How often have you fired a gun?

I shot one a few times in high school, just aiming at cans with a friend who had a handgun. I also helped another friend shoot a beaver who had taken up residence in the pond by his family's cabin in the mountains.

As an adult, I've shot sporting clays a number of times.

I've saw a policeman carrying one a few times but that's as close as I've ever been to one.

... I was in my 30s before I'd ever seen one in real life.

... pretty sure it was outside the US Embassy in London, go figure.

When I lived in Lima, Peru, the National Police at the airport carried submachine guns. That was jarring.

Have seen probably less than 10 in the UK, ever. But in China every bank has a nervous teenager with a cheap uniform and what looks to me like an uzi. Never touched a gun, no desire to either.

This could use an update.

My answers:

I have been shooting fairly regularly. My dad was a second amendment asshole, so I know how to handle guns (rifles and pistols mostly). Haven't handled one in at least 20 years (probably more). Never owned one. Don't want one.

(Also kind of funny sidebar: because of policies, at the end of one of my 5250 mental health hospitalizations, my discharge agreement included having my second amendment rights suspended for 2 or 3 years. I don't remember. They were like, "You can go to court and appeal this" and blah blah blah, but it honestly felt like a burden being lifted. Like ... what a relief that I don't have to worry about that responsibility anymore — I was signing the paper before they even finished explaining it to me!)

Went to a shooting range once, didn’t really get much out of it but kind of glad that I had the experience.

Went to a shooting range once, didn’t really get much out of it but kind of glad that I had the experience.

Bah

The nearest I've been to guns is when we had an educational school visit from a police armed response unit for some reason, I remember seeing some kind of assault rifle up close, maybe a pistol, don't know if we were allowed to handle them.

When I was fourteen, my Scout troop visited the FBI academy, where an FBI agent took us out to the shooting range, handed us semi-automatic weapons, and taught us to fire in bursts. Other than that, I've generally steered clear of guns.

Spent childhood summers with step-family in UT, WY, and shot cans and clay regularly with their firearms and supervision

Have been twice as an adult to a shooting range when I’m with company that wished me to do so

When I lived in Lima, Peru, the National Police at the airport carried submachine guns. That was jarring.

Pretty sure I've seen French cops in the larger Paris train stations with the same.

Twice, at shooting ranges. It was kinda fun, but I'm not eager to do it again.

Never. Even the real guns I've held on stage were unloaded and never fired.

No desire to

never, thank goodness, and i fervently hope i'm never in a situation where i feel like i need to

one of my brothers shot my waterbed when we were little (i wasn't in it at the time, just watched it bleed out). an older brother had left his gun lying around, as you do when you're drunk/high and have deranged little siblings running wild.

When I was about 5 years old my grandfather, who lived on the top of a hill in the California desert, took me out back and let me fire a .45 pistol and a shotgun at some buckets down the hill. Nothing in the 45 years since.

Had a BB gun growing up, did lame target shooting in the backyard. Real guns I've only handled in the course of doing a "citizens' police academy" as a reporter. The final day of the 8-week program (1 evening a week) was an outing to the police shooting range. We were allowed to try a bunch of different guns. I fired a 9mm a few times, and then also an actual machine gun. The latter was totally terrifying, because a small trigger pull produced this crazy spray of bullets. I left that experience with increased certainty that I didn't want or need a gun. That said, my backwoods-dwelling bro has kept guns on and off, and if I were hanging out with him and he wanted to go out to the woods to shoot at targets I'd be happy to.

Shooting range a few times at boy scout camp, with a .22. Didn't make much of an impression, never wanted to do it again, was always acutely aware how innately dangerous it seemed. Preferred archery. Once a kind of libertarian (now pretty liberal) friend of mine picked me up at the airport in Nashville and asked me if I wanted to go fire automatic weapons at a range, and I told him hell no, and never heard about it again.

