In my opinion, a child is never too young to begin learning how to handle a firearm. Not all, but many of the gun related accidents among children could have probably been avoided with proper education. Given, kids will still be kids…and they don’t always have their heads screwed on straight, but again, in my opinion, a child with a gun who has had some proper training, is always better than a child with a gun who hasn’t.
With that said, with guns spread throughout my house, I’m always looking for opportunities to teach my kids how to properly handle a weapon, and should the need arise, use it. Now that doesn’t mean that I have pistols laying around in areas that are extremely accessible for any of my kids. What I mean by that is this…if one of my kids wants to find a firearm, they will, regardless of how many safety precautions I’ve put into place. So when and if that ever happens in my household, the best safety measure I can put into place will be the ones that are in between my childs own two ears.
Now I’ve got four girls between the ages of three weeks and 13 years old with a mild interest in guns, and a three year old boy who is infatuated with them. So I’m thinking that I should get on the ball and start properly teaching this kid the basics of handling a gun.
So of course, we start with an Airsoft pistol. Yeah, he may be a little young for shooting BB’s, but with proper supervision, it’s a bit more exciting than shooting dart guns.
And, in order to save our BB’s and shoot indoors, I ordered an Airsoft BB Trap from Amazon as our backstop, and as a disclosure, I did receive the BB Trap for free to “test out!”
My wife wasn’t so sure about shooting guns in the house, even Airsoft guns, so I had to convince her that this was going to be safe, using first hand experience. The BB Trap is basically a pup tent, or one of those windshield shades that can easily pop up and be ready to go. Inside the BB Trap it has strips of fiber and cloth hanging down to slow the BB’s as they enter the trap.
I’m telling you what…it drives me crazy seeing little plastic BB’s all over the place, so this BB Trap is heaven sent.
I printed out a squirrel BB target from the internet and attached it to the BB Trap, which actually comes with a little piece of velcro, in the event you would like to use that to attach targets. Tape works good too.
Key points in my first “official” training session with my three year old boy were:
- Properly holding of the pistol.
- Keeping fingers off the trigger until ready to fire.
- Always pointing the gun down until ready to fire. We’ll work on always pointing the gun down range and clearing the pistol in the next session.
- Aiming. This one was tough!
So, instead of the typical household shooting training of, “Don’t point the gun at people sweety,” we’ve taken it a few steps further. Hopefully, with more practice, firearm safety will become second nature to him.
In closing, the BB Trap worked perfectly and was later used as an actual “pup tent!” You can’t beat shooting and playing in forts! Here’s the link for it on Amazon: http://amztk.com/airsofttarget
Here’s a little video I shot of my training experience:
