Belgium Sgt. York in the making!

[Bark'n]

Jarhead 79's post about taking his Chinese Foreign Exhange Students made me remember a shooting session from last year. (didn't want to hijack his post)

My step daughter married a guy from Belgium and last summer I took his 16 year old son out to shoot for his very first time. I gotta tell you he had the time of his life.

After starting with a Hi-Standard .22 with only 1 and 2 rounds in the mag and ensuring proper safety indoctrination, we moved on to shoot (in no particular order) the Colt AR-15; the FN FAL; the Glock-23; the Ruger Speed Six; The Colt Officers and the Para P-12; a friend of mine's new .22 Cricket single shot (those are cool) and his grandfathers Walther PP .32 acp (his grandfather found on a dead german in WWII Belgium when he was a kid, and shooting it was a way cool experience) But his absolute favorite was the Mossberg 590 pump shotgun. He looked like Arnold Swartzenegger in the Terminator out there hosing down targets with the old Mossberg.

We shot for about 3 hours on probably the hottest day of the year in Missouri and it was hotter than hades but we had a good time.

I had also bought 2,500 rounds of steel core lake city .223 at an estate auction a couple years ago so we shot the AR-15 at a 2" wide piece of flat steel bar approx. 3/4 inch thick at about 125 yards.

I must say it put dime sized holes in the steel bar and just shy of punching all the way through. Not real hard steel but it impressed me enough. Plus we were using iron sights so that little AR is a tack driver. The kid was even hitting it from a rollover prone position and a braced standing position. He'd never fired a gun before that day, so I was pretty impressed. (note to self, I won't be using that ammo for home defense... Stick with the Hornady TAP for that)

(I'm hoping that learning the shooting basics from a former Marine helped a little bit ) but the kid seemed to be a natural at it as well.

He also got a lesson in weapons cleaning and maintenence since I wasn't cleaning all those weapons myself.

My rule is, for first shooting experience, ammo is on me, but you help clean the weapons. After that, you have to help pay for ammo.

He's saved some "shooting money" and wants to go out again before he starts college this fall. (He liked shooting the Belgum FN Fal and his grandfathers Walther as well as the legendary Colt .45 and Colt AR-15 but this next time he wants to shoot my Belgium FN 98 bolt action .30-06, and of course the Mossberg 12 ga.)

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[aznav]

A star is born! Looks like he'll be saving more than "shooting money" in the coming years.