My dad served in the Air Force, as an officer, because it paid for his medical school. This was during Vietnam, though thankfully they didn't send him anywhere. I think I asked him once if they ever taught him to shoot, and he said one day on the base they invited all the other doctors to the range and asked them if they wanted to learn to shoot a gun, and every single one of them said no, and that was the last of that.

never and i never will

never and i never will

worth posting twice by accident

Once in the desert near Barstow when I was little, a few rounds with a .22 rifle at a gun safety course when I was 12, once quail hunting with a .410 shotgun at 15, a couple of times firing a terrifying dirty-harry style .357 at an empty Cheez Whiz can on a camping trip at 17.

It would be supremely weird if I had, but my career path has meant that I am fairly often around ppl who have and do

my dad’s a gun nut and as long as i’ve been alive he’s had a locked case of guns in the house, and i’m thankful that once it seemed like i had no interest in them he didn’t impose his interest on me

his gun nuttiness (and republicanness) has exponentially worsened over the years. when i stayed with him last november i noticed a rifle perched behind his bedroom door, looking forward to the day someone breaks into his apartment and shoots him with it j/k

My old man was never a gun nut per se, but his father, who was comfortable with violence having grown up on the streets in Saginaw and Detroit, once got him a .38 special. I don't think he ever took it out of the box. Some movers stole it and I think the police eventually recovered it but he didn't want it back.

The final day of the 8-week program (1 evening a week) was an outing to the police shooting range. We were allowed to try a bunch of different guns. I fired a 9mm a few times, and then also an actual machine gun. The latter was totally terrifying, because a small trigger pull produced this crazy spray of bullets. I left that experience with increased certainty that I didn't want or need a gun.

This was my experience at the FBI academy, except that we were all 13 or 14 and we were only there for the day. Spraying bullets was just part of the tour.

RE: crazy gun nut dads

Having an arsenal just lying the fuck around the house was so normalized for me growing up that I was made nervous when I went to a friend's house and learned that his dad only owned 3 guns (they had 5 people in the family). My dad had enough for every person in his house to have at least 5 (and he had 6 people living in his house); he also had a lockbox and I know there was an explosive of some sort in it.

Whenever he took me shooting, I feared for my life every time.

That level of saturation kind of reminds me of the hoarder mentality. I wonder if they come from similar fears and anxieties.

My brother (who was in the army for about 25 years) has a bunch of guns, and builds/customizes them in his garage; I'm sure he would send me one if I ever asked him to.

Can only speak on what I know and that is this: my dad was a Vietnam combat vet.

Lots. I enjoyed shooting at local ranges until the second Obama term, give or take - before that it was a pretty diverse crowd in terms of age, white people & people of color, etc. but the white people got nuttier and nuttier and it became almost impossible to avoid their politics. Then my dad died and since it had been our father-son bonding activity beyond fantasy baseball and football, shooting became entirely pointless.

If I was ever given 30 acres out in the middle of nowhere I'd probably buy a .22 rifle with a scope again for targets.

The first time was on a Scout trip, where we fired some kind of old musket. I just remember the kick of the musket, and how it seemed like the gunpowder was exploding awfully close to my face.

Second time was in Vegas at this ridiculous military-fetishist gun range for tourists, where I fired a sub-machine gun.

Went shooting first year of law school with some 3Ls that had an arsenal: .357 magnum, 12 gauge, .45 or 9mm (don’t remember which), and an AR-15. We left a sub machine gun back at their place. Despite being into the idea of guns and wars as a kid, my inability to hold and fire them securely made me never want to do it again.

I still have the .22 single shot that I got for Xmas when I was 12, but I haven't fired it in years
And I got a .22 ruger revolver in January when my stepfather died, but I haven't fired it yet.. maybe in August

when I lived in northern rural california, there were well known places where you could pull over on the side of the road and pop off a few rounds at beer cans
In Oakland, that's just not a good idea

never, have never been comfortable around them even in safe/controlled conditions

this is what video games are for

I don’t own a gun and never have. Not a fan.

On a high school trip to a ski lodge I *think* I fired a mounted, fixed-in-place gun (some sort of rifle?) at a shooting range. There’s a vague memory of the noise and having to wear ear protection. But it’s entirely possible that I didn’t shoot and was just a witness. Don’t remember the experience being scary, or exciting, or much of anything; it didn’t seem real, and it’s something I did because a bunch of us did, not because I really wanted to do it.

