Your shooting background

[FirearmFan]

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.

[Excalibur]

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.

[Yournamehere]

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.

[Spartan198]

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.

[MT2008]

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.

[Rockwolf66]

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.

[S&Wshooter]

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

[Excalibur]

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

[S&Wshooter]

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

[Excalibur]

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.