars/etc. Anyway, that's why I am pro-gun/freedom/self-defence.

45er
 
I never really thought much about guns one way or the other until I joined the Marines. My faher was a Jehovas witness, so guns and shooting people were verboten. He had some rifles and shotguns, but only for hunting.
After I joined the Marines, I got plenty of gun training of course, and qualified expert the whole time I was in.
I got out about 1 1/2 years ago and did not own a firearm. I read a book a while ago that was about a series of massive earthquakes that devestated the mid-West (Fictional), and one of the remarks was "in a time like this, guns are a priceless commodity". Basicly the book was about a natural catastrophe in which the local and federal governments were disabled, and the ensuing chaos.
I started thinking about that and how if the S*** were to hit the fan, I would be out of luck.
Bought a Glock 27 the next day, started going to the range and caught the bug. I now purchase a new gun every month, which is as fast as I can in California (I'm moving to Dallas next summer :-) My list will soon be complete - Davis Derringer in .38, Kel-Tec P32, Glock 27, Steyr M-40 (or Walther P-99, not sure yet), Mossberg 500, Rifle (Not sure what yet).
Should get me through any contigency...

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"Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond."
-Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
 
Geez, where to begin? My father was an attorney, as were both my grandfathers. They were both politicians, too...Democrats. My father was chairman of the SC Dem Party.
Dad taught me to shoot when I was 6 1/2. I got a BB gun for Christmas that year ('61), and I've not looked back since. When I was 8, he started teaching me the fundamentals of swing and lead with a shotgun, and we spent some time shooting hand thrown clays with me using a Harrington & Richardson Topper .410. I then began to dove hunt with him, and eventually graduated to a Fox/Sterlingworth 20 ga. SxS w/26" barrels & a cut down stock. Great fit; got my first limit of doves with this gun. Then on to a Browning A5 in 20, and finally, to a Remington 870 in 12.
When I was 10, I attended the Citadel Summer Camp, and learned to shoot a .22 rifle (instructor was head of the school rifle team, and NRA certified.)
I learned to shoot pistols and revolvers by reading. When I was about 14, Dad allowed me to shoot a game warden's M66 one day before a dove hunt.
Dad only hunted birds, and had nothing other than shotguns. He said that handguns were only good for killing people. Imagine my surprise, one day, when I saw him running out of the house with a Colt Agent .38 strapped to his hip. Turned out there were some poachers on his land outside of town, and he was headed there (along with the game wardens and the sheriff) to take care of the situation.
My Mom always expressed some dismay whenever I bought GUNS or other shooting magazines (Field & Stream and Outdoor Life were OK; they were about hunting,) but she never discouraged it, nor forbade me from buying them.
At any rate, here I am. Pistols are my first love, then rifles, then shotguns.
Keep in mind that although I came from a family of Dems, they were South Carolina conservative Dems of the late '50's early '60's era. That's a whole different kettle of fish from today's Dems. Some of the things my parents/grandparents believed would earn them a "right wing extremist" label in today's world.

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Shoot straight & make big holes, regards, Richard at The Shottist's Center
 
I can't remember ever NOT being around guns.
I started shooting as soon as I was big enough to hold a Red Ryder, I was four years old give or take a few months.
I do remember my Grandfather having to cock it for me 'til I was around five. :D
I come from a long line of gun owners, on both sides of my family.
I remember all my Great Grandparents having them, and handing them down.
I remember my Uncle having to go to the nursing home to DISARM my 108 year-old 3rd Great Aunt who threatened to shoot a mean orderly with her Schofield, which he just filed the firing pin then gave it back to her, ;) and my 9th GreatGrandfather's gun is even in a Virginia museum.
My Mom has repeatedly drilled into me to either kill or die for my guns, so I don't understand at all how anyone could even BE an anti. :confused:

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"Rise like lions after slumber in invanquishable number - Shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - They are few."
-Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822)
 
Years ago, I was for gun control laws (the editorials in the newspapers told me this would disarm the criminals). Then I was struck with curiousity about how do semi-automatic pistols work. I bought a copy of "Shooting Times" to find out and a column in that magazine asked a question I never heard before: "You expect criminals to obey gun laws?" That simple question started the corruption of my innocent little brain and turned me into the raving gun-nut I am today.

Thank goodness! :D
 
While my dad never owned a gun, my three older brothers all did and they all hunted. I got a bb gun as a kid, then joined the school rifle league when I was 12. I was away from guns for years, until I moved into a bad neighborhood in the early 80's. Then one gun led to another, and another...

Seems like I've spent a lot more time writing and calling than I have shooting, though.

Dick
Want to send Bush a message? Sign the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/monk.petition.html and forward the link to every gun owner you know.
 
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