(As an adult, I look back and think we should never have been anywhere near that range.)

I have a handful of “being near a gun” experiences that I’ll share in a day or two. (No, no one was pointing one at me!)

Side note, and tipsy might appreciate this: as a daily newspaper reporter, two decades ago, I watched a cop taser another cop as part of a police press demonstration of “hey, we’ve got tasers now, see how much safer these are”?

once when i was about 12 or 13, not officially with a scout group or with an lds young mens group but some mix of those two, de facto. it was on state forest land and i believe we were camping. i think it was a .22. i remember the kickback hurting, and i didn't like the experience overall. never since, and i still feel no need or desire to.

i'd be genuinely curious what percent of people have their only shooting experiences with other males.

xpost to jimbeaux i know it was forever ago but goddammit don't kill beavers

I grew up with them. Dad's a hunter or was. No pressure to go or to shoot; he was good about it. I fired a .22 pistol once -- never underestimate how loud those fuckers are.

My father grew up poor in a rural environment where hunting provided much of his family's protein. As an adult he rarely hunted or shot but enjoyed collecting guns. After the onset of his Alzheimer's I had some interesting experiences searching his house and attic to round up all the weapons and ammunition he'd stored in odd places. Fortunately he wasn't enough of a gun nut to really notice or care when that stuff disappeared.

He gave me a .22 rifle when I was a teenager and I did some target shooting with that and other guns he owned. It's probably been 40 years since I fired a gun.

Served in the US Army Reserve as a medic from 1991-1993. Probably put 700 rounds through a M-16. Have never owned a firearm, and given the statistics on much higher suicide rates and murders of household members, never want to.

xpost to jimbeaux i know it was forever ago but goddammit don't kill beavers

That experience was 40 years ago and I still remember the feeling. It pretty much confirmed me as not a hunter for life.

Alfred otm- never wore hearing protection all those times we went shooting, of course. My tinnitus is settling in nicely at 41.

Probably already understood, but we were encouraged to make fun of the people who had ear protection. *noice*

hunting provided much of his family's protein

I'll admit having a mild case of survivalist fears/fantasies, and this is one of my main reasons for holding onto the .22 rifle
but I know damn well I'll never be forced to hunt jack rabbits for survival

I wouldn't know how to clean and cook a rabbit, and YouTube would likely be unavailable in the event of societal collapse.

yeah, if youtube goes down, I'm fuucccckkkked

My favorite Argentine restaurant had a rabbit dish on the menu until a year before the pandemic. I never wondered if they sent their gorgeous food runners out to shoot them.

Dad was a hunter, when to hunters safety class when I was 12-13. More: I now think every kid in the US should be required a gun safety class, just gotta watch that pertinent detail as to who’s teaching the classes. When hunting a few times with only small game as success.

In adulthood, did backyard plinking twice in the last 12 years, the second time with an assault rifle just to try it out.

I had to take a shooter's safety course before I got my pellet gun... I think the Jaycees taught the course, I just remember shooting yellow rubber bb's and that you're never supposed to point a gun at anyone

One of the guys I shot clays with accidentally discharged his shotgun outside the frame. Thankfully, it was off to the side and not at anyone. Still, it kind of got everyone's attention. Dumbass.

Thanks you everyone for your answers so far.

And oh lord, all of the times my dad almost ??accidentally?? shot someone. Some people around the place froze, some people dropped to the ground, everyone was afraid of what was going to happen next. Sometimes he would fire straight up into the air, just because.

Now is a good time to say: we never went shooting at a proper range. It was always out in some rural area, so safety was "not dying." I only share all of this because this is how people who demand their second amendment rights behave: they are carelessly violent at their core.

