I got interested in Guns when I was around 6 years old. I had a .22 caliber Derringer I found in the attic. Ammunition too.
I have been thumbing hammers down for a long time.

My dad got me started. One of my first memories is dad shooting a Ruger 1022 he bought in the early sixties. Still have it!!

I grew up around them.

When I was born you could legitimately call my family poor. So poor my parents hunted so we had food to eat. As such, guns were a part of daily life.

I was about four months old when I was taken on my first hunting trip literally swaddled in a papoose on mother's back.

I received my first gun, a Mossberg 142A, when I was five (I still have it). I started shooting skeet when I was thirteen. I began shooting center-fire rifles and pistols at 15. I bought my first rifle at 18 (still have it), my first handgun at 22 (still have that one too).

For about six months I had a license to carry at 24 (highly restricted to taking cash bank deposits to the bank) and a Virginia concealed handgun permit in 1996.

I worked at the National Rifle Association from 1987-1989. I was an NRA instructor and training counselor, with some 600 students taught to shoot (I mostly taught basic rifle shooting with an AR-15 with a .22LR Ciener conversion kit in it).

I began doing what I do for a living in 1991, working the nexus of environmental management, military munitions, and military ranges. I'm still doing that kind of work.

I sold my first gun at 22, working for an arms importer. I became a federally-licensed firearms dealer 2007.

My involvement with firearms and the shooting sports have been very good to me, personally and professionally.

Boy scouts. Grew up in the military and our scout troop had lots of shooters amongst our scout leaders.

My father got me interested in guns at a young age.At eight years old my first 22 rifle at 9 shot my first MG an M2 carbine,At 17 a 30-30 rifle fast forward at age 24 became a class 3 dealer,at 62 now still own and shoot MGs.

I grew up in Hartford Conn. right next to Colt's park. The gentleman who used to sharpen my hockey skates was QC for Colt.
On my 10th birthday he brought me along and I got to fire an SP1 right off the manufacturing line and a Colt Trooper MK1 and then tour the facility with him.

That pretty much started an addiction that hasn't stopped.

Oddly enough, it was also my first ethical dilemma. My father had an old Iver Johnson 32 cal revolver. One day when I was 10, I snuck it out of his toolbox and took it out to the woods and test fired it. Unknown to me (or Dad) it was a rimfire gun loaded with centerfire ammo. No the old man often worked in bad neighborhoods. I had to tell him, but I knew it would earn me a beating. It did.

Uncle Sam really got me hooked on guns when he loaned me an M1 Garand along with cases of 30.06 ball ammo.

It was Summer of 1957 and I lost some of my hearing that year during basic training. No hearing protection back then.

I'm never with without a gun since then.

The smell of gunpowder. Dad was a competitive shooter.

There was always a gun rack on the wall of our den/TV room. We lived in a rural fishing/farming village with woods and a swamp two houses away. My earliest recollections are of a lever action single shot .22, a tube fed bolt action .22, a double barrel .410 and a Colt 1908 pocket. I was allowed to take the long guns for woods walks around age 11, and the Colt at age 15. I was never allowed to own a BB gun, my parents felt that I would put my eye out.

All the neighbors had kids and gun racks, too. During hunting season, many of the pickup trucks at high school had rifles visible in the rear windows. This was circa 1969.

The two .22s were stolen from a mountain cabin in Virginia around 1973. The .410 was my grandfather's gun and is now owned by my brother's grandson, so fifth generation of ownership. The Colt is going to my sister's grandson.

My story is a bit different than all of yours that I have read. In 1996 my wife decided that while I was on the road working that she no longer wanted to be married. Of course, she had other male input in her decision making process. A physically and mentally abusive asshole, frankly. I tried multiple times to keep her, as we had two small children then. In one of those periods where she wanted to come back, I ended up in a confrontation with her new beau. At some point he pulled a pistol and had it pointed right at my face. I still remember reflexively ducking my head still de to side so the barrel was not pointing right at my head.

At that point I knew that this asshole would prefer a world without me in it, and all I could think of was my two little ones that I would not be around to see grow up. Some way I managed to talk him into putting the gun down, and I tried to get the hell out of Dodge. We ended up beating on each other for a bit, but I freed up and got away from there.

After playing this over and over in my head, I relied on a close friend at work for input and bought my own pistol. I swore from that point on, that I might end up dying from getting shot, but I wouldn’t be unarmed and helpless as I was that day.

I didn’t grow up with guns, even though I am born and raised in PA. Fact is, I was afraid of guns. This event forced me to learn about them, safely shoot and that I could control a weapon.

From target practicing I realized that shooting was one of a very few ways that I can actually relax, as it forces me to focus on my target and not all the other chaos from life that is in my head. I picked up trapshooting and Sporting Clays as hobbies, and my gun acquisitions are fairly into three digits. And I know there are still more to come.

I was born this way.

About the time of joining SF, the first job after I got out used 9mm 226s - so it was for practice and home defense.

Mom watched "The Adventures of Kit Carson" and "Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" while gestating.

Around 10.....Daisy BB gun age.

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
Mom watched "The Adventures of Kit Carson" and "Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" while gestating.

I know. My Grandmother and also my Mom were both big “fans” of Gene Autry.
My Idols were Audey Murphy , and later... Dean Martin .All the while getting nice toy guns ... when I was well behaved enough to get the cap pistols ,as presents.

Parents bought me a BB gun when I was 12. Went to Scout camp and got the rifle and shotgun merit badges--hit clays the first time shooting and was hooked. Then there was my fascination and intent to serve in the military. Didn't shoot centerfire until I was in college...and started my collection.

Some of my earliest memories are of gopher shooting and target practice with dad and my brothers.

I wouldn't describe dad as a "gun nut", but he had a number of rifles (bolt action .22, .222, -06, 300 WinMag, M1 carbine) a shotgun, and one pistol - 357 Highway Patrolman. He reloaded for all of them on a bench down in the basement.

My first gun was a 20ga Stevens that I bought at Monkey Wards at around age 10. Killed a lot of pheasants and huns with that old shotgun.

My dad despite, (or maybe because) of being a Marine Corps combat veteran who served on Guadalcanal in WWII, was never into guns. Yet I wanted a BB gun, so he bought me one for my 11th birthday, and that folks is what started my journey.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Warhorse,

I grew up mostly in rural Connecticut in through the 1970s and 1980s. We watched John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns, played cowboys and indians, and war games with our cap guns. No real guns in the house but not anti gun feelings either. Growing up my best friend had non firing metal replicas of WWII 1911 and a Colt Python that operated just like the real ones and I loved them. I remember visiting a gun shop once as a little kid with my dad while he looked at a nickel Colt revolver and seeing an AR15 for the first time. My dad was a veteran of the Air Force and for a while was in the Army Reserves growing up. One of my other friends Dad in our neighborhood had a US issued surplus 1911 that he would shoot in their back yard on occasions. As a teen, I remember my older brother subscribing to Guns and Ammo magazine and reading them from cover to cover. I was about 19 or 20 when the P228 was adopted as the M11 and distinctly remember it featured in one of the gun magazines of the day. I purchased my first gun, a Sig P228 several days after I turned 21 and the rest is history.