this tread is to stop and estroy all the media saying guns are bad, and little kids shouldn't play with plastic army men or gi joe's or toy guns, or use real guns (with proper supervision).

when i was about 7 or 8 i had a bunch of other boys on the block to play with, about 10 or 15 guys. we used to get together and play "guns". yeah that was the name or the game, guns. we would form into 2 teams and one would hide, and the other would go find em. we all had toy guns or empty water guns, and we would play for hours. we shot line of sight, with honour, i say honour, because if the enemy said bang your dead, and it looked like he would of hit you, then you fell down and pretended to be dead. after the game you got up and kept on playing, my parents didn't mind, we didn't play rough (hitting people). they even bought a big plastic m-16. i was popular with the boys the first day that i came out with that. none of knew what it was, we just new it was cool looking, and we thought it might be a army gun, but we didn't care. we never called ourselves army, and we didn't wear camo or anything. we didn't use miliary tactics just the ones your born with. stay low, don't talk loud, peak carefully, aim well, say bang.

this is why i posted how to make cheap fake guns, a long while ago. they're not for serious colectors just something for kids.

i must of died 100's of times and killed 1000's.

it was great. i'd prolly get in trouble with other parents if i did that today. too bad. that badness is the point of this thread, tell your happy childhood gun memories.

OffRoad

Every summer I went to my grandfather's farm (fresno, ca area) my brother and I got to shoot air rifles, bow and arrows, and occasionally a shotgun.  

Boy scout summer camp I got to shoot .22's a lot.  

My other grandparent's farm (WV) I remember shooting at groundhogs with pellet guns.  Once my uncle shot a deer there.  

I remember watching my dad shoot a bluejay out of a tree off hand from about 75 yards.  With a 22.  He hunted quite a bit and was a good shot.  

In every case where I got to handle any projectile weapon, I was strictly admonished to be careful, not point it at anything, or anyone (even my brother).

I went shooting with my dad and sister out in the desert. We shoot his 22LR JC Higgins Pistol made by Manchurin of France, and a 22LR rifle. Those were the good old days.

OffRoad, growing up in small-town eastern Ohio in the '70s, we used to play "Army" exactly as you describe.  Then when I was 14 or so, I joined the local shooting club which met at the YMCA for class time and at the local National Guard armory for shooting.  We used heavy barrelled Remington and Mossberg(?) bolt-action .22s at 50'.  We were taught sight picture, breathing, smooth trigger pull, and, [b]above all[/b], safety.

-kill-9

As the oldest of 3, my Dad taught me to shoot first...starting with a .22, then a .38, then a shotgun. Dozens of trips to a neighbor's place where there was ample land. I still recall how the first thing he showed me was how even a piddly .22 could shoot through a chunk of wood--a good lesson in the power of a firearm. By the time my sister and brother got old enough and then the parents split, Dad was too busy and no one but me got to experience those shooting expeditions.

Dad passed on about 4 years ago. The shooting memories with him are some of my favorites.

Where to start and how to make this reasonably short?????  I was very blessed, I was lucky enough to have been the son of a man who built custom handguns for about forty years "can you guess why I have an interest in firearms". The early days.........in the 60s "yes, I'm getting old", I shot my first 1911 at age four.  I can remember being around firearms enough to know at age 6 to stop, look, and listen before walking from my room out into the hallway...dad may very well have been shooting wax bullets down the hallway.  Carried a Benjamin .22 caliber pellet rifle just about everywhere.  Was given my first single shot .22 at age 6 "dad got it somewhere and made a bolt for the thing", accurate as hell.  Dad was in the military in these days so we moved a good bit.  Most of his work was building Carbines, Model 10 S & W revolvers and some 1911s.  In later years I shot competition, as I still do, I think my 59th, 60th, and 61st match this year is this weekend, two handgun and one tactical rifle.  During the later years dad ran his shop as a second full time job and then later just full time until his passing in 1996, did a little bit of this and that, but most of his work was on 1911s and Hi-powers, 1911s being his true love.  Funny, I have always hated to clean guns and would take mine to him for something to be done to them, he would clean them before he gave them back....at least for a while, I think he figured it out as he started sending them back dirty like I had given them to him.  There is nothing I can think of gun related that he could not make from scratch.  I saw him many times on the mill cut two thousandths of an inch off some part and never measure a thing, he could do it by sight alone.  He was listed in American Handgunner Magazine in the Top 100 Pistolsmith section from its beginning until his death.  I have been selling off 40 years worth of parts since then, find stuff all the time that I have no idea what in the hell it is or what it goes to.  Mother is moving soon so I worked in the shop today, bringing home more gun related tools, jigs, and odds and ends of parts that I wanted to keep.  It was the strangest feeling digging through the shop after his death, like I was invading his world, like I was a kid again using his tools without permission.  There is much more to the story, but this is getting long.  Yes sir, I was blessed and I had one hell of a good time...........  

