At the tender age of 4, I got to sit on my dad’s knee ( my feet did not touch the ground as he was crouched down so he could hold the gun) and as I held the gun with his hands over mine I got to feel what a .22 pistol was like. At the time I thought it was a giant cannon with a bang that scared me, but it was love at first bang for me and has been ever since!
I remember I could hardly hold the full-size shotgun level at the tender age of six or seven. So damned heavy. I still think back fondly to those days of instruction by my uncle Ken. Not that he wasn’t mean in a big-brotherly sort of way, but instruction from a world-class marksman at an early age gave me the skills, safety knowledge and love of guns that continues to this day.
The first gun I ever shot was a 357 Magnum. I was about 9-10 years old. I’m 40 now and my brother still owns and is keen on selling it to me! Can’t wait to shoot it again.
I was brought up a city slicker and didn’t get to break the cherry until I was 17 with a Remington 870. Did pretty good on my first round of trap, got 13 of 25. I then did not pick up a gun again until I was 21, when I bought my XD. Been in love ever since.
I just got back from deployment, and was about to get out of the Navy after 6 years and was on post deployment leave. I went to a gunshow in Southern California to check out prices on rifles for when I get one when I get back home to Phila, when I bought a Mosin for $120, I took her to the range, and experienced the joys of a metal butt plate, rimlock and a stuck bolt. My shoulder was sore for the next 2 days and I was in love.
Like for many of the girls that I went to high school with… I dont really remember where it was or who I was with, it was over way too quick, and now I am a total slut.
Wait. Did I just say that?
BTW, this may be the stupidest QOTD in the history of the internets. Definitely a new low for this website…. and I stand by my original comment.
My cherry was popped while visiting family friends in Eastern Washington state (I was around 12). I remember shooting a lever-action .22 rifle and a Ruger MkII reasonably well, but I struggled with the Browning .32 and could barely keep the .357 magnum on paper. My “uncle” was shooting some kind of 1911, which he offered to let me try, but in my 12yo mind, the .357 was already a handful, so the prospect of shooting a .45 was downright scary (thinking back, i wish I had taken him up on it).
After we came home from the range, he taught me how to safety-check and clean all the guns we shot, lessons I still keep in my head. Now that I think about it, I guess this goes to show how profound an impact one’s first experience can have on a person’s outlook on guns…
It was an overall great first experience, but I didn’t have a chance to shoot again for years. A decade later, right out of college, I bought my first handgun, an M&P9c, and I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my CHL. How time flies!
When I was fourteen I fired some bolt action .22 as part of the hunter safety education which my mom required me to take before I could buy a pellet gun to use in the back yard. Little did I know, she was prepping me to inherit my grandfather’s Winchester Model 90 which I got soon after completing the course. I would say that I really got the gun experience upon taking the Winchester to the range for the first time. My neighbor who took us brought along a Smith and Wesson model 629. That was fun! Also, I love that Winchester.
i started life on a hillbilly farm. i don’t know how old i was. it seems like i’ve had a gun in hand for as long as i can remember. there’s a photo of me getting ready to head into the hills for a little hunting with a single shot shotgun. the gun is actually taller than me.
I was 5 years old, Dad had bought a Youth model single shot .22lr from Sears for me and my brother(6yrs old). One of the most exciting days of my life. We went to an underground range in Ladera Park Inglewood, CA after his work on Saturday.
I can’t ever remember a time that there wasn’t firearms in the house. I remember hunting at about six years old. At 8 years old I had my own shotgun, a .410 pump. My brother, who is a year older, had a nice 28 gauge semi auto. My father’s long guns were always on a rack on the wall or in a display case in the living room. Just like I was brought up around firearms, so were my kids. At six years old, they were shooting handguns and riffles and one day they’ll have a very nice collection of old Marlins, Winchesters, and a few evil black riffles.
Mine was an M-16A1 in 1991. I was 18, a bit nervous and I had a drill seargent yelling at me ’cause I wasn’t doing it right. I sucked at first, but after spending hour after hour dry firing in the prone position with a dime balanced on my barrel and quite a few trips to the range I eventually got the hang of it.
Putting that rifle to my shoulder for the first time down there in the dirt was the exact moment when I felt myself move from one phase of my life to the next. I think of that every time I take my AR to the range.
you just reminded me that is gun I lost my “full auto” cherry to at a local gun range that rents out machine guns.
I have since gone through a uzzi, ak-clones, m16,-14,clones, a styrg?, tommy gun, and a few WWII german machine guns.
