When did you become interested in guns?

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FireArmFan

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How old were you when you first became interested in guns? Were you brought up with guns or did it come later in life? Did you get into guns strictly because of home defense/self defense? or was it a hobby originally?

For me, I was brought up with guns. When i was very little i used to use a puzzle piece of the state of Florida as a toy gun before i had any actual toy guns. (Florida makes a pretty good pistol when your young)

when i was 6 my dad took me to a gun show and i bought a left handed bolt action savage .22 I saved up all year for it. I've been shooting guns ever since.
 
I started training in martial arts at age 15. My instructor didn't mince words about certain self-defense techniques: if you can carry, DO IT!

So, at age 21, I applied for my carry permit, got it, and bought a Beretta 92FS. It was the most natural thing in the world for me, although my friends were a bit surprised by the purchase.

The rest is history. :D
 
I grew up with guns... In a house full of 'em, as a matter of fact. All of them loaded at all times.

90% of the surviving pictures of me, back when I was no more than 2 or 3 show me with toy guns of some kind. I even had a BB gun by the time I was 3 or 4.

For me, having guns in the house is no different from having a coffee pot, refrigerator, or any number of other items that can be found in 99.9% of homes in the U.S. *shrug*


J.C.
 
We used to shoot .22 rifles at summer camp (somewhere I have my NRA sharpshooter rifle medalion). Then did a bit of bird (pheasent) hunting with a shotgun in my later teens.
Of course my first guns were Cowboy sixshooter cap guns. That was when I really became interested in guns. So I must have been, what 4 or so.
I remember I had a Bat Masterson belt buckle with a derringer in it--spring loaded. If you pushed your stomach out, it stretched the belt and the derringer poped out the front and shot the person. Had several different bright chrome cap pistols and shot myself a mess of Indians (no Indians were ever really harmed, and half the time I WAS an Indian--American varity only, no relation to the ACTUAL country of India-blame Columbus not me)
I remember quite well when the first "plastic" caps came out--the real LOUD ones. The guns looked so real-revolvers--and were so loud. LOVED IT. I had a little .38 snubnose.
I never saw my father or anyone other than my brother and I ever fire real guns.

Kinda funny. I do not remember where I heard this (but I think it was in a college class), they did a study many years ago about kids and violence, and when they did not allow little boys to have toy guns (as anti-gun programing at a young age), the little boys just made guns from their hands and fingers and said, "Pow, pow, pow."
Bet that pi$$ed the socialists off to no end.
 
The day the doctor smacked me! :eek:

Not really, but I could never remeber a time that I just snapped, and was suddenly interested in firearms. That interest was always there. No one in particular exposed me to it, althought I did go shooting with my dad a few times.
 
I was about 9 or 10 years old and my dad bought me a lever action BB gun at a yard sale. My mom didn't want the BB gun at her house (divorced parents, I lived with my mother) but had no objection to my shooting it at my dad's place under supervision.
At any rate, he bought the BB gun, and taught me how to shoot with it. I got really good at making soda cans go *ping*

Since then, its been a downward spiral. I shot my first real firearm at 12 or 13, bought my first firearm the day I turned 18 and have developed a real interest in historical weapons. Now, at the ripe old age of 24, I own just under a dozen firearms, some of which I purchased, some I inherited, and all of which I love.

The gun has played such a pivotal role throughout history, that ignoring it and its contributions as well as its negative uses, would be an insult to the history of mankind...and since .22 is so cheap anyway.:evil:
 
You might say that I am the oddball in my family, with the exception of my dad, they all think guns are evil. My dad grew up on a farm in Arkansas, and his dad would give him two bullets, and if he did not come home with two things for supper, his dad would whip his :cuss: butt, so he had to be a crack shot with his 22cal. rifle. I got into guns by watching war movies when I was a kid growing up, and always wished I could own and shoot those guns I saw in the movies, and I'm still that way today.:D
 
When I was 6 yrs old my Dad took me squirrel hunting, I blasted my first squirrel with a H&R Topper 490 410 shotgun. :D... been hooked ever since.

RH
 
It was the 1994 Crime Bill, aka the "Assault Weapons" Ban. They didn't want peaceable folk to own a pistol with a magazine capable of holding more than ten rounds per magazine? Damned if I didn't go out and buy myself a semi-auto pistol and a bag full of matching "high capacity" magazines right after I turned twenty-one...

It was all downhill from there. :p
 
When I was about six and Dad let me shoot his High Standard Double Nine. I still have that gun.
When I was a little older I wanted a BB gun but he wouldn't let me have one, instead he got me a .22 pump rifle. He knew I'd get in trouble with a BB gun, since at that time there was no law against shooting one inside the city limits. No sparrow or neighbors window would be safe.
I never did tell him about shooting the can in the back yard with the .22. :eek:
 
Didn't have guns in the house when I was growing up (had alot to do with my Dad being in WWII--I think--he never said much about it.

But I always (as long back as I can remember) had toy guns. My dada started me fishing when I was old enough to hold a pole---so I was always reading "Field and Stream" and similar stuff. Which got me interested in hunting, which of course got me interested in guns.

So, Dad taught me gun safety, I was allowed a pellet gun, then a .22, then a shotgun, etc. Dad hadda buy a shotgun too, as at that time a 14 yr. old couldn't hunt without an adult.

Was hooked from that point on, even though I wasn't that active in shooting sports/hunting/guns for a while.
 
My dad bought me a BB gun when I was 4, and taught me how to use it... SAFELY...

at 5 he bought me a single shot bolt action .22

at 6 or 7 he taught me to shoot his .22 revolver (gave me that beat up old revolver a few years ago, what a gift that was!)

I've been hooked since I let that first BB fly into that BB trap in the basement...
 
