Learning to Shoot

I got my first BB gun in when I was 10 years old. Before that, I had a couple of toy Fanner 50’s in a hand-carved leather double holster rig. A Fanner 50 is a toy old-west style six-shooter. My dad made the holsters from a Tandy Leather Company kit. Once, I surprised him working on the leather carving and guessed that it was for me. After that I got to watch him cut and stamp out the all the stylized flowers and scrollwork as he worked on the project. It was very, very cool. I still have one of the holsters. I don’t know what happened to the belt and the other holster.
I’ve always liked guns, even toy guns. The Christmas when I got the double holster rig with the Fanner 50’s, I was instructed by my dad to never point a gun, even a toy gun, at anyone, ever. About the only safety instruction I got from my dad was gun safety. That’s okay, though, because as a result, I’ve never had an accident with a gun in all the years since I got that first BB gun. It wasn’t a Red Ryder BB gun, like the one made popular in the move A Christmas Story, instead it was a Daisy target-shooting gun. Paper targets are what I was taught to shoot at, rather than those more tempting birds and small mammals . My dad showed me the proper way to hold the gun so that the sights would stay on target as I squeezed the trigger. He taught me to always shoot into a backstop so as the keep the BBs from going somewhere I didn’t intend. I got pretty good with that BB gun, and I loved shooting it. I didn’t always shoot targets though, sometimes I shot a few cans, too. Cans were more fun because they would fall over when you hit them, targets just showed you how accurate you were aiming. Cans give an indication of the potential power of a BB when propelled at high speed; it is enough to do serious damage at close range.
When I joined the Boy Scouts, I learned about .22 caliber rifles. At summer camp, one of the high points of the week was the time spent on the rifle range learning to shoot bolt-action .22 rifles. We were given careful instruction on all aspects of safe gun handling before we were allowed to get anywhere near these potentially lethal weapons. Only after we had thoroughly learned gun safety were we issued the little wooden blocks which held five, live rounds of .22 caliber long rifle ammunition in little holes drilled into the block. You were only supposed to shoot five rounds into each target. The goal was to get as many of the rounds into the center of the target as possible. As a beginner, the object is to first get all five rounds onto the target. Once you’ve done that, you then strive to get all the rounds as close together as possible. When you’ve managed to get all five rounds reasonably close together, say within the diameter of a quarter, then you’ve got what is a called a “group” of shots. If you can group your shots, then you can adjust your point of aim to get them all in the center of the target. While you’re trying to do that, you also need to remember to always keep the muzzle of the weapon (the end from which the bullets exit) pointed in a safe direction, to treat every gun as if it were loaded, to listen to the range officer (the guy who gives you directions on a shooting range), to squeeze the trigger, to control your breathing, and to be aware of where the bullet goes after it exits the target. That’s not a lot to remember, really, and I absorbed it easily.
I got good enough at it that my dad gave me a rifle of my own, a bolt-action .22 caliber Mossberg. It is a wonderfully accurate rifle and I had a great time using it whenever we would go out target shooting. My dad’s rifle was a semi-automatic .22 with a scope and, sometimes, I got to shoot that rifle, too, but I really liked my simple Mossberg and the way I could knock out the center of a target with it. I still have that Mossberg. I don’t get a chance to shoot it much anymore, but when I do, I get just as much enjoyment from it as I ever did as a teenager. There’s something very satisfying about being able to control a rifle, to be able to place a round wherever I want it to go. It’s not something everyone can do. It’s not something everyone wants to do. I know people who are afraid of guns. In most cases, it stems from fear of the unknown. If all you know about guns is what you see on TV, in movies or in most media sources, it is no wonder that you are afraid of them. In my case, after target shooting nearly all my life, I still find it thoroughly enjoyable to spend a couple of hours knocking the center out of a few targets.
Shooting was a good thing to learn in my teen and pre-teen years. It gave me a sense of accomplishment, but it also gave me a sense of responsibility. Being entrusted with something which has the power to kill a human being or an animal was not something I took lightly, and it gave me a bit of a self-esteem boost at a time when I didn’t really have much. It’s good to have at your disposal skills that you can call upon and use confidently and competently. The Boy Scout program gave me a great many survival skills upon which I can depend when needed, tying knots, first aid, camping, cooking, leadership and such, but shooting is the most fun.