If I ever get the cash to blow I will go back and rent their crew-served machine guns. They have some from just about every major army in the world from WWI til today available to shoot, for the right price of coarse!
Humiliating. Five rounds of .22 short through a single-shot bolt rifle at Boy Scout summer camp with ZERO instruction. Had no idea how to hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn.
It was not nearly as good as losing my real virginity in high school on the beach next to NorthWestern University located in Evanston Illinois. Going afterwards to The Spot for pizza was great too.
Was not a great experience. I was 17 and at the range shooting a 44 magnum (bad choice) thinking I was so “cool”. After the first shot I kept flinching and pulling the trigger all wrong (despite decent body positioning) anticipating it to fire and anticipating the recoil. I was also death gripping the thing as well. Needless to say I did not hit my targets at all.
My advise to new shooters is to start small and work your way up.
It was kind of child abuse. My otherwise man-up step-dad was terrified of guns but he had a business partner who was all about big game hunting, so he took us out in the desert (age 9, me 10, eldest 12) and had us shoot a 12 gauge, a snub .357 and a .22 Nylon. All without eye/hearing protection. My younger bro failed to shoulder the shotgun properly and was straight-down flat-on-his-back like a cartoon. Tiny me was no fan of the shotgun or the undersized revolver (or the hearing damage), but still hit what I was aiming at (no one else came close), and was immediately at home with the .22. If the mission was to scare us wimpy ex-New Yorkers away from AZ firearms culture, it backfired in my case. Fast-forward 15 years and the first gun I buy for myself is a brand-new Mark I .44 Desert Eagle. Been a gun junky for 25 years since. (Still no big fan of teeny revolvers or shotguns.)
I was 10 and remember getting a lot of .22 brass in the face.
I’m a lefty and the particular semi-auto Remington I shot had a bad habit of sending brass straight back. Because of that day, I still shoot rifles right handed.
I was 10 and remember getting a lot of .22 brass in the face.
I’m a lefty and the particular semi-auto Remington I shot had a bad habit of sending brass straight back. Because of that day, I still shoot rifles right handed.
5 ish. While visiting my grandfather, we went for a ride. Stopped in the woods. He pulled out some ear muffs. And a 22 pistol. He let me squeeze off a few magazines. Then helped me hold his .45. I got to shoot a few from that. He then said “don’t tell your grandma!”Which is odd, as my grandmother carried a .38 right until we had to put her in assisted living. Grandfather has been gone for more than 30 years now. That old Colt 1911 is about 10 feet from me right now however. So is grandmas .38.
16. At a (now long gone) skeet range on the bluff above Lake Michigan in Chicago. 12 guage, load unknown, semi-auto. I had never even held a shotgun before, yet I managed 11 out of 25, including a double. It was an excellent day.
Went out to the trap line with a friend at 17 against 5 other people, went 0 for 8, so embarrassing. I only have rifles right now, but last winter I went for 3 rounds of 25 and finished the last one 22 for 25 hitting the last 15 straight. Have a shotgun on the short list now.
With a friend and his dad at the local outdoor range. 9mm 92FS clone and a sweet .45 Colt Commander XSE that I fell in love with. I’ll never forget the guy two lanes down shooting the .500 S&W Magnum revolver. After the first of THOSE went off and the dust stopped floating down from the rafters, I wanted nothing so badly as to shoot it myself 🙂
I was 5 or 6 with my dad’s 28ga. he tried to show me how to shoulder it, but I said “no I want to shoot like rambo” or something equally stupid. need less to say I learned to accept my dad’s advice.
I was started out at the age of 3 or 4 in my Grandparent’s huge attic using a vintage Red Ryder BB gun and cardboard boxes, and I got very good with it. lol (BWT, I still have it)
But, my first real shooting experience came on a YMCA trip with my Dad, I was 10.
I picked up a .22 rifle and proceeded to walk the ammo box across the range. I think my Dad was pleased, to say the least.
Gun virginity? Are you effing serious? I’m an infantry officer so I take pride in my marksmanship, but weapons are tools, not sex objects. You guys need to stop compensating and get girlfriends or something.
Like so many, my first was at Scout Camp. I was about 12 years old, with a single shot .22. I had such a blast with that thing. I remember we had to (in order to get our badge) get a five shot group inside a quarter at about 50 yards I think it was. Not trying to brag; but it felt so natural as I owned plenty of BB guns before but I was pretty good at it and kept purposely missing on shot 3 or 4 just so I could get more goes at it! Great times. When I finally turned 18 I went out and bought a .22 the second I could followed by many, many more 😉 Have it to this day and she’s still a tack driver after thousands and thousands of rounds. Most likely give it to my son or daughter come time for ’em.
