Younger Guns

‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ With almost any skill, it is best to start young. ‘ ‘ ‘ That’s why the… ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ With almost any skill, it is best to start young. ‘ ‘ ‘ That’s why the Pitcairn Monroeville Sportsmen’s Club hosts free, monthly, kid-friendly firearm teaching programs. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘The younger you subject someone to something, the more interested they’ll be, and the better they’ll be at it as time goes on,’ said Gupta. ‘They won’t have the reactionary fear of weapons if they are used to handling them and know about them.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Kyle Trohoski, who is 12, and his brother Austin, who is 11, like to go shooting with their dad at the Wexford State Game Lands on the weekends. They both enjoy shooting .22 caliber rifles. ‘ ‘ ‘ Kyle likes it ”cause you can have a blast out of it,’ but his main reason is that ‘it’s fun, mostly fun.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Yeah, fun,’ chimed in Austin. ‘ ‘ ‘ After some thought about why he likes to shoot guns, Kyle said, ‘I like spending quality time with my dad and to practice hunting.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ About a month ago, Kyle passed the two-day-long hunter safety course. He plans on going deer hunting with his father this year. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘I teach my children to shoot because it’s something we can do together throughout the entire time they’re kids, to when they’re adults, and maybe to their kids,’ said Brian Cerra, the secretary of the Pitcairn Monroeville Sportsmen’s Club. ‘ ‘ ‘ He explained that there are two shoots, the BB/Air gun shoots for kids ages 6-12, and the youth .22 shoots. The Sportsmen’s Club Web site says that the youth .22 shoots are for shooters ages 8-80. ‘ ‘ ‘ The kids start the BB/Air gun shoot with an hour-long firearms safety class to learn about proper gun handling. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘The number of safety rules is very small, but there are no exceptions,’ said Cerra. ‘It’s simple. There are three rules of gun safety: Point in a safe direction, keep your finger out of the trigger guard, and don’t load until you’re ready to shoot.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Following the safety course is ‘plinking time,’ where the kids get to test out their new knowledge on pop cans and clay pigeons. After that, the young shooters get to test their skills with money on the line, or rather in balloons. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘We put up balloons, and in the balloons is money. Sometimes it’s a quarter. Sometimes it’s a dollar. Sometimes it’s a 50-cent piece. And then they go one at a time, and they get one shot. If they hit the balloon, they get to go get the money,’ said Cerra. ‘ ‘ ‘ When it comes to Cerra’s two sons, he makes sure that they know what is a toy and what’s not. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘We have one toy gun in my house. They’re allowed to play with it, but they have to follow the same rules with the toy gun as with a real gun,’ he said. ‘If you want [the] Sonic the Hedgehog

, that’s fine. That’s pretend. But some of the Halo [games] and [others] where you’re shooting people, in my opinion, is too close to reality for a child to understand the difference between ‘this is a real gun’ and ‘this is a play gun.”