[rolleyes]An anti told me when he was 3months old,another[rolleyes] anti(4months old) FOUND HIS sisters(1 1/2yrs old) ASS'AULT gun w/copkiller boolets and he pulled the trigger to see what would happen.....                                                                                                              WELL                                                    ..........he killed a kitty!

When I was 10 years old and got a crosman BB/Pellet gun for Christmas. I stayed outside all day shooting it. I don't think I even came in for dinner or opened up any of my other presents.

Going dirt bike riding and shooting at the same place and weekend.And shooting an ar for the first time.an a1 ar15 colt with the 20 rounder mag 4 shota as fast as i could pull the trigger.

I also played "guns" many,many times with my friends and brothers growing up.  It was just like you described the games Offroad, with the addition of oranges and apples as gernades[:D].  Those were great times.

Another favorite memory was when I was 12 y.o. and shoot my first rifle with my father.  It was a straight pull bolt rifle in .308 that my Dad got from th AF Base were he worked.  He taught me all about safety and shooting.  I knelt down, aimed and pulled the trigger...but the butt stock was about 1/2" from my shoulder and it knocked me to the ground!  I quickly learned how to properly hold a rifle after that!!

Two weeks ago I finally got that very same rifle from my father and am it's new proud owner[:D].  AFter doing some research I learned that it is a Swiss Schmidt Rubin rifle made for their "Home Land security" Army and was built in 1917!!  Even though it is worth several hundred dollars as a collector piece I will never get rid of it.  It is something I will always treasure as a memory shared between me and my father.  When I die it will go to my son....and so on...and so on.

Sgtar15

Where do I even start!!!  I remember being about 12 or so and getting to shoot my dad's ar15 for the first time.  All I remember is how cool I thought that rifle was because it blew big chunks out of the berm.  I remember playing war with my friends.  I remember having a black beretta 92 style dart gun, a orange beretta 92 style water gun, a toy ar15 that when you pulled the trigger it made a sound that was supposed to be a machine gun sound.  I've had so many toy guns it's not even funny!!!  I even remember when I was a bout 10 or 11 my dad buying me one of those survival knives that had the cheap sheath with the sharpener on it and had matches, fishing hooks and sinkers, and a little wire saw inside the handle with the compass on the end.  I wore that thing with me on my belt all the time around the house.  



Now how many people played BB gun wars shooting BB guns at your friends???

When I was a kid, I got yelled at for an hour straight when my mom found out that I had my friend's bb gun. That's the extent of my childhood gun experience.

When I was 2 my father bought me a Savage 24V and held on to it till I was big enough to hold it up then I got to shoot it off the bench ( I was about 5 ) , I also used to enjoy shooting his 40XB 6MM off the bench.  Then I got one of those Marlin youth single shot .22's I must have shot about 3 cases of ammo out of that in one summer.  By time I was 7 I got my first Anshutz (1403) and practiced smallbore for the whole summer while I was 6 and started competing in NRA Smallbore conventional prone when I was 7 I did that up until I was 17 then parents split up and my father moved to Ill, and I pretty mush lost intrest.  about 2 years ago I started to become interested in shooting again I bought a S&W Model 14 and started plinking with it again also wanted to get back into reloading again so I loaded up some .222 shells for my Savage ( tho only rifle I held onto) and it snowballed from there I got a dear rifle last fall and started hunting again last fall, this spring I got back into the shooting club and got my first AR and shot high power matches all last summer. Not to mention the other Misc guns I bought in the last year  because I liked them.