I was very young. I come from a hunting family. Once a month or so we would have “squab” for Sunday dinner at the Grandparents house. One day when I was 4 or 5 I asked Grandpa where he gets squab. He grinned and took me outside and shot a pigeon off the eaves of the house. He let me shoot the old Stevens Crackshot .22 falling block after he had shot it. I got the bug then and there. I’m 70 now and still hunt squirrel with that old Crackshot. Don’t eat much “squab” though.
Wow, I’m the latest bloomer of the whole comments thread, by a long shot.
I was 28, and my first time was a threesome with a 10/22 and a S&W Sigma 9mm. I’d bought both in the previous year and spent months learning about them at home before my first trip to the “range”—a clearing in the woods behind the auto shop of my aunt and uncle’s friend.
I had a good natural feel for the 10/22 from my boyhood experience with a BB rifle. I nailed just about everything I aimed at, no problem. The Sigma was a whole other story. I had no real sense of what to anticipate from a pistol, and firing the first round shocked me into adrenaline mode. Hands shaking and heart racing, I emptied most of the magazine into the dirt behind our targets (which were set up on the half-rusted husk of an old car). I think I hit one water bottle.
Probably about 8 or 9, I got a CO2 powered pellet rifle for christmas which I had to pay half price for my mother to buy. Then 11 or 12 years old, by this time I had shot the crap out of the pellet gun and I went to the outdoor range with my dickhead stepdad. First shot a Ruger 10/22 that I was totally ok with because it was exactly the same as the pellet gun, then a .357 revolver, then the big bad Remington 870. Somehow I managed get a shell jammed in the tube because I didn’t push it in just right. I prefer Mossbergs anyway.
LOL.
At the tender age of 4, I got to sit on my dad’s knee ( my feet did not touch the ground as he was crouched down so he could hold the gun) and as I held the gun with his hands over mine I got to feel what a .22 pistol was like. At the time I thought it was a giant cannon with a bang that scared me, but it was love at first bang for me and has been ever since!
I remember I could hardly hold the full-size shotgun level at the tender age of six or seven. So damned heavy. I still think back fondly to those days of instruction by my uncle Ken. Not that he wasn’t mean in a big-brotherly sort of way, but instruction from a world-class marksman at an early age gave me the skills, safety knowledge and love of guns that continues to this day.
I was too young to remember, but there is photographic evidence. My dad thought it amusing that newborn me was smaller than his model 29.
The first gun I ever shot was a 357 Magnum. I was about 9-10 years old. I’m 40 now and my brother still owns and is keen on selling it to me! Can’t wait to shoot it again.
I was brought up a city slicker and didn’t get to break the cherry until I was 17 with a Remington 870. Did pretty good on my first round of trap, got 13 of 25. I then did not pick up a gun again until I was 21, when I bought my XD. Been in love ever since.
Honestly I don’t remember I was 4 so I bet my dads woodsman. My full auto cherry popped with a m-60 and that was awesome.
I just got back from deployment, and was about to get out of the Navy after 6 years and was on post deployment leave. I went to a gunshow in Southern California to check out prices on rifles for when I get one when I get back home to Phila, when I bought a Mosin for $120, I took her to the range, and experienced the joys of a metal butt plate, rimlock and a stuck bolt. My shoulder was sore for the next 2 days and I was in love.
Like for many of the girls that I went to high school with… I dont really remember where it was or who I was with, it was over way too quick, and now I am a total slut.
Wait. Did I just say that?
BTW, this may be the stupidest QOTD in the history of the internets. Definitely a new low for this website…. and I stand by my original comment.
My cherry was popped while visiting family friends in Eastern Washington state (I was around 12). I remember shooting a lever-action .22 rifle and a Ruger MkII reasonably well, but I struggled with the Browning .32 and could barely keep the .357 magnum on paper. My “uncle” was shooting some kind of 1911, which he offered to let me try, but in my 12yo mind, the .357 was already a handful, so the prospect of shooting a .45 was downright scary (thinking back, i wish I had taken him up on it).
After we came home from the range, he taught me how to safety-check and clean all the guns we shot, lessons I still keep in my head. Now that I think about it, I guess this goes to show how profound an impact one’s first experience can have on a person’s outlook on guns…
It was an overall great first experience, but I didn’t have a chance to shoot again for years. A decade later, right out of college, I bought my first handgun, an M&P9c, and I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my CHL. How time flies!
