Shootin' Buddy Conundrum...

I've made no secret of my desire to take my son shooting this year. He's nine years old, has had a BB gun for two years now (and no, he has not put his eye nor the eyes of his sister out with it), and has expressed interest in going to the range with daddy. Mrs. G. remains skeptical, pointing out rightly that he still has trouble with basic directions from time to time, that he has the typical attention span of a nine year old boy (SQUIRREL!), and that it is a big responsibility to hand a firearm to a young boy. I firmly believe that he is ready, certainly for the single shot Ithaca Arms M-49 I've got picked out as his first firearm (Note to self: Clean & oil the M-49...) and under my supervision.

But TheBoy threw me for a loop last night. As I was tucking him in, he told me that he wanted to come to the range with me sometime this summer. He's expressed interest before, so it's not a complete suprise, but most of the time he's expressed interest it's been as I am heading out the door to the range. Up until last night, I'd chalked it up to him wanting to spend time with his dad (*beams*), but last night came pretty well out of the blue. Sounds like it's time...

And then he threw me for a loop.

"I don't want to shoot anything that could kill someone".

How do you respond to that? I've tried to get the point across that it's not the weapon that should be feared, but the bad people that misuse such weapons. I've tried to make them understand that pretty much anything can function as a weapon (and believe me, they take this to the ridiculous extreme when they get going - "Broccoli! That can be a weapon - it's awful taste will kill you!" [dissolve into giggles]). I explained that yes, even the single-shot rifle I was going to start him out on could potentially kill someone, but that it would be very difficult under normal circumstances and practically impossible when he and I go together.

I had him recite the Four Rules (which he nailed) and showed him, using a Nerf™ gun, how I would help him shoot the rifle. I showed him how we would hold the rifle together; how I would only let it point downrange (I had him try to move his Nerf™ gun more than a few degrees in either direction); I even explained in simple terms how the gun was a single-shot - that we had to manually load the bullet into the chamber and then pull the trigger to get it to fire, after which we would have to load in another bullet.

I think what I'm going to do is bring his rife with us when we go to the range for him to observe only. I'll shoot .22LR only, and let him get used to the sound of gunfire (double-plugged, of course) and see what actually happens at the range. I'll put a few rounds through his rifle, so he can see how it operates and how to hold it, and offer to let him hold it unloaded. If he expresses any further interest at that point we can continue; otherwise we'll save that for the next trip. Or the trip after that. The last thing I want to do is force this on him; I want him to genuinely want to come shooting with dad to have fun.

But that really threw me off my game for a second - "I don't want to shoot something that could kill someone". I don't know if he heard something on the playground at school, or if there was some sort of "safety" lecture, or if there are other factors at work I don't know about. This is Massachusetts, after all; we shut down schools for a single .22LR casing found on the premises, so it's quite possible that students have been told how terribly icky and dangerous guns are. On the other hand, deer season still claims a good number of high school students in the fall, and there's more than a couple NRA, GOAL, and Gadsden stickers on the backs of pickup trucks.

We'll see - I'm certain he'll have a blast (pun intended) and want to come with me all the time.

That is all.