( . . .also those couple of times he was holding the 9mm so improperly that, as he emptied a clip, the barrel opened back and shredded his hand jfc what a psycho— tho that was kinda funny to see because i hated him so much)

you=to

My grandfather was a total paranoid gun nut - kept them in his desk at work, the closet in my parent's house when he lived with us, his car, etc. He let me and my cousin shoot all the time and it was super fun because he had like 30 round magazines and sketchy small handguns and cop style shotguns and we made homebrew silencers out of soda bottles. Part of me is glad he died before rush limbaugh and the whole assault rifle fetishization took off because I would have very different feelings about him now.

My inlaws and wife's grandfather are hunters and have boring hunting guns that are tools and are locked up in gun safes. They have black powder guns and crossbows so they can hunt during specialized seasons. They fish and occasionally trap, and last night I ate part of an elk that my mother-in-law shot on a trip to Wyoming and tomorrow will be cooking fish they caught in Lake Superior.

I want people like my grandfather to not have guns while people like my inlaws are still able to do what they love - like laws that at least treated them like cars with regular license renewal, liability insurance, legal paper trail of ownership transfer, etc. I don't know how this happens and if I had to choose between what we have now and repealing the second amendment I'd take the latter, no question. My inlaws can fish more or get into archery.

I haven't fired one in ages and don't want to own have to own one.

I think my ears are still ringing from the time I shot a bicycle with a .44.

I didn't even hear the bang. Just saw the embers from the report and all of a sudden I was deaf.

Haven't shot "a real gun" since, and that was more than 30 years ago.

One of my oldest friends is an avid hunter. He's also one of the only non-republicans in his family, and hunting is the sole way for him left to bond with his dad (who is now also grandpa). He's also one of the most reasonable voices for gun control I know. I wish there were no guns, and I've told him that I think all guns are stupid, but if there have to be guns - and apparently there have to be guns - I wish more people were like him. Also, when this country inevitably descends into true violent chaos, I'm going to his house.

Speaking of chaos, I wouldn't fret about cooking rabbits. I have a hunch standards get lowered a lot when you're living off the land in a dystopia. We should all just get used to eating well-cooked meat and feathers.

hunting is the sole way for him left to bond with his dad (who is now also grandpa)

sounds like they have at least 2 things in common

Apparently the grandpa part of the relationship is pretty fraught, because his wife is Chinese and his kids half Chinese, and his dad, grandpa, being a Trump supporter, does not exactly put them at ease.

I have it on reliable information that there is more than one way to skin a cat, I imagine the same may be true of rabbits.

Some thoughts on a friend below (cw mental illness, self-harm):

I wanted to touch on Austin's note above about his mental health hospitalization. I had a friend who had serious mental health issues in his teens and early 20s, and one result of it was that the state of Virginia said he couldn't own a gun. Over the next 10-12 years, his mental health improved, he had a good stable job, he got married, etc., and he petitioned the state to lift the ban. It was a significant thing to him, I think less to have a gun than to have what he felt was a stigma removed. He was successful, and bought himself a handgun. I don't think he did much with it, just liked having it. And then ... some mental health issues returned, he got divorced, he had to move out of the house into an apartment, and he took the gun with him. His wife/ex-wife was really worried about him and tried to get him to give up the gun, but he was in no place to listen to her or much of anyone. He ended up killing himself with the gun. Of course afterward all of us talked about what we or anyone could have or should have done. The thing we all agreed on was if he just hadn't had the gun ... He needed time to process what he was going through, and the gun short-circuited all of that.

The thing that always stops me from taking steps toward buying a gun is the fear of it either going off by accident or being used by a loved one in a bad mental state, two things that feel more likely to me than actually using one in self defense.

California has been doing research that was unfunded at the Federal level for 24 years by the Dickey Amendment.

Adjusted hazard ratio of being a homicide victim among adult cohabitants of handgun owners: × 2.33. Hazard of being fatally shot by a spouse or intimate partner among adult cohabitants: × 7.16. Adjusted hazard ratio of suicide for handgun owners, male: × 3.34, female: × 7.16

it was compulsory to do a year in the Cadets at school so I've fired a .22 rifle a few times. have seen cops with guns loads living in London though, I got a train from Liverpool St daily for a few years

Thanks for sharing that, tipsy. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up potentially difficult things — wanted to share an anecdote to illustrate just exactly how anti-gun I am.

