The Liberal Gun Club Forum

As a child: The ubiquitous bolt action .22s at Scout camp.

Decades later, as an adult: 1911

A Winchester model 1904 .22 single shot with separate cocker. I was 8. At my grandmother's youngest brother's house in PA. Uncle Tommy (Great Uncle actually) was a coalminer, and was in the 1st Marines at Guadalcanal. He still had malaria.

Dunce wrote:

Coach wrote:M16A1 in Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO.

It had a five-digit serial number and was manufactured by the Hydro-Matic Division of General Motors. In other words, it was old.

I think I used that same rifle a few years ago.

That's OK I got it when it was new in basic training at Fort Lost in the Woods, MO. I was there in 1970. That was before they had the deflectors on them and it liked to bounce hot brass off the forearm of lefties. I still have the scars.

Single shot bolt action rifle at summer camp when I was 9. Loved every minute of it.

Bought a Marlin Model 60 when I was 16.

Remington Speedmaster 241. Belonged to my grandfather.

Winchester model 06. It's a tube fed, pump action .22. It was grandma's .22. Grampa had the earlier model 1890 which was much heavier with an octagon barrel. Since I was a kid around 10 I used grandma's gun to shoot squirrels around the ranch.

I have both of them.

Black Eagle wrote:I don't know for sure but I think it was one on my mother's custom .22 pistols. My mother was a tennis player and she had to give it up due to a heart condition so she took up competitive pistol shooting. I have been shooting since I can remember -- maybe 3 or 4 years old -- and for my fifth birthday, she bought me a Colt Woodsman .22. So I have been shooting for at least 63 years and perhaps 65 years. After my fifth birthday, the guns began to accumulate -- handguns, rifles, and shotguns. I've been hunting small game since I can remember and I started on deer, antelope, and pheasants when I was 11. [You had to be 11 -- I think today it's 14 -- and have the Hunter Safety Course behind you to get a license to hunt that stuff in South Dakota.] My childhood memories are saturated with guns, bows and arrows, and horses.

Pretty close for me on the time frame. I started on a Remington Model 12 .22 rifle back when it was way bigger than I was around when I was just out of diapers, I think.

I have shot so many handguns, rifles, shotguns etc. that I can neither count nor remember.

I tried hunting and I hated it.

Had to have been an old 22 semi, probably a Marlin, not really sure, Shortly after a 30.30, probably also a marlin.

.22 short gallery gun at the fairground.

Step-dad's .357 snubby. Dunno what kind. Shot at a sapling in a clearing.

I was 16 my 24 year old brother let me shoot a .32 Mauser Hsc that a deacon in our church gave him. It had been taken from a downed German pilot in France. It had a good grip due to the heavy rough engraving of the deacon's Social Security number on the front strap. This will sound like the big fish story but I loved the walk down at the beginning of "Gun Smoke" I would be ready with my Mattel peacemaker my Dad gave me when I was 8. It shot spring loaded plastic bullets. I'd try to beat Matt Dillon by shooting at the TV from the hip of course. I practiced a lot. Back to the Mauser behind my grandpa's house in the Smokies my brother said hit that pie pan. At about 25 feet from the hip I was no more than 0.75 inches off dead center. My brother says beginners luck you can't do that again. Two more down the pipe again from the hip and I have a 3 shot 2 inch group. To this day it is the only gun I can do that with but I need to get a real Peacemaker.


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Mossberg 500 20 gauge


West Coast Shooting Stars a women's shooting group in the SF Peninsula

A single-shot bolt action .22 rifle (brand unknown), the only firearm my father ever owned. He passed down to me the basics of rifle marksmanship he learned in WWII-era U.S. Army.

Driving, Dad's manual transmission Rambler going up Gough St. in San Francisco. Smell that burning clutch! Smells like teenage terror!

M-1 Garand .30 cal in Coast Guard boot camp, 1965; an obsolete beast then

M-14 in MCRD Parris Island, back in 1968. My Dad got me a pellet gun when I was a kid but I don't recall ever shooting his 20-guage shotgun or .30-30 deer gun, the only guns he had. Not even a .22LR. Guns weren't any big deal in my family although deer and bird hunting was.

I got to shoot a Mossberg Model 44 that was WW II surplus .22 bolt action when I was 7 years old. That's all it took to hook me.

Summer of 1980. I was twelve. I fired my dad's S&W Model 65 revolver. Though it was/is (he still has it thirty-five years later) a .357 Magnum I fired target grade 38 Special full wadcutter loads through it. Didn't matter to me. What mattered was I was finally at the range and shooting!

I dont even recall, we were started being taught around 5 , but It had to be a 22. Before that pellet and bb guns. But my dad had some many guns, it could have been one of maybe the 13 different 22lr rifles he had. The one I know I shot the most , and still have , is a Remington model 12 pump that was my grandpas, then my dads, then mine, and has had 3 barrels shot out of it. To this day its one damn accurate little rifle and the most fun to shoot. I spent a many afternoons in my youth walking cans down to the creek, which was 365 yards away from the back yard, or shooting the numbers off playing cards pinned to a wooden sawhorse and such. And I tried, but I could never spin the top off a bottle, but I did see my dad do it at least twice.

Single shot .22 bolt action Winchester that my dad had cut down for me!

Wish I had that old gun..

I was 5 years old when he gave it to me! (of course he kept it locked up except when he took me out to soot!)

Aged 22 air rifle in the school gym. Probably age 7 (me, not the gun)

Bunch of us college kids got together and went to the range. Being our first time we had no clue about guns. Rented a 9 MM semi auto, compact... Think it was a Ruger. Bad idea for us first timers. . One box later, we swapped out for a Model 94 Taurus. Went through a box of 22s and I was hooked.... This is my mid 20s.

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It was Winchester .22 bolt action rifle. My dad borrowed it from his brother in law to teach me to shoot.
There was no turning back after that.

1974...Single action Colt Frontier Six 44-40. Former spouse's father owned it. It was manufactured in 1886, fired a very large, very slow slug (as I recall firing at a berm roughly 50 yards away: Shoot, sit down to have lunch and wait for the sound of the slug hitting the berm).

My Dad's 9mm Browning HP. The first time I shot it I must have been 9-10. I liked it because it looked like the 1911's he sometimes carried on duty. Wasn't really happy with the noise and recoil though.

I worked up from be gun to pellet to a Sears bolt action with a clip.