A Range Trip With Cameron and his Dad

The phone rang the other day and it was Hank, the vacuum cleaner salesman. It turns out that KeeWee had entered a raffle at the county fair and had won a free air purifier provided she would listen to Hank's sales pitch for his high tech vacuum cleaners. I've known Hank for years, as I first met him at the county fair when he had a vacuum cleaner booth next to the booth run by our fishing club. We visited a bit about fishing and shooting, and he mentioned that he wanted to take his son Cameron out to the range for his first exposure to shooting a .22 rifle. I suggested that why didn't he swing by on Saturday and bring his son along. After showing off his vacuum cleaner, we could head over to the Holmes Harbor Range for a little shooting.

Come Saturday, Hank and Cameron showed up and demo'd the vacuum. It's called a Rainbow, and it seems to be a pretty darn good vacuum cleaner, and it has no connection to Rev. Jesse Jackson. After his demo, we headed over to the range. Hank, Cameron and I all discussed firearm safety and the four rules of firearm safety. Then we talked about what a range master does, and terms like "Hot Range" and "Cold Range" were discussed.

Note his trigger finger. Good habits learned early stay with you for the rest of your life!

After covering the bases safety-wise, we set the rifle on some sand bags and went through the basics of bolt action rifle shooting. The rifle was a tad long for Cameron, but he made the best of it. With a little practice Cameron was getting his shots to group a bit, and he was definitely showing improvement as he got more comfortable with the rifle.

After some rifle shooting, Cameron wanted to shoot dad's concealed carry .40 pistol. Really! Now a short barreled .40 is getting close to being a handful for people with full sized hands and hand strength, but Cameron's a pretty small dude. No talking him out of it, he wanted to shoot the .40. I was concerned with safety, so I suggested only loading one round at a time. Worst could happen would be he'd drop an empty gun after the first round.

We went over the basics, shoulders forward, aggresive stance, good grip, left hand with a strong grip, etc. He leaned into it and squeezed of a round. I thought he was going to jump out of his boots when it went off! He looked at his Dad, then looked at me, big ear to ear grin on his face!
"Can I shoot it again? Huh, Dad?" After four or five more rounds he decided that he'd had enough for one day, but two thing's are clear.

Cameron will remember his first range trip for the rest of his life, and he'll definitely be back for more!