Your shooting background
 

I know people who have grown up hunting and shooting at an early age. I know people who start later in life. I almost never shot, family doesn't like gns but I always had a fascination with them, shot a couple times with 22s in boy scouts when i was too young to remember. Then I shot in basic with the p229 DAKs, came home, now 18, and got an 870 and savage 22. Shoot with friends all the time. So I basically had to wait till age 18. Some of my friends on the other hand have been shooting since age 8 with 410s and 22s. When and how did yo start shooting?

At age 7 when my family moved from Kentucky (where there are only white people for as far as the eye can see) and I was given a single barrel .410 (the same one seen in Napolean Dynamite!) and a Browning .22 semi-auto rifle http://store.valueweb.com/vintagepap...alog/AB015.jpg

If i have kids theyll grow up learning safe and fun shooting.

I've been around guns my whole life, and I figure the best way to instill good safety habits is to start teaching the child early in life

Totally agree. Most effective form of gun control there ever could be.

When I was living in Kentucky, we had an unlocked closet full of guns that was situated where no one really paid attention to it. I could have went in there and messed with them at any time, but even as a very young child I knew better

Children with guns don't kill people, ignorant children with guns kill people.
Teach! Impart! Etc!

None of my family owns or shoots, so I mostly did stuff with my uncle. I never got a chance to fire his AK 47 civilian model before he sold it, more's the pity.

My first hunting trip was when I was 11. A friend of the family took me to some woods a couple hours away. That's where I first fired a Remington shotgun. I forgot which type. Every so often, my uncle would ask me to join him hunting for deer.

I try to hunt as often as I can. I'm really lucky though so I don't get to go as much as I would like because I'd kill my limit the first week of the season if I did (for the last 2 years I have killed something on my first hunt of the season). This year I almost couldn't go opening weekend because of a pinched nerve in my lower back/ hip area (I couldn't even really stand without tremendous pain/effort), but I swallowed some ibuprofen, grabbed my Winchester 88 and liquified ever single one of a buck's organs at a hundred yards. The pinched nerve still rears it's ugly head every now and again, and it hurts like a motherfucker, but I endure the pain until it passes

Learned to shoot in the cadets at 13 - first with the Daisy 853 air rifle then the old Lee-Enfield No.7 .22. Shot competetively from then until I was 17. Bought my first rifle at 15. Shot extensively before I joined the army at 19.

Started shooting .22's at about 5. Got a left handed bolt action Savage .22 when I was 7. Started hunting a few years later. I haven't looked back since. I was always into pistols but I didnt start shooting them frequently until about 16. Now at 23 I have a pretty decent collection and variety and I've been carrying since I turned 21.

My college has a pistol and rifle club, but it only allows .22LR firearms. It was never clear why we can't have higher caliber. I know the shooting range could handle bigger bullets than .22LRs. The club have a bunch of Ruger 10/22 rifles in semi and in bolt action. They also have one shot rifles as well and a bunch of pistols.

I fell into the whole gun thing after watching a bunch of gun-movies and playing CounterStrike, no joke. My family had a bit of a gun background but never influenced me as they thought that guns and kids were a bad combination, though they shot and owned them. I spent every day lurking forums and gunbroker learning about guns, and saving what money I could to buy my own, along with begging for them as christmas gifts. Over the course of the last 4 or 5 years I've done a lot of research and a bit of collecting and I'd like to think it shows, especially seeing as how it came from nothing. No hunting, not competition, no young shooting, no family members, nothing. It sucks because if you don't have any "excuse" for it, most people think you are just creepy, violent, or insane. All the same I'm proud of what I know and that I have a hobby which I enjoy.

My story isn't much different from YNH's. When I was little, my dad had a couple of .22 LR rifles. I shot one of them on one or two occasions, but never again after that. At some point my dad sold them and that was it.

I started getting into military weaponry at 15 or 16 when I finally became intent on determining the identity of the "M16 grenade launcher" that Arnold used in Predator. At first I thought the rifle by itself was the M16A1 and the rifle/launcher combo was the M16A2. Then I found out the M16A2 was the rifle by itself, so I started thinking the rifle/grenade launcher was the M16A3... I eventually got the game Conflict: Desert Storm, where one of the squad members had an M16A2 with an M203 and then I finally learned that the rifle and launcher had separate designations. This was all pre-Internet, of course.

