Category: New Shooters

I had the pleasure of introducing a newbie to the joys of shooting today.  My former girlfriends’ younger brother was only 9 or so when I first met him, but he recently graduated from high school, and was out visiting his sister.  He wanted to go shooting, so I decided to take him to the club’s plinking range.

I still stand by the AR-15 as a great rifle for the introduction of enthusiastic beginners.  For people more timid about shooting, the .22LR is a better choice.  I loaded up 50 rounds for Jason, and we went through all of them.  We went through 30 more rounds with the AK-74, and a few rounds with my Mk.II and Glock.

His mom is going to want to kill me, because I know she doesn’t like guns, and now he wants to buy a rifle.  Hopefully he can find a range or club in Iowa that can help him get started.

Nope, neither of them look very trashy to me.

Syd has an excellent take on the video circulating of the girl smacking herself int he face with a recoiling Desert Eagle.

Take them to the range.

Take them too the range.  In my experience, if you can get them to go, you have a good chance of changing their minds.  You might not make a gun rights activist out of them, but they will at least see both sides of the coin.

Over at Breda Fallacy, she took one of her coworkers to the range. We all have to be evangelists for this sport if we’re going to win long term. And I for one, support bringing more women into the sport, especially attractive ones:

Monica met us at the range today, looking a little nervous. (Jimmy, the range manager, said to me, “You brought another one? I’m a little afraid to go to the library now.”) I let her handle all the pistols before they were loaded so she could feel what they were like since she had never handled a firearm before. I helped her with her grip, showed her how to load, put the gun in her hand and said, “Now. You’re ready. Loaded. Aim and shoot.”

And she did.

Good show Breda.

Reader, blogger and NRA certified instructor Brian is offering to take newbies shooting in the Hampton Roads, VA area, and add any other instructors to the list if they want to add their name.

The other Sebastian takes an anti-gun person shooting. It takes quite a leap to go from activist on the other side to the shooting range, and I have to hand it to Sebastian, that was quite a feat. His entire post is a must read, but here’s a quick excerpt:

The more interesting part of the evening was the drive home. Becky’s first time firing a gun had been a success, and she clearly had had a good time. I joked that much like Luke Skywalker playing with the laser droid thing…she’d taken her first step into a larger world. Becky remarked that since she’d left the gun control lobbying world, she’d realized that we gunnies aren’t a bunch of crazed maniacs trying to arm criminals for kicks; she further remarked that she thought the rhetoric was too heated all the way around, and that yes, much of what the Brady Bunch and the VPC promulgated was hysterics designed to provoke a reaction, not really anything that was meant to be factually accurate or sound grist for the public policy mill.

Sebastian’s new shooter-fu is clearly much better than mine.

Robb Allen shows the importance of getting new people out to the range:

I am proud. It goes to show that a calm, reasoned approach has a much better chance at bringing people over to our side. It is also proof that we are winning the war on guns and that the Brady’s and the VPC’s of the world are simply money pits with near zero ROI.

One day, they’re a hoplophobic teacher, the next they’re producing massive fireballs with a vintage Russian carbine.

Yep. I think it’s the only way to win long term.

UPDATE: Robb says it’s mostly Greg’s work

Tom King says that some of the best shooters he knows are soccer moms, and stresses the importance of outreach.   I couldn’t agree more:

When the hand that rocks the cradle pulls the trigger on the range also the fight will be over.

I think that’s very true, and I’ve seen more than a few women take to shooting like a duck to water when introduced to it for the first time, even after being initially wary.

Bitter didn’t get her start in the gun issue until she hit college, but once she tried it, there was no going back for her.  Some of the most vocal advocates on our side of the issue did not grow up raised as shooters or hunters, but came into it through circumstance.