Today I broke out the new Daisy BB gun and a sticky target, stuck the target to a cardboard box, backed off about 20 feet, and started the lesson. My students were my two kids, a 6-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy. The daughter is hereafter referred to as "G" and the son as "L."
Before they touched anything we started with muzzle control. After a long sermon on how and where to keep the muzzle pointed, as well as additonal little things like "don't run in front of it when someone else is holding it, either," I gave them some info on the gun itself. No, I don't expect them to learn everything all at once, and though this was only a BB gun, it was never handled by either of them without my strict and immediate supervision, usually involving me helping them physically hold the gun. We went over how the safety works, how not to touch the trigger until you were really going to shoot, how to load, and how to safely make sure it was no longer cocked when it came time to put it away.
This is the Daisy Buck, the smallest BB rifle they make, which weighs 1.6 pounds unloaded and shoots a BB at about 275 fps. Still, they are small kids and haven't developed rifle-holding muscles, so they needed help handling it. An outdoor canvas chair provided a convenient barrel rest.
"G" did most of the shooting. She had a bad habit of trying to grab the gun by the trigger, which I came down on pretty hard, and by the end she was conciously lying her finger along the lever beneath the trigger until she had lined up the sights on the box. Just teaching her to find both sights and get them lined up somewhere in the vicinity of the black circle took quite a while, but she was beginning to get the hang of it. Out of the ten or so shots she took, she got 6 or 7 to hit the box (about 2 feet square). I felt that was a pretty good start for a 6-year-old who had never done any such thing before in her life. By the end of the session she was even beginning to get the hang of the safety, but the trigger pull was still a little stiff for her little hand.
With "L" I didn't attempt too much, focusing mainly on just letting him get the feel of how to properly hold a rifle. My final summation: it was a great start, but there's a long way to go, which is good. Shooting with my kids is great fun. I expect it will be even more fun when they get old enough to handle firearms.
After our session with the rifle, I broke out my Crosman 1008 pellet pistol and fired off 40 or 50 shots. It's a fun gun, but has a lousy trigger. I did a lock of cocking so that I could fire single-action, which more closely simulates the trigger pull of my XD40. When it came time to put everything away, I made sure the pistol was unloaded and then put it down on the tailgate of the pickup. While we were cleaning up, neither of them tried to pick it up. I brought them both together and asked what they should do if they found a gun just lying around somewhere like that. "G" immediately answered, "Don't pick it up, and get an adult." I don't remember having given this speech before, so I told her that was exactly right, and asked who had taught her that. "I don't know," she answered, "it was just in my brain." Hm. Maybe I did something right, sometime, and don't remember doing it.
The Buck is the same model that my sister had when we were kids. It has changed somewhat since then (25 years ago?). It now has a fiber-optic front sight that is very easy to see. It also has a cross-bolt safety that blocks the trigger. That's a nice touch for such a cheap gun, but then, it's a Daisy. It has a fixed rear sight but it still shoots quite accurately for what it is.
I have previously let the kids "help" me when cleaning my firearms after a range session, and with me, that usually involves cleaning up a minimum of three guns. They also helped me go through about 150 .40 S&W rounds to check for bad reloads (some reloads I got at a gun show a while back, one of which severely jammed the XD). I have done this with them to try and get them over the "fascination" attitude that many kids have who have not handled guns much.
Both kids want to do it again tomorrow.
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