What makes shooting relevant - to YOU?

[GunClasses.Net]

There are many different uses of guns, and therefore many different reasons people can be attracted to them, or find them useful and relevant in their lives. I bet if you ask 100 different gun guys or gals why guns are a part of each of their lives, you'll get more than a dozen, at least slightly, different answers. I would love to hear your stories.

My own answer has changed over the years, and I think quite a bit, in retrospect...:

When I was 13 and my stepdad put a .22 rifle into my hands (and gave me one bullet at a time - yes, I was Barney Fife for a while), I felt like I took a rite of passage toward manhood; the gun meant something about my own identity.

Later, when I was in high school toward the end of the cold war, I foresaw the day I would fight the Russians. I grew up listening to every word Ronald Reagan said. What I wanted was the biggest badest loudest rifle, and I cherished my DCM M1 Garand. I joined the Military Book Club and assembled quite a library. I read about Carlos Hathcock in Vietnam and probably read "Marine Sniper" 8 times until I could tell every story myself, and took everything as a learning experience, because as Plato said, "only the dead have seen the end of war"; the gun meant a means of defending the common good, and it validated my patriotism.

It was during high school that I also got very political, quoting NRA stats whenever possible in history or sociology or writing classes; although I was the socially awkward kid initially, the gun made me an expert in something and I felt knowledgeable and credible to speak on a subject.

That day I would 'fight the Reds' never came; the Berlin wall fell in my Senior year, and "Red Dawn" became irrelevant in memory. In college, I learned to love the challenge of shooting, and I didn't pick up the M1 Garand or the AR15 as much as the bolt action gun or the shotgun for sporting clays; the gun became a symbol of discipline and skill.

After college, I started to manage retail and had to make deposits at night in some areas of town not known to be exactly crime-free. I didn't pick up the bolt rifle as much, but if I had my handgun I felt completely safe. Without my gun I felt utterly vulnerable; the gun became my foremost means of personal protection and home protection.

Later, when I began to take self-defense classes that acknowledged the role of a defensive gun in a struggle, I was introduced to real world situations that awakened me to how the gun incorporates into self defense, and is not itself the great equalizer against the odds; I realized that my idealism of simply carrying and not preparing very much for self-defense in other ways was simplistic and naive, and the gun became a tool in a far broader toolkit for personal protection. It was with this awareness that I began to offer permit to carry classes.

When I married, my entire focus on the gun was about self-defense. I married into a family of hunters who live in rural areas with little to no crime, and don't carry. My new spouse had some adjustment to make, and I had to be attentive to her feelings as they were not the same as mine, and she felt anxiety about the differences in perspectives ("This is new to me, we had guns for a different purpose. Whenever my dad took the gun out, something died and we ate it"); I took my first deer and the gun became a way to connect with nature and with my new in-laws.

A gun has been with me on my journey in many different configurations, and if you'd have asked me at different stages of my life "What's special about guns to you?", if I would have had the clarity to honestly reflect, I may have given some pretty diverse responses over the years. To some degree, today, the gun means to me all of the things above, though my focus has been in some flux. Whatever our reasons, what brings us together as a 'community' is this object - this thing of steel and wood or plastic that goes boom and blows holes into nearly anything in its path from 0 to 1000+ yards. So, what is YOUR story? What's special about your guns in your life?

[MaryB]

Started hunting at 12 to feed the family. My own shotgun at 16, deer, ducks, pheasants, fished, the entire family went.

[Spartan]

I played team sports my whole life .... football, baseball, basketball and track in HS .... Football in college... but always loved slow pitch softball ... played from age 8 in 4H until age 42 .... played and managed/organized for 34 years and played/about 3500 game and umpired about 1500 more games .....

I hunted and shot when it didn't conflict with playing ball ..... when I retired from softball I just began shooting a lot. I shoot SASS it's low key and the people are great ...... shooting has kept me sane in my middle ages......

[thunderoussilence]

Family on a farm taught me survival skills harvest time, how to grow, skin, utilize fish oil How a .22 can kill a decent sized animal, snares. My uncle gave me a 1911 I have to this day too sentimental to me for use he died last Dec he would kick me in my butt and scream that is a tool too be used not stuck in a drawer

[river_boater]

They're just guns; I like them, but I don't get all that worked up about them.

[Kelor]

I lost interest in guns for about 20 years. All that changed when a great friend of mine was shot and killed in a mall shooting.

Two weeks or so later, I had my wife in gun training classes, and to this day we often shoot at the cabin for fun.

[Seismic Sam]

At age 5, discovered a 22 pump rifle in a corner that my mother had gotten from the NRA back in the 30's and they let me shoot it, and I had so much fun my dad bought a Colt Woodsman about a year later and I shot off the back porch for years. That started 59 years ago. I still live on the same property, but in a new house, and I can still shoot off the porch.

