07Apr16e guntotingliberals
My mother’s father was the only one of our
grandparents who owned guns. He was an Iowa farmer
and a hunter—mostly deer and game birds.
Both of our grandmothers and both of our parents were
vegetarians, but my grandfather taught my mother to
shoot targets with his rifles and “clay pigeons” with
a shotgun. She never went hunting with him.
My siblings and I didn’t have toy guns or BB guns
growing up. We weren’t allowed to play with other
children’s toy guns, but occasionally were allowed to
shoot other children’s BB guns.
When my grandfather died, my mother inherited his guns
and soon thereafter taught me how to use the rifles
for target practice.
My wife, Sally, and I never bought our children toy
guns or BB guns and they knew that I didn’t want them
to buy toy guns with their own money, so they never
did.
After our children were grown and had children of
their own, Sally and I started acquiring a few guns
and practicing with them. I am more interested in
airguns than firearms, but like to practice with both.
When someone bought our grandson, Anthony, a toy gun,
I used it to teach him things like always treating it
as a real gun, keeping it always pointed in a “safe”
direction, indexing, etc.
I never thought I’d let anyone under 16 years of age
shoot a “real” gun of mine (which, to my way of
thinking, includes my airguns), but our daughter,
unaware of our plans, took an extra shift of work on a
day that Sally had decided she wanted to go shooting.
I decided that if Anthony was going to watch us shoot,
he should be allowed to shoot something more than his
toy Kentucky rifle.
I have a Grizzly that I use for pellets only. That
morning, when I picked up some ammo for one of Sally’s
guns, I also bought a pair of shooting glasses for
5-year-old Anthony. I decided that if he could hit an
8-inch circle consistently from 25 feet with my
“pellet gun”, I’d reward him by also letting him shoot
a repeater. In Utah there are many places where that
can be done safely, even by a shooter who, as it turns
out, and even with every kind of instruction Sally and
I could think of, tried a couple of dozen shots from
17 feet without hitting a 12-foot square pizza box.
Every time I loaded the gun and handed it to Anthony,
it was with the safety on. I only had to tell him
once how to take the safety off before shooting, and
only had to remind him maybe twice in a couple of
dozen times. But while he positions his head exactly
as if he were sighting the gun, he is obviously only
mimicking what he has seen other shooters do.
I have a number of books and articles about learning
to shoot. The most common way of teaching someone how
to use the sights seems to be the “lollypop on a
stick” explanation. Frankly, that doesn’t make a lot
of sense to me, but we tried a number of different
ways of explaining the concept, to no avail.
If Davy Crockett “killed him a bar when he was only
three, I have to assume someone explained how to line
up the sights with the target. But how?
I have an old laser sight that might work if I buy
batteries. It was never more accurate than about a
half-inch from 25 feet.
I’d be interested in anyone’s advice as to whether
using the laser would be more of a hindrance than a
help at this point. I don’t want Anthony to rely on
it to the point (pardon the pun) of not learning to
use regular iron sights.
I’d also be interested in any other advice you can
give me.
Now that I’ve decided to let him shoot, I REALLY want
to teach him how to do it right.
Roger Metzger


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com