My father started me at age 5.

Last March, we started my niece with her own Chipmunk rifle on her 3rd birthday.  VERY supervised, she did not actually manipulate the rifle, just pull the trigger and "melt" (her word) the water balloons.  She does already practice safe gun handling with her "pop gun."  You cannot get her to point it at a human.  She has killed a thousand imaginary deer though. [:D]

I was 5 years old with a Red Rider BB gun.

7 years old when I got a 20 gauge, single shot, shot gun.

It was a hand me down of Grampa's to shoot rabbits with.

Drill them over and over about  how to be safe. I was drilled over and over and still almost shot my eye out with the bb gun. I shot at a rubber bucket and it flew back and hit me in the cheek. I was lucky.

BTW, my sister-in-law ran the video camera while my niece (her daughter) shot her little .22 rifle.  I could send a copy of it if you think it would help.  It was a GREAT time for our family.  [:)]

I started shooting .22 bolt action when I was 5.

My son, I started drilling on general gun safety when he was 2, handling and helping clean them at 4, shooting at 6 (had to fight the ex-wife on that one).  I have no problem handing him a loaded gun even if he is not familiar with it - he WILL check the chamber, etc.

I believe when I was 4 years (my brother was 5) old when my father showed us his rifle (.22 LR Mossberg Tack-Driver).  He spent HOURS drilling safety into our heads, then let us handle it, and cycle the bolt (all while empty of course).

After he thought we were competent enough with his rifle to go to a relative's farm & shoot it, he bought a 100 round box of ammo & we went out for a couple hours in the country side.  I couldn't hold up the forarm/barrel for shit at the ripe old age of 4 years, so I had to use an old wood fence as a rest as we shot at some pop cans, gallon jugs of water, quarters nailed to a tree, and a used spray-paint can near an old private garbage dump that wasn't used since the 1960's.

He would load only 1 round into the magazine, because having it used as single shot was better for him to keep track of the muzzle & # shots left.  It was a great time, and is still one of my favorite memories of one of the times my father didn't have too much work & still had time to do something fun with my brother & I (he missed a lot of our childhood while at work as an engineer).  It meant a lot to my brother & me.

Later that year a few months later he had an ingenious idea of cutting a semi-circle out of a saw horse & padding it with some old rags, then we had a good collapsable "bipod" for me to use that rifle (which is to be inherited by my brother).  Shortly after, we both recieved pump air rifles to continue practicing safety, and for fun plinking in the minnesota river bottoms.

When I got a little older a year or more later, he bought a single-shot YOUTH model Marlin .22.  This way it would last me until I was a teenager.  My brother was stronger, and grew affectionately attached to the Mossberg, and after digging through crap & storage boxes, we later found a FACTORY Mossberg scope (3x or 4x I think?) and mounted it.  It needed little sighting in to be accurate.

As a police officer, he's really into handguns & bolt-action centerfire rifles, and I'm into AR15s.

Last summer we invited my mother to go shooting with us, because she finally saw it's not dangerous at all if precautions are followed.  It's no longer something "The Guys" do, it's family bonding.  Turns out she's a better handgun shooter than my father (and she loves to joke about her pinshooting).

-iNuhBaDNayburhood.

Age 18; M16A1 service rifle at boot camp. This was the first time I ever shot a 'real' weapon. Growing up in NYC made it almost impossible to shoot real guns. I owned a BB gun since age 9 and I was a good shot with it. I believe that my younger years spent shooting various BB guns, laid the foundation which resulted in great sucess when firing the M16A1/M16A2 service rifle during my time in the service.

Probably about 5 or so with a BB gun.  At around 7, I shot a .22 Short revolver and a .22LR Bolt Action.  At about 9, a .357 loaded with .38's.

Tell your sister-in-law that she's a moron.

Good God!  We may be related.  LOL  My first rifle that I "owned" was an old Mdl. 510 that my father bought from a guy he worked with for $20.00 when I was 12.  It is, to this day, the gift I cherish most, and, of course, I still have it.  I bought a Chipmunk or Cricket (can't remember which, they're the same gun) for my only niece and gave it to her on her second b-day.  We took her out to shoot it, as recounted above, on her third b-day.  Ah, memories!

I shot my father's .44 Mag at the age of 10. What a wallup!

I would guess I shot a .22 at around 8 at Boy Scout camp, probably as a cub scout. What great guys the fathers were to take the one week they probably got off a summer to sleep in army tents that they had thought they had seen the last off and try and drill little kids like marines

At 10 I think we would go hunting and checking trap lines with a .22. That'd probably get you turned in for child neglect now.

At 17 I gave a buddy a ride to shoot at a range in Syracuse. Over the summer before he had shot this rifle called an M1 Garand at somewhere called Camp Perry. I was almost speechless with joy when I got my hands on one of those. I couldn't believe the beauty and solid feel of that gun and the quality that let you hit something so far away so accurately.

That was almost two decades ago and I remember what it was like it was yesterday. It's sad so many kids will never have those experiences, wasting their youth away playing videogames and watching cable TV.