[Tronster]

It was Christian summer camps as a young teen that I was introduced to shooting. Can still remember loading .22 shorts into the single shot rifles and plinking at paper or steel spinners. Didn't get to shoot guns outside of summer camp.

Boot camp and shooting the M16. Quite a bit more oomph than a .22, it was the range days that kept me sane.

Had no interest in guns until the 2008 election (truely the greatest gun saleman ever).

Today I enjoy a variety of rifles, shotguns, and handguns. But the bulk of my shooting nowadays is defensive handgun (self-taught). Everything else is mostly for historical nostalgia.

[Rodentman]

Firearms (and of course shootng) are relevant to me on several fronts:

Obviously, personal protection. As an amputee I feel I am more of a potential target since I am not exactly fleet afoot and park in handicapped parking spaces.

Firearms are my way of "fighting back" against the rising tide of technology, social media, and smell phones. Firearms are "old" technology and a way for me (in my alleged mind) to stick with the old, since I am old.

RELOADING makes the hobby. it's so much more fun to shoot what I make rather than what I buy off the shelf. It's something I can do sitting down, in my basement, away from the hustle and bustle of the world around me.

There is also VERY IMPORTANTLY the camraderie of the fine folks I have met who share this hobby. The people I have met are down to earth, not snooty, and share the love of the pursuit as do I. That alone makes shooting relevant.

[Seismic Sam]

There is also VERY IMPORTANTLY the camraderie of the fine folks I have met who share this hobby. The people I have met are down to earth, not snooty, and share the love of the pursuit as do I. That alone makes shooting relevant.

Hey, ya beady eyed rodent!! I was just over at Fleet Farm, and while there's no .22 ammo yet, they were having a sale on those green apple flavored SweeTarts they sell over in the Farm section, so I bought ya a whole case!! OHHHH!!! Nummy, nummy, nummy!!!

[oneunder]

I have always liked guns...I mean, really, who doesn't?

When I was a kid my old man would take out his small collection and let me see them. He taught me the rules. I have always had a BB gun, or a bow and arrow of some sort. I won a BB gun target shooting contest in cub scouts. Growing up, my family and I were not much of hunters or anything. But we knew guns existed, and my old man shot. We went to the range a few times to shoot his dad's (his) .22LR pump rifle. I was young, but I remember it clear as day.

Recently, I picked up my first pistol, and got back into it. I am an adult, I like guns, so I bought one. People asked "why do you need a pistol". I dont "need" one, but I want one. So I bought one. My purchase rekindled my fathers interest in guns and shooting. He bought a gun, and then another, and then I built an AR, and then he bought a couple more etc. We took our carry classes together, we took a defensive handgun class together and for a while we were going to the range once a week together. When we are together we can talk guns, about what I have done to mine, ones we are looking at buying and different scenarios about carry and politics.

It's a nice bond my father and I have, and for that I am grateful to the shooting world. With all this political mess that's going on, my biggest disappoint is that the hoarding and price gouging has really just ruined a really good bonding time my father and I had at he range. Don't worry, we still talk guns though. Much to our families dismay. Oh well...

[XDM45]

Guns are a tool I own for the sole purpose of self defense of my own life and those of my immediate family. For me, it's strictly functional and purpose driven. Probably pretty dry and not sexy at all, but that's how I view them. Same thing with computers, just another tool.

[AFTERMATH]

Hitting the target.

[Rodentman]

There is also VERY IMPORTANTLY the camraderie of the fine folks I have met who share this hobby. The people I have met are down to earth, not snooty, and share the love of the pursuit as do I. That alone makes shooting relevant.

Hey, ya beady eyed rodent!! I was just over at Fleet Farm, and while there's no .22 ammo yet, they were having a sale on those green apple flavored SweeTarts they sell over in the Farm section, so I bought ya a whole case!! OHHHH!!! Nummy, nummy, nummy!!!

That's warfarin, a blood thinning rat poison. I'm not gonna eat that!

[Eric Marleau]

Dad started me shooting with Mom's Colt Woodsmen {which I still shoot} when I was about 6. Dad and his buddies were Camp Perry guys with Col Joe Alexander a Perry Champion. Taught me only the Bullseye way of shooting. Used to spend hours practicing with that Woodsmen. Started hunting at about 7 years, and it has been a passion my entire life hunting ducks and geese along with big game in many parts of the U.S. and Canada.
Shot ATA trap over the Midwest for many years, along with small bore rifle and pistol.
I have never given up my passion for hunting or target shooting.
I just spent several hours at the range with my pistols and my "black rifles" today.
Still trying to shoot the perfect group which has eluded me my entire life.

Nice topic to post.

Eric