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| Father of the Year |
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Sunday, July 06, 2008
8 comments:
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Anonymous said...
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One day long ago my 4 children (8, 6, 5, and 4) were sitting in a semicircle watching some insipid mind pablum on TV. I got 4 sharpened pencils and laid a phone book on the floor near them. In turn from youngest to oldest, I had them stab the book as hard as they could with the pencils and then we wrote down to which page the point penetrated. They all agreed that even a little kid could do serious damage to a person with a sharpened pencil.
About 10 minutes later I came back with an old .22 pistol and shot the book with it. Then we dug down to see how far the bullet had penetrated. I explained that the .22 is the smallest common handgun available and that it had gone 100 times deeper into the book than any of them had been able to do with a pointed stick, despite how much havoc a sharp stick could do to a human body.
Then I took them out to the country to a bridge over a creek and let them shoot at sticks and plastic cups in the water with a .22 rifle. I shot some hickory nuts with the pistol, and then I blasted an old rotten log with duck shot from a .16 gauge. Next I shot a fencepost, first with the .22 pistol and then the rifle, and last a .38 (didn’t have a .45 – woulda made a better impression).
They’re all in their 40s now, and I have great confidence that they see weapons as tools, much like hammers or screwdrivers or knives, each having a specific purpose and each being dangerous as hell if used irresponsibly or incorrectly. Both my daughters keep pistols in the house, and my youngest son has a collection of rifles and pistols with which he is teaching his son.
Oh, and the girls were pretty damned good shots with the rifle off that old bridge. Got the hang of it immediately. Oldest boy couldn’t hit a barn with a blunderbuss. Had to help the youngest one hold the rifle, ‘cause it was longer than he was. Wanted him to get the feel of it, tho, and the immediacy of the slug he had fired hitting something. -
7/6/08, 11:58 AM
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Firehand said...
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You do realize that any GFW's that come by, just had a high-pressure skull failure as their head exploded?
'Course, that's another good reason to post this. -
7/6/08, 11:58 AM
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BobG said...
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I learned to shoot at 22 pistol at five. By seven I was hunting cottontails with a 22 rifle. At ten, I was taught to shoot the 1911. The only thing that limits the age a child can learn to shoot is the emotional maturity and intelligence of both the teacher and the child.
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7/6/08, 2:42 PM
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Anonymous said...
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OK, why is he wearing a prison jumpsuit?
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7/6/08, 4:07 PM
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RKV said...
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Eye and ear protection? I mean I have zero problem teaching kids to shoot under appropriate supervision and with their full cooperation. But...
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7/6/08, 8:17 PM
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pdwalker said...
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BobG: +10!
RKV: If the rifle and handgun's are 22's, I don't see a problem. -
7/6/08, 9:02 PM
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Anonymous said...
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You still need ear protection with .22s.
if they keep shooting without, they will all end up with permanent tintinitus in their right ears.
I made that error when I was a kid ... didn't take .30-06 reports seriously enough as a result. -
7/7/08, 12:16 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Now if he was really a FOTY, he would be teaching those kids to use suppressors as well.
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7/7/08, 12:17 AM
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