When I was fourteen I fired some bolt action .22 as part of the hunter safety education which my mom required me to take before I could buy a pellet gun to use in the back yard. Little did I know, she was prepping me to inherit my grandfather’s Winchester Model 90 which I got soon after completing the course. I would say that I really got the gun experience upon taking the Winchester to the range for the first time. My neighbor who took us brought along a Smith and Wesson model 629. That was fun! Also, I love that Winchester.
i started life on a hillbilly farm. i don’t know how old i was. it seems like i’ve had a gun in hand for as long as i can remember. there’s a photo of me getting ready to head into the hills for a little hunting with a single shot shotgun. the gun is actually taller than me.
I was 5 years old, Dad had bought a Youth model single shot .22lr from Sears for me and my brother(6yrs old). One of the most exciting days of my life. We went to an underground range in Ladera Park Inglewood, CA after his work on Saturday.
One of my Life’s best memories!
I can’t ever remember a time that there wasn’t firearms in the house. I remember hunting at about six years old. At 8 years old I had my own shotgun, a .410 pump. My brother, who is a year older, had a nice 28 gauge semi auto. My father’s long guns were always on a rack on the wall or in a display case in the living room. Just like I was brought up around firearms, so were my kids. At six years old, they were shooting handguns and riffles and one day they’ll have a very nice collection of old Marlins, Winchesters, and a few evil black riffles.
My dad and grandfather started me at the age of 2 with a jc higgens model 88 .22 revolver.
Mine was an M-16A1 in 1991. I was 18, a bit nervous and I had a drill seargent yelling at me ’cause I wasn’t doing it right. I sucked at first, but after spending hour after hour dry firing in the prone position with a dime balanced on my barrel and quite a few trips to the range I eventually got the hang of it.
Putting that rifle to my shoulder for the first time down there in the dirt was the exact moment when I felt myself move from one phase of my life to the next. I think of that every time I take my AR to the range.
I was 18 we found this gun store that rents out guns. He said I could pick anything so I asked for the mp5. It was awesome.
Ah yes, the mp5…..
you just reminded me that is gun I lost my “full auto” cherry to at a local gun range that rents out machine guns.
I have since gone through a uzzi, ak-clones, m16,-14,clones, a styrg?, tommy gun, and a few WWII german machine guns.
If I ever get the cash to blow I will go back and rent their crew-served machine guns. They have some from just about every major army in the world from WWI til today available to shoot, for the right price of coarse!
manchesterfiringline dot com
for those that want to know.
Humiliating. Five rounds of .22 short through a single-shot bolt rifle at Boy Scout summer camp with ZERO instruction. Had no idea how to hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn.
‘What Was It Like to Lose Your Gun Virginity?’
It was not nearly as good as losing my real virginity in high school on the beach next to NorthWestern University located in Evanston Illinois. Going afterwards to The Spot for pizza was great too.
Was not a great experience. I was 17 and at the range shooting a 44 magnum (bad choice) thinking I was so “cool”. After the first shot I kept flinching and pulling the trigger all wrong (despite decent body positioning) anticipating it to fire and anticipating the recoil. I was also death gripping the thing as well. Needless to say I did not hit my targets at all.
My advise to new shooters is to start small and work your way up.
It was kind of child abuse. My otherwise man-up step-dad was terrified of guns but he had a business partner who was all about big game hunting, so he took us out in the desert (age 9, me 10, eldest 12) and had us shoot a 12 gauge, a snub .357 and a .22 Nylon. All without eye/hearing protection. My younger bro failed to shoulder the shotgun properly and was straight-down flat-on-his-back like a cartoon. Tiny me was no fan of the shotgun or the undersized revolver (or the hearing damage), but still hit what I was aiming at (no one else came close), and was immediately at home with the .22. If the mission was to scare us wimpy ex-New Yorkers away from AZ firearms culture, it backfired in my case. Fast-forward 15 years and the first gun I buy for myself is a brand-new Mark I .44 Desert Eagle. Been a gun junky for 25 years since. (Still no big fan of teeny revolvers or shotguns.)
I was 10 and remember getting a lot of .22 brass in the face.
I’m a lefty and the particular semi-auto Remington I shot had a bad habit of sending brass straight back. Because of that day, I still shoot rifles right handed.
I was 10 and remember getting a lot of .22 brass in the face.
I’m a lefty and the particular semi-auto Remington I shot had a bad habit of sending brass straight back. Because of that day, I still shoot rifles right handed.
I remember having a great time though.
