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Along with first aid training and a bunch of other stuff (did the permaculture design a few years back with Patrick Whitefield), I'm interested in doing a little firearms training. I last picked up a shotgun (on a farm) about 33 years ago.

I have encouraged a couple of friends to get involved too (yes, I am turning them on to the issues, slowly slowly catchee monkey) and we are all up for some winter training. I'm just in the middle of approaching a nearly-local gun club, which runs weekly training sessions.

Any advice for us beginners?

woodpecker wrote:Any advice for us beginners?

Watch where you point the end with the hole, and always be a sissy and wear ear protection.

I assume you are writing about shotguns, in which case I would say buy an over/under double barrel 12 bore.

O/U are easy for a beginner to aim ( actually you "point" a shotgun ), they break open, so you can see if they are safe, empty or loaded - this is most important, and 12b is very versatile with both heavy and light loads available for different quarry and different builds of shooter.

Don't let anyone talk you into a .410 or 28g, 20g is OK, especially if you are small or frail.

Never underestimate the power of a shotgun, treat it with utmost respect - a 12b with medium / heavy load has twice the muzzle energy of a .44 Magnum pistol and as Dirty Harry says "it'll blow your head clean off".

Wear good ear protection if clay shooting, eye protection is advisable.

Ah yes, the end with the hole
I can be a bit cack handed and absent minded, so hoping this doesn't cause any disasters.

Eye protection: presumably this would be in addition to normal corrective lenses?

(Cack handed, absent minded and with a visual impairment - beginning to sound like a hopeless case, eh?)

woodpecker wrote:Ah yes, the end with the hole
I can be a bit cack handed and absent minded, so hoping this doesn't cause any disasters.

Eye protection: presumably this would be in addition to normal corrective lenses?

(Cack handed, absent minded and with a visual impairment - beginning to sound like a hopeless case, eh?)

Personally, I haven't had a problem with my eyes but steel shot is becoming more popular as the price of lead increases and although many clay grounds have banned it somebody may be using it, it ricochets like crazy, even off a clay pigeon. If you have polycarbonate lenses in your day-to-day glasses that would offer some protection, but not as good as a wrap-around style.

If you're absent minded you definitely want a break-open type shotgun, they are so much safer for you and your buddies.

Always wear eye and ear protection.

Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

Always keep your finger off the trigger and out of the trigger guard.

Start with light loads, bird shot and the like. Slugs and 00 buck can be brutal if you don't have good technique.

Keep the butt pressed tightly against you. Invest in a butt pad or recoil jacket if you are shooting lots of heavy loads. You will get a bruise. I personally love the feeling of a heavy recoil but maybe I'm a masochist.

I love shotguns and have several in my collection. A very versatile firearm. Take your time and practice, practice, practice!

All things considered, the world would probably be a better place if guns had never been invented. Let's not encourage them.

yup

Ann Coulter"...What the arms-control faithful really want is a world without violence, not a world without weapons. These are the ideological descendants of the authors of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which purported to outlaw war. But we can't have a world without violence, because the world is half male and testosterone causes homicide. A world with violence -- that is to say, with men -- but without weapons is the worst of all possible worlds for women. As the saying goes, 'God made man and woman; Colonel Colt made them equal'."

you could broaden that , we have lots of guns in the uk their in the hands of the army and police, now thats fine except when you look at history govt and national army's and police forces have been the biggest killers of their own people.

far greater than all the wars

china russia germany all supported arms control as well as pretty much every country that had genocide against its own people

http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM

Guns are great they enable the weak to kill the strong, they enable the women whose going to get raped by the group of men or the single man twice her size to stop being raped .

Have you ever had anyone try to kill you I have, six men for no reason attacked me, well they had a reason they wanted to beat someone up they had already beat up a couple of women and a man for fun .

Thats the real world I think you need to wake up to it

jonny2mad wrote: Have you ever had anyone try to kill you I have, six men for no reason attacked me,

...but fortunately my sister was well armed and shot all six dead before they laid a finger on me.

If you're joining a proper gun club, take advantage of all the shooting disciplines. At the club I'm a member of there's a training module for each and they walk all new members through it before allowing them to shoot on the range.

The NRA safety course before being allowed to shoot on the MOD ranges was pretty interesting for the uninitiated and a useful reminder for us foreign trained ex-squaddies.

For shotgun there's not much to beat practical shotgun, a pump or semi auto against the clock, multiple targets and various static firing points, you have to move between the firing points and shoot the targets, reloads are needed as many stages involve 20+ rounds of birdshot to complete. PSA membership is about £40 a year and that constitutes need for a sec 1 shotgun, plus membership of your original club.

The Practical Shooting Association run various safety courses which must be completed before being allowed to compete at either local or national level. All really good fun. Search for practical shooting on youtube for examples of the good times to be had.

jonny2mad wrote:Guns are great they enable the weak to kill the strong, they enable the women whose going to get raped by the group of men or the single man twice her size to stop being raped .

Yup and they also enable:
the disgruntled student to annihilate a class room,
the curious child to blow his own head off,
the family argument to get out of hand and someone end up dead,
the rich to kill 16 million pheasants a year,
8000 tonnes of lead shot to poison the UK countryside.
Yup, guns are great

Is your argument that we should have guns because the police and army have guns and we need protection from them? Good luck with taking on the military with your shotgun! And you've got the nerve to tell Biff to live in the real world!

Yup, it's a proper gun club, and we get training in a range of guns, plus we don't have to buy our own for training.

Thanks for the info about the PSA. I hadn't heard of them.

Try taking on the Nazis without any arms like the Jews .
work it out 6 million unarmed Jews 6 million other unarmed gypsy's anti-Nazis etc a couple of hundred thousand ss and gestapo, with small arms in the hands of Jews etc would it have been as easy to get them into cattle cars .

Read up on the Warsaw uprising, if the 12 million victims of the nazis had been armed at least they would have had the chance to not die like cattle

If you add up all the people killed in America in gun murders which because of the society might well have happened without guns, they are still less than the number of unarmed people killed by their own govt .

Also a far more armed society than the Americans exist in Europe in Switzerland with 400,000 fully automatic assault rifles in peoples homes, do you see widespread gun violence in Switzerland ? is Switzerland known as a bloodthirsty country .

nah our country would never kill its own citizens only foreigners do that .

There is nothing wrong with law abiding citizens owning guns.

"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns"

People murder innocents every day. In fact, in countries where gun control is the heaviest, violent crime is on the rise.

I have a huge gun collection comprising pistols, shotguns, hunting rifles and assault rifles.. I hunt, compete, collect and train. I am a range officer and a pistol safety and marksmanship instructor. We have never, ever had a gun related injury in the 50 years of operating our range. We have also never had a member go "rogue" and go on a killing spree.

Mentally damaged individuals sometimes will snap. Whether they are gun owners or not. If they decide to kill, they will use anything they can to accomplish their goal. Cars, bats, poison, knives, tools, explosives... anything. I recently read an article where a man in China went on a rampage with his car and killed 17 people. Want to start banning cars?

Ridiculous.

Muadib wrote:Want to start banning cars?

Sometimes I’ve thought they ought to be.