Any Shooters With Disabilities?

Adaptive Equipment

We've been around disability for about 18 years now. We also have a disabled man that lives with us (his mother died suddenly 5 years ago). When he first came to live with us he was afraid of guns in general - probably scare tactics from his mother.

Well, if you’re going to be a part of this family, you’re going to go shooting. Once he fired a few rounds he was hooked. He has mental retardation plus severe spastic cerebral palsy. The way we help him shoot looks pretty unconventional.

The rifle butts up against the back of the wheelchair, and the gun has to be sideways so he can pull the trigger. His range of motion keeps him from firing the gun upright. We do the actual aiming because there is no way he is able to support the whole firearm. When I let him shoot the 12 gage it pushes the wheelchair back about 3 inches (he loves that)

We searched for a while, but now he has his own .22 rifle. I need to get a trigger job done on it to make it easier for him.

I also have another friend that is a C4-5 spinal cord injury (he has no control from the nipple line down). We’re trying to get a rig that will allow him to actually shoot himself the rig we’re looking at is at http://www.beadaptive.com/pages/lm100.htm (hopefully the link will work). They even have a sip-n-puff trigger control.

If anyone knows of a better rig please let me know.

How do you upload a picture? Maybe someone could talk me through it off the forum.

Holdcard

I have severe degenerative arthritis and spinal stenosis of the lumbosacral spine. My loss of mobility is the reason that I became interested in shooting. Up until just a few years ago, I was always confident of my ability to protect myself, and my wife. Now though, I have difficulty walking distances, which pretty much running out of the question. My ability to generate force my putting my hips into a punch is gone, and any attempt to kick higher than the knees would most likely be ineffective. Nerve damage from the spinal problem, along with diabetes has caused me to have balance problems. And what would be a simply "ass whooping" to most others, could easily lead to a major injury and further disability to me. Fortunately, I don't require any special accommodations for shooting, except that if I'm standing at the range more than 30 minutes, my pain level rises substantially. As far as self defense goes, I do carry pepper spray in addition to my handgun (XD 45 or Glock 26, depending on mode of carry), so that I can try to keep from escalating from a fight to a shooting.