Because at this point, my feeling is: please don't allow me to have a gun. And more people should be on board with that. Normalize it, or whatever.

The other thing we haven't touched on... just google the words 'toddler accidentally shoots' and see how many hits come up

I grew up around farm people and truck drivers. There were guns around, but most in my family took it pretty serious.

As a kid, I hung around a boy's club a bunch and that place was ran by a bunch of ex-and off duty policemen as they had it tied into the 'police athletic league' stuff. The camp the Boys Club ran had a shooting area and kids of a certain age were allowed to shoot and when you got to be a 'senior' like 6th grade - you could shoot some other guns - always under supervision and they used goggles and ear coverings even in the 80s. Same Boys Club had a 'shooting club' that if you signed up you would get to go a couple of times to practice (always on a .22 rifle) and then go to Indianapolis for a state contest. I did all that a couple of years and did pretty well one year at the state contest.

As for my family, I only shot with my family a couple of times. Most of them worked too much and had no interest in hunting. Maybe a little fishing. I had one uncle that had a farm that had this huge man-made hill out in his back pasture that was made from digging up for a pond for his hogs. We used his man-made hill as a back drop to do some target shooting a couple of times when I was a teenager with my dad, grandpa and my uncle. Again, this was with a .22 rifle and a .25 pistol. This was probably '87 the last time and the last time I ever shot a gun.

I didn't mean to bring up potentially difficult things — wanted to share an anecdote to illustrate just exactly how anti-gun I am.

Oh for sure, I thought it was a great point to make. Just made me think of that case and how disallowing my friend to have a gun was obviously the right thing, and the state returning it was not.

The GOP party line so duplicitous: "It's not guns, this is about mental health!" But if the offender is heavily damaged from a tour of duty in Iraq and has been threatening his ex-wife, they're completely against disarming the guy and have actively tried to suspend or dismantle any laws that attempt to do so

Well yeah I mean, look at the map of which states haven't even expanded Medicaid under the ACA: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/status-of-state-medicaid-expansion-decisions-interactive-map/

That's a total no-brainer easy lay-up for anyone interested in immediately improving access to mental health care, and a lot of the biggest pro-gun states haven't done it.

Did a lot of target shooting at Boy Scout camp, and maybe went to a firing range once? Not sure if that’s an actual memory or not. anyway I’ve never owned a gun but I feel like I really should teach myself how to effectively use one

did some clay pigeon shooting with a shotgun for a bachelor's party. it was kinda fun, but also the ricochet was way more than I expected. it felt like I got punched in the arm 30 times.

voted never and hope to keep it that way

I shot my dad's rifle and shotgun at targets a few times as a kid sometime before he gave up on his futile attempt to Make a Man Out of Me (his dad had a full cabinet, so I assume he felt that this was compulsory father-son bonding nonsense). My brother had a bb gun. Fired that occasionally at stuff in the yard. All of this was before the age of ten. Haven't held a gun since. Don't own a gun and have zero desire to do so. And I'm not aware of anyone of my acquaintance who has a gun (my dad's guns are still somewhere at my mom's house but I don't think that counts).

I'm sometimes surprised by the progressive/radical people I know in Tennessee who do have guns. But I guess the "in Tennessee" part is the determinant there, especially this Appalachian corner of the state. A lot of people grow up with them, and I definitely know some who are like, "I'm not gonna let the fascists have all the guns" — a position I don't share but understand.

In my experience, owning guns has never been a partisan thing. I've got lib friends in the upper Northeast who always hunted.

