The Firing Range

I remember growing up in a rural setting well. From even before I ever went to school, I was taught by my father how to properly respect and handle firearms. I remember all my years of growing up with guns how my father would tell me how to properly hold a firearm, how to clean it, and how to always treat a gun as if it is loaded. I think he did rather well and I am thankful my father took such care with me in dealing respectfully with firearms.

For example, I remember back when I was but about 5 years old. My father brought out a shotgun to let me shoot it - the specific one does not come to mind at this time, after all I was only 5! So there I sat, in front of my father on the steel rails of the railroad tracks while he held the weight of the gun and I aimed and fired. And my target? Well it was the trash barrel out behind the company doctor's office of course :-)

So there we were shooting up the good doctor's trash barrel out behind his office, from the railroad tracks, aiming and shooting across a public road.

Ah yes... good times.... good times...

And other times we would go back into the hills and set up targets of various kinds - like glass bottles, boxes, jugs filled with water, nearly anything you could think of as a target. And we would stand beside the truck, sit in the bed of the truck, or just stand off to the side and practice our aim. We would shoot everything from small caliber handguns and rifles, to large caliber rifles, to shotguns of various gauges from 410 to 12.

For example there was this one time that my father was helping me improve my aim with a .22 caliber rifle (a small caliber if you don't know). I was just a boy, I think around 10 or so. So my father told me to "lean over the hood of the truck" to steady my aim. But when I tried, I was so short, I could not see well. "Dad, I can't see it too good." I would say. And after a few iterations of that my father said "Just shoot the target!". There may have been a few choice words there. Honestly, I don't remember :-)

So I gently squeezed the trigger and "KAPOW-FWUNK!" There was this horrible noise and my mother who was sitting in the cab of the truck at the time (she was a bit more nervous around guns I think), was looking wide-eyed with her mouth open. Apparently with the "KAPOW" there was a corresponding shaking of the vehicle with the "FWUNK".

And there I stood, staring in amazement at the fact that the old Ford pickups had a "slight" ridge in the center of the hood. This particular hood now had a really nice, deep, round dent in it.

"You shot my truck!" said my dad, equally amazed. And from inside the cab my mom cut any reprisal short when she said "I don't want to hear one word! He told you he couldn't see but you wouldn't listen."

So for the next few awkward moments I stood there with the sinking feeling that I may well not live out the night. My dad looked at mom, my mom looked at him. They both looked at me. Then we all looked at the hole. When we realized how bad things could have gone with a ricochet bullet as we all stood around there, we packed up our stuff and left for home.

Ah yes... good times... good times... :-)

Over the following years I got bigger guns and better aim. I also got a lot taller. I was a little runt at 10. I never shot another truck, well... at least not like that... I had purpose in shooting them later... and I always remember proper firearm safety because really, he did a fantastic job teaching me.

So in the past year, I started teaching my son and daughter firearm safety. My son has been shooting a few times before, but it wasn't until my father gave him a .22 Hornet that he now owns his own gun and really likes to shoot it. I wanted to start with him years ago, but living in modern suburbia people tend to complain when they hear gunshots from your backyard. No really they do. I couldn't believe it either.

And so now, living on the farm, I take my son and my daughters (I picked up a gaggle of small females when I got married), and we set up some targets just away from the house so we shoot into a hillside. We mostly use 2 liter soda bottles filled with water, but we also shoot trees, twigs, boxes, anything we can get our hands on.

And so the other day, there we sat, my son and I, on the back porch. I took an old computer monitor down into the woods, set in place as a target, handed my son a full box of shells, and I said "see what you can do with that thing, but you have to clean up the mess". He had a blast shooting holes in the monitor tube, then blowing off chunks of the housing. I brought out a 20 gauge and loaded a lead slug shell into it. The resulting hole into, through, and out the backside, blowing a cloud of plastic dust everywhere, was well worth it.

Ah yes... good times... good times... :-)

But I will never, not once, tell my son or daughters "just lean over the hood of the car to steady your aim." I think we already covered that lesson.



Copyright 2007, Kevin Farley (a.k.a. sixdrift, a.k.a. neuronstatic)