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I have been interested since I was very small. Had all kinds of toy guns from the moment I was able to say which toys I wanted in the early 1960s. When I was eight, my dad got me a Daisy BB gun. Spent the whole day with that gun many a time until I got my Crossman .177 cal ten pump pellet rifle with scope when I was about 13. Back then they were all blued steel. Yes, the stock was plastic, but solid through and through, so it had the heft of a real gun. That became my new all day companion. Became an expert at sniping wasps. Next was a better pellet rifle/scope combo, chambered in .22 cal this time, imported from Germany, which brought down many a squirrel, and a few cottontails too. When I was 16 I got a Remington Fieldmaster pump .22 lr. More dead squirrels and cottontails. At 17 I got a Ruger Mini 14. At 18 a Winchester 94. Had my concealed carry permit at age 19. First handgun that same years was a Ruger Speed Six that now belongs to my mom. A Colt Government Model followed shortly thereafter, and the rest is history. I was officially a gun nut.
 
I grew up in West Virginia. I can't ever remember a time when firearms weren't a routine, normal, and accepted part of life.
 
I can't remember a time when I didn't have a gun in my hands. I even remember the first two guns I ever shot at the age of five with the exception of my daisy bb gun and with the help of my father. One was an Italian M1891 6.5 Carcano or as I fondly remember calling it the fire breathing dragon. The other was a 12 guage SxS made by Lanber. I really liked the 12 guage. When my father and I cleaned it he would let me pull the string on his homemade boresnake. My what fun that was. In 1979 our house burned down and I remember him sitting holding those shotgun barrels in his hands they had split apart from the heat and one was curved one way and the second the other, making a big M out of the double barrels. Sitting in the smoldering ruins he held those barrels and cried, Even though he was thankful we were not home and everyone was alright he love that shotgun too. He bought a second Lanber this one an O/U in 1983 and I still have that shotgun to this day. It is the only shotgun I have ever owned. That same year he bought me my first firearm for my 12th birthday, a Marlin model 60. I sold it when I was in my late teens and I regret it now. It's amazing how such a simple question can bring back such splindid memories.
 
How old were you when you first became interested in guns? Were you brought up with guns or did it come later in life? Did you get into guns strictly because of home defense/self defense? or was it a hobby originally?

For me, I was brought up with guns. When i was very little i used to use a puzzle piece of the state of Florida as a toy gun before i had any actual toy guns. (Florida makes a pretty good pistol when your young)
Click to expand...
LOL! That is funny, I used to use Oklahoma from the wooden puzzle map as a gun.

I first became fascinated with the mechanics of the gun when I was old enough to read well enough. We had an Encyclopaedia Brittanica published in the mid 60s and I used to read every gun reference there was in there (Artillery, ammunition, anti tank, etc), but my favoritie was the section on machine guns and how they worked (still took me many years before I really understood it though).

I didn't own my first gun until my early 30s however.
 
As long as I can remember. Shot my first real one at 9 or 10. Had my first real one (a 1911) at 16 or 17. Parents did not know.
 
I'm just a typical American male I guess...I can't recall a time that I didn't like muscle cars and firearms. When I was 19 I bought an SKS ( my first rifle that wasn't a .22 or BB gun) and the collection has taken off from there.
 
wow, great thread

Brings back a lot of good memories for a lot of good people.

My dad introduced me to shooting when I was six. He had an old single-shot .22 rifle of some sort and from time to time we would go out in the back yard. He would staple a piece of folded-up newspaper to a big elm tree at the edge of the woods line. The woods went straight up hill, a natural backstop.

He taught me the basics. Being a single-shot made every shot count. We did not do it often; it was more a spur-of-the-moment opportunity thing.

He also had a 1911 he brought back from his service in WWII. Some time later, he gave me a few tries with it (you can guess what that led to...)

He ended up selling both during a bout with paying bills, and he and my mom seperated shortly thereafter.

My friend up the street would "borrow" his dad's .22 from time to time, and we would walk to the dump, looking for rats.

Just yesterday I went to the range and went through 100 rounds of .22, and 50 rounds of centerfire (in this case, .38 Spl). I can say with certainty that I fired more rounds yesterday that all the times of my boyhood put together.

On the way home I stopped at Bass Pro and picked up 500 rounds of .22 to make sure I have some for next time. Think I'll go back and buy some more...because I can. :)
 
From toys to BB guns to .22s and on up, I grew up with and around guns.

The oldest male family members were WWI and WWII vets and my father was training men about to go into combat in Korea when I was a little boy. Most everyone in the family owned firearms and were avid hunters.
 
I love guns!

I was raised around guns, my dad was an avid hunter for many years. I had my first 22 rifle when I was 10 years old. On my 21st B-Day my birthday present was a Taurus 669 357 magnum in stainless, that got me into handgunning. Sine then I've bought an XD-40, a taurus mil-pro 40, a Ruger 22/45 and a taurus tracker 357 mag, I sold the old one, I wanted to upgrade. Recently I started reloading my 40 S&W ammo, as ammo prices have gone way up. I'm shooting 40 S&W for 11 cents/round.:D I'm into guns full bore now, never looked back. Its an immensly fun hobby.:D
 
I first became fascinated with the mechanics of the gun when I was old enough to read well enough. We had an Encyclopaedia Brittanica published in the mid 60s and I used to read every gun reference there was in there (Artillery, ammunition, anti tank, etc), but my favoritie was the section on machine guns and how they worked (still took me many years before I really understood it though).
Click to expand...

That's kinda funny because I was the started out the same way. Never really had anyone in the family active in the world of shooting, but like Novus Collectus, the encyclopaedia was my best friend. Funny thing is when my grandparents moved closer to my family they found an old slip of paper marking the 'firearms' section of the encyclopaedia. (I still haven't lived that down :D)
 
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