I grew up in deer huntin country but (fortunately?) my dad never really cared about it, so we def weren’t going to spend money on it. I think we actually went hunting once when I was 9-10 and I was so bored it made me crazy. Most of my shooting (target, skeet) took place while supervised by responsible adults when I was like a Cub Scout, maybe some other youth activities. And then once or twice we took some guns out to shoot at bottles on a friend’s farm when we were probably late late teens, maybe 20. It just didn’t hold a lot of allure for me and my group of friends. Smoking pot and riding back roads, maybe lazily looking for psilocybin mushrooms was more our jam. This was the 90s tho so I can only imagine what growing up in a similar milieu would be like today. It’s gotta be just obnoxious and exhausting if you’re not a raving gun fucker

We also grew up in the country and my macho older brother hunted with his friends. My father was a pacifist and wouldn't let him bring a gun into our house, I remember that being a conflict between them when I was a kid

Yes, many times as a kid, rifles and shotguns. Hunter safety course was required for all 6th graders in my school district. As an adult, I think I’ve shot a gun once shooting skeets in a ranch vacation.

I've looked at guns but have never touched them and don't want to. my father was right

Grandpa was a competition shooter in the Air Force, also a hunter and definitely a 2A believer, but he never had ARs or anything.

Dad hunted birds and so I did a little bit of that, plus Boy Scouts and such. Then I didn't interact with guns at all for years but have recently taken one of my dad's old .22s and a bird shotgun with the intent of practicing a bit, though that hasn't happened much -- ranges are mostly awful places and I just don't want to deal with that. Dad has all of grandpa's old guns after he died, mostly old target shotguns but there's a WWII era .30 carbine in there and an interesting target shooting .45 that is apparently worth a lot of money.

there were a few times in my late 20s where my friends and i would go up to a range in new hampshire where you could rent and fire just about any common gun. i had never been around guns before but over the course of a couple visits we tried out a bunch of handguns, an ar-15 type, an ak-47 type, one of those mp5s with multiple firing modes including full auto, etc. etc.

at the time it was a fun way to kill a sunday but after one mass shooting or another it made me feel kind of gross and i have no interest in doing it again. i did find it really useful though as far as having an appreciation for the deadliness of guns--the weight, the power of the recoil, the ones where you could be pretty accurate vs. the ones where you were just spraying. i think of those experiences every time there's another shooting in the news.

I have a memory of a friend (whose parents were cops) bringing out an old gun at his house and wanting me to hold it. How heavy and alien it was. It was wrapped in a cloth, and I held it for a few seconds and made him take it away. I was 13 or 14.

Never handled a gun. I had a roommate once whose parents were associated with a gang and she grew up around it. She told me her dad entered her in shooting competitions as a kid and had to disguise her as a boy or she wouldn't have been eligible. Her boyfriend and our other roommate were fascinated by it and I didn't wanna know. One night I came home and the three of them were sitting on her bed visibly wasted, faces flushed, with a bunch of handguns spread out in front of them and a couple more they were posing with and passing around and I COMPLETELY LOST MY SHIT.

I've fired guns 20 or 30 times. My dad's rifle in the backyard at paint can lids (small town Indiana in the 70s). Various handguns at ranges in Arizona. Ruger in Prescott was one of my customers for process control instrumentation in the 90s, and I kept a 9mm in my car for awhile (I traveled all over northern AZ and NM for work and thought I needed one - I didn't). I sold it in probably 1996.

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I guess firing a gun for recreational purposes is a thing, but I don't see how casually using a gun for whatever purpose can be viewed as light and pleasurable

more than ten for sure, less than a regular for sure, last time was 20 years ago but I'd do it again with the right friend

voted "other"

My answer is still the same as it was in that other thread from 2007. I once owned a .308 rifle in 1984-1985 that I traded a modded P-bass copy for (I needed a bass player for my band, but my friend was into guns and had no spare $$$). Couple of my friends back then were into firearms so I have fired a variety of handguns, shotguns, and rifles both at ranges and out in the Mojave. Most of the esoteric ones (AK-47, Thompson, Sten) I fired were at a gun store/range in Las Vegas where you could rent them. The last time I went shooting was 1986 and that's it. Zero desire ever since.

Never touched one. I guess I've seen a few, but not many, and not for very long or very closely.

There'll be a sharp US/Rest of the World divide on this one. I've lived in the UK, France and Australia, and with the exception of armed police I've never even seen a gun let alone shoot one.

really like the idea of a 'right friend'

as in, someone with proper training

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