I basically started researching and learning through books (and eventually Internet) to the point where I could give a person step-by-step instructions on how to tear an AR-15 apart and put it back together without ever having touched one. Studying weapons lead to studying tactical gear, that lead to tactics and strategy, then that led to studying warfare of multiple eras between now and the Bronze Age.

My Dad got me into skeet (errr..."clay pigeon") shooting when I was about 8 or 9. I enjoyed it, but I think I saw it as strictly a sport. The guns themselves weren't what interested me. I had a little 28-gauge Harrington & Richard single-barrel shotgun which my Dad got me for my 9th birthday, because I was such a short and skinny little boy that that was all I could handle. :)

By the time I was 12 or 13, I started getting interested in the military, and modern firearms. My grandfather got me into pistol-shooting, mostly with his little .22 Ruger, but by the time I was 16, I was shooting his S&W 4506, Taurus PT92, and Walther PPK/S. I could never shoot consistent groups with the S&W (still can't), but I was decent enough with the Taurus and the Walther.

I also remember literally counting the days to my 18th birthday because I had wanted to own an AK-47 for as long as I could remember.

I grew up around weapons like alot of people here. My grandfather used to be a rangemaster at the Simpson range outside of Eureka, CA and I have spent some quality time there when I wasn't shooting on an aunt's ranch. Some of my relatives are former military and one relative who will remain unnamed has been called a Mercenary. Now I tend to be rather suspisious of people who claim to be experts in small arms when they go by what's in books and don't even train to shoot under conditions they talk about. It's a very big differance between I have read and I have done. While I have not done everything I want to try when it comes to shooting I have tried as much as I possibly can. Sometimes what i would like to do is as much for "Shits and Giggles" as it is to see if something can be done.

I hate the people who falsely claim to be small arms experts too. I usually know much, much more than them about guns and I am by no means any sort of expert

I'm not really a small arms "expert". I just know a bunch of stuff that a lot of people dont.

Same here, but alot of people my age believe that playing Call of Duty makes them experts. Unsuprisingly, everything they say is utterly idiotic/ false

It surprises me sometimes when I talk to people who knows absolutely nothing about guns. A girl I know who was in the Marines surprisingly didn't know what a Desert Eagle is. When I was talking with a comic book shop owner about the M1 Garand, he didn't know what that was.

How does someone not know what a Desert Eagle is? It has been in just about every single goddamn movie and video since it was put into production

Well a lot of people have SEEN a Desert Eagle, but it wouldnt be surprising if they dont know what it is. How often in a movie do you hear it being called by its name?

Now if someone didn't know what an AK-47 is by name, then they are stupid.

Suprisingly, I've met a few people like that

A lot of the general public don't know a thing about firearms and react surprisingly when you explain things to them.

When people find out I own 15 guns their heads damn near explode :D

I dont expect the non-gun nut to know all the guns. We all love guns here, many soldiers may sighn up to serve, shoot well, but not read gn mags, browse forums, etc. Have you ever noticed how many military vets just buy a m92fs and ar-15? Its the gns they knew and used. Although, i know one national guard person who doesnt know what a m9 is.

A Marine buddy of mine didn't want to get the M92FS. He said he didn't like it that much and bought an XD. He does however want to get a class 3 license and get himself a full auto M16

Every single vet I've met that's had to use the M9 thinks it's a piece of shit. Oddly enough, the majority of those guys own Kimbers

I know of one guy who writes for a couple publications and outside of a 25 yard range I don't think he's ever used a firearm. I first heard about the guy when someone who admits to having only shooting a firearm once in their life tried to argue that the 5.56X45mm round was short ranged and that the 7.62X51mm NATO round was uncontrolable in Full Auto. Now I have seen a 5.56/.223 rifle shoot out past 600 yards. Heck there is a man who has used a .223 AR-15 varient to put twenty rounds in a twenty inch circle in twenty seconds at a range of 1,000 yards. The man chose the cartridge because it had low enough recoil that the weapon wouldn't be moved off target.

As for the 7.62 NATO round I have friends who use such rifles at Class 3 competitions. In addition I have friends who have used such rifles in more "political" situations and when under 100 yards such weapons can be used to shred entire squads who have made the mistake of bunching up at the bottom of hills. Unfortunatly most armies don't properly train their troops to really use the weapons they are given.

The vets I know have no real complaints about the 5.56 being too weak. A couple have a little problem with jamming in their M16/M4s, but they are ok with the weapon.