5 ish. While visiting my grandfather, we went for a ride. Stopped in the woods. He pulled out some ear muffs. And a 22 pistol. He let me squeeze off a few magazines. Then helped me hold his .45. I got to shoot a few from that. He then said “don’t tell your grandma!”Which is odd, as my grandmother carried a .38 right until we had to put her in assisted living. Grandfather has been gone for more than 30 years now. That old Colt 1911 is about 10 feet from me right now however. So is grandmas .38.
Boy Scouts
.22 single-shot bolt-action
Boy Scout camp, about 12 yrs old. Five shots with a 22 rifle, five shots with a shotgun. I hit 3 out a 5 clays. It was a very good day!
Boring, hot and uncomfortable.
Shot at a public indoor range. Enough said.
16. At a (now long gone) skeet range on the bluff above Lake Michigan in Chicago. 12 guage, load unknown, semi-auto. I had never even held a shotgun before, yet I managed 11 out of 25, including a double. It was an excellent day.
Went out to the trap line with a friend at 17 against 5 other people, went 0 for 8, so embarrassing. I only have rifles right now, but last winter I went for 3 rounds of 25 and finished the last one 22 for 25 hitting the last 15 straight. Have a shotgun on the short list now.
With a friend and his dad at the local outdoor range. 9mm 92FS clone and a sweet .45 Colt Commander XSE that I fell in love with. I’ll never forget the guy two lanes down shooting the .500 S&W Magnum revolver. After the first of THOSE went off and the dust stopped floating down from the rafters, I wanted nothing so badly as to shoot it myself 🙂
I was about 12 and was with a friend shooting his new 12 ga semi auto. I got to shoot 5 shells and loved shooting from that day.
I was 5 or 6 with my dad’s 28ga. he tried to show me how to shoulder it, but I said “no I want to shoot like rambo” or something equally stupid. need less to say I learned to accept my dad’s advice.
I was started out at the age of 3 or 4 in my Grandparent’s huge attic using a vintage Red Ryder BB gun and cardboard boxes, and I got very good with it. lol (BWT, I still have it)
But, my first real shooting experience came on a YMCA trip with my Dad, I was 10.
I picked up a .22 rifle and proceeded to walk the ammo box across the range. I think my Dad was pleased, to say the least.
Gun virginity? Are you effing serious? I’m an infantry officer so I take pride in my marksmanship, but weapons are tools, not sex objects. You guys need to stop compensating and get girlfriends or something.
Like so many, my first was at Scout Camp. I was about 12 years old, with a single shot .22. I had such a blast with that thing. I remember we had to (in order to get our badge) get a five shot group inside a quarter at about 50 yards I think it was. Not trying to brag; but it felt so natural as I owned plenty of BB guns before but I was pretty good at it and kept purposely missing on shot 3 or 4 just so I could get more goes at it! Great times. When I finally turned 18 I went out and bought a .22 the second I could followed by many, many more 😉 Have it to this day and she’s still a tack driver after thousands and thousands of rounds. Most likely give it to my son or daughter come time for ’em.
I was very young. I come from a hunting family. Once a month or so we would have “squab” for Sunday dinner at the Grandparents house. One day when I was 4 or 5 I asked Grandpa where he gets squab. He grinned and took me outside and shot a pigeon off the eaves of the house. He let me shoot the old Stevens Crackshot .22 falling block after he had shot it. I got the bug then and there. I’m 70 now and still hunt squirrel with that old Crackshot. Don’t eat much “squab” though.
Wow, I’m the latest bloomer of the whole comments thread, by a long shot.
I was 28, and my first time was a threesome with a 10/22 and a S&W Sigma 9mm. I’d bought both in the previous year and spent months learning about them at home before my first trip to the “range”—a clearing in the woods behind the auto shop of my aunt and uncle’s friend.
I had a good natural feel for the 10/22 from my boyhood experience with a BB rifle. I nailed just about everything I aimed at, no problem. The Sigma was a whole other story. I had no real sense of what to anticipate from a pistol, and firing the first round shocked me into adrenaline mode. Hands shaking and heart racing, I emptied most of the magazine into the dirt behind our targets (which were set up on the half-rusted husk of an old car). I think I hit one water bottle.
I did it wrong.
My first was a Barrett .50
Now nothing else compares.
🙁
Probably about 8 or 9, I got a CO2 powered pellet rifle for christmas which I had to pay half price for my mother to buy. Then 11 or 12 years old, by this time I had shot the crap out of the pellet gun and I went to the outdoor range with my dickhead stepdad. First shot a Ruger 10/22 that I was totally ok with because it was exactly the same as the pellet gun, then a .357 revolver, then the big bad Remington 870. Somehow I managed get a shell jammed in the tube because I didn’t push it in just right. I prefer Mossbergs anyway.