Quote from: RE on Sep 09, 2025, 07:37 PMI didn't get the center fire rifles until my 3rd year, after I passed my expert certification.  Started with an air rifle, then .22s.  Safety training was required.  Nobody got shot while I was there.  Generally I would say it was better training than the average redneck got from dad sucking down beers out hunting.

RE

Depends on the dad. Most folks in the holler were fairly serious about getting the kiddies up to speed on firearms. Start around 8, shooting 22's under the uncles supervision, my own by 10 (grandma talked mom into it rather than an air rifle) and by 11 get them with a centerfire, 30-30's were quite popular getting ready for deer season. And then of course the hunter-safety course at 11 so the instant someone turned 12...LIVE FIRE! Groundhogs if you turned 12 earlier in the year, I was legal about 1 week before the beginning of deer season. But they allowed the hunter safety course when you were 11 for just this sort of circumstance.

Average rednecks were mostly so-so. I got my training from uncles and a friend of my moms from her parents without partners church group. Loaned me a 30-30 as well, took me out to sight it in, he was quite reasonable when it came to training someone elses kid. More of a structured tradition than one might think, in the holler.

The whole 8-12 year old thing was where firearms began, certainly not where it ended.

I can't even imagine what firearms training looks like nowadays, with the rumours and tales and anti-gun and pro-gun sales pitches and mass shootings always in someone's mind and so on and so forth. I took care of both the kids and the wife, no interest in hunting but both have been to the range, the daugthter likes the Glock, the boy the 357 revolver. The wife only wanted to know where it was in the house and has no desire to touch it, only hide it if guests show up. The 6-point antlers of my first whitetail when I was 12 sit in a box stored somewhere because the wife wants nothing to do with it, but it is a momento of a simpler time.

I find it difficult to call them the "good ol' days", maybe it is more like nostalgia?