My grandpa bought me a Mini-14 when I was 12...Only reason I didn't get an AR was he didn't want to spend that much $.

QS

We lived next to a big vineyard, the [b]Dirt clods[/b] were hand grenades, we actually had an old german bunker on the property (Greece), we'd choose sides, Americans vs. the Germans...we would assault the bunker from all directions through the vineyards.  My dad was in the Air Force, so we always had real helmet liners from ww 2 and canteens and other good stuff.  We played WAR.  

Almost all of my most cherished childhood memories are from the times I spend walking the woods with a .22 or .410 in my hands.  Sometimes with my grandfather and later, many times alone. In the fall and winter I was huntin squirrels, in the spring and summer, tins cans would die by the dozens. Mostly I was just growin up without realizing it.  What do I remember most?  Man that's a tough one because there is so much but let's see....waking up at 4:00 am at my granddads to the smell of coffee, grits, eggs, North Carolina country ham, homemade biscuits and red eye gravy, watching the sun come up thru the mostly bare oak limbs, wondering if my fingers, toes and ears would fall off if they got any colder, hearing leaves rustling on the ground just out of sight and wondering if it was squirrels or birds making that racket, my grandfather climbing a "squirrel tree" and using a long green stick stuck down the hole and twisting it to pull out a squirrel so I could "shoot'em on the run, throwin a rock on the far side of a tree to fool the bushy tail into running around so I'd get a shot, getting to hunt with a squirrel dog for the first time, the first hunt with my brand new "Ted Williams" single shot .22 that I picked out from the Sears catalog, that wonderful CRACK it made in the dead winter air, so much nicer than the just plain loud BOOM my H&R .410 made (that "Remington" green of the shotgun shells is still my favorite color though), the smell of a fired .22 shell, squirrel tails on my bike, fried squirrel, gravy and biscuits that I killed, cleaned and cooked.  GrandDaddy also taught me to make a whistle from the branch of a spring sapling, build a fire with flint and steel, tell the best ghost stories and to "call up" that great big hoot owl that lived in the abandoned barn.  I'll never forget the sound that ole owl’s wings made in the night when he would fly up and roost above us and our fire and our ghosts. Probably my best childhood memory is the day that my grandfather gave me his cherished Remington Speedmaster .22 auto rifle.  I guess I was 14 or so. It was, and still is the most accurate, most reliable and prettiest .22 rifle I've ever owned. It's got to be nearing 60 years old by now.

My Grandfather has been dead for over 25 years. True to form he waited until his favorite grandson got home from the Marines before he went. I got to spend a day or two with him in the hospital before he died. Most of "our" hunting spots are now housing developments. For the life of me I can’t remember which tree we used to make the whistle. My children never knew Granddaddy or our favorite spots but I made sure that they have their own "shootin tin cans, huntin in the woods with dad memories". I ain't much of a golfer, never had the time, but my kids are good kids, mostly grown up now. No drugs, dependable, responsible, good grades, fine athletes and much better looking that their old man.  I know that when I’m gone I will have done my best to leave the world a little better because my kids will do there best to make it so. All because of a few .22 shells (later 5.56 and 7.62) a little love, some time well spent and a few good memories.

Semper Fi
Rocketman

Growing up in rural southeast Texas I was lucky enough to have a father who was an avid waterfowl hunter and a salt water fisherman.  I don't remember when I wasn't around guns. Especially shotguns.  I recall hunting in the saltwater swamps with my dad.  I wish he was still alive so we could do it some more.