I always like to see dads taking their kids to the range with them, and teaching them how to shoot. We always need more young people interested in shooting, and becoming gun owners later in life.
So I was shooting for about an hour when this guy and his kid showed up. This kid was maybe 10 or so. Maybe a little older. The dad just hands this kid an AR with some godawful huge scope on it, and gets pissed when this kid isnt shooting under MOA at 50 yards. Keep in mind this huge scope was on a cheap ass mount which was on a SW MP15T.
He would shout “what are you doing!?” when the kid didn’t shoot good. Then he’d tell him “I can shoot ‘this’ good. Why cant you?” Just really impatient with the kid, and this boy eventually went and sat at one of the benches staring at the ground looking quite sad. Then his dad comes over, and tells him to go sit in the truck.
A little while later they go to shoot pistols, and Mr. impatient dad leaves his two guns laying on the shooting bench for over a half hour. The pistol range is about 100 yards away, and completely out of sight of the rifle range. So this douche leaves two guns unsecured but can’t teach his kid how to shooting with making him feel like garbage, and verbally berating him. Oh almost forgot…this guy put his 100 yard target behind my 50 yard target, and I put 3 30rd magazines into my target before I realized what he did. From my vantage I could not see he had put his stand behind mine.
I just don’t understand why “parents” even take their kids out there if they are going to get on them so harsh so quick. This kid will probably have a negative thought process around guns now, and isn’t going to want to go out and shoot. Im excited enough about my 3 year old twin boys going shooting in a couple years they already have guns waiting for them.
But I had a good time, and got some good 100 yard groups out my LaRue Stealth upper w/ IMI M193. Its the most accurate M193 Ive shot so far.
Some people shouldn’t even be parents. But who am I to say anything? It’s their kid and not mine. At least I know what not to do if I have kids of my own.
I seen the same with a guy and his girl, i wanted to say something, but i knew he was a army reservist and a cop, soo his weapons ego was prob huge. Maybe I should have, she was cute!
Thats a moment when you just want to confront the dad and yell at him asking what the hell are you doing??!! Except at a gun range with lots of loaded firearms prolly isn’t the best place to do it. :eek:
Reminds me of the poor ski bunny kids I use to see. Don’t know if any of you snowboard or ski, but it always broke my heart to see the little screaming four year olds being dragged around and bullied by their yuppie parents!
I think Rof Shod said it right this guy isn’t a Dad.
sorry brother…heck, I’m just glad when my boy wants to shoot. I would have had a tough time not trying to step in and encourage him with my own toys at the range
My kid is close to the same age and is a natural dead eye but really cares nothing about hunting / shooting sports in general (yet). He LOVES the vid games and has picked up some mis-guided knowledge of guns which is fun to hear him say it’s “easier on the x-box”
Says quite a bit about a person when he gets upset with a ten year old because he isn’t Sgt. York yet. I think some people only have kids because they want them to be the things they never were so that they can take credit for it.
It was one of the reasons I stopped teaching martial arts to children. I got tired of kids being sent to me so they could be the “black belt” Daddy always wanted to be but he lacked the dedication and talent. Parents could undo weeks of training and patient encouragement on my part in ten seconds with a single sentence.
The saddest part of all was a lot of those kids could have been genuinely skilled one day had they not been derailed by “soccer dad’s” who expected immediate and dramatic results. Because after all anyone who is genetically related to them should be Bruce Lee after only a few months.
saw this all the time on Maui
parents take kids to pool or on boat the kids want to play and the parents keep yelling I am busy !!!
had one that let their kid go diving with me ! when I taught at blackrock Sheraton doing intros
so they fill out the medical and I say are you sure their is nothing !!! this can be serious !!! they say NO how long is this going to take ? I say about a hour ? they say can you make it two we want to go shopping and have lunch ? I look at the kid and he looks kind sad so I say well I am off after this he can hang out with me around the pool
anyway I get the kid in the pool no prob so we go to the ocean and he has prob getting down ? so we try slowly no luck we go back to the shack and he is saying his ear is dizzy sounding and has a strange feel to it !
we have a great diving doctor we use so I send the kid down their and turns out he has perf eardrum !!! when the parents get back turns out they lied and he has had tubes most all his life !!!
I went off on the parents so so so so so hard screaming at the top of my lungs that they could have killed their kid how pathetic they are etc… everyone around the pool was watching I chewed em out for a good 1-2 minutes
made them sign a paper saying they lied and filled out a PADI report etc… frigin idiot parents
doctor gave him a no fly order for a week !!! so they had to stay longer and book the hotel longer since it was almost their last day
the hotel of course knew what was up and did not give him a break on price hehehehhe
OP,
Sorry to hear this. This kid could now equate shooting with being yelled at by his father, and it is possible that he will no longer wish to shoot.
Parents like that really don’t deserve the title of parent or “Dad or Mom”. My11 yr old son likes nothing I do or did when I was a kid, but I support him wholeheartedly. He loves baseball and drama(acting). Me I loved martial arts, boxing, and cooking. Basically what parents need to understand that it isn’t about them and what they want, it is about what their child wants or dreams of. Hell I would have loved my son to be Golden Gloves like his old man, but he apparently wants to be either an actor or a MLB pitcher. Just as long as he doesn’t play for the Yankees I figure I raised him right.
I would have gone off on the guy, so many kids want nothing to do with shooting and this boy did but probably won’t ever again. My boy wants to shoot but he’s 8 and has autism so his attention span is about 1/4 sec. I tried letting him shoot a Red Ryder but it wasn’t pretty. I’ll just wait and try again, on the other hand my daughter turns 3 on Thurs. so it won’t be long for her.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. My father was the exact same type, possibly worse. He humiliated me shooting both in public and private countless times. And while doing yard work, and at sporting events, etc. To him, I was and still am the eternal idiot. This unless he needs help refinancing or something like that where he thinks I can save him money, then I’m ok.
My 6 year old and I stopped by his house as planned on Easter morning for what was to be about an hour or two. He lives 5 minutes from me, yet I haven’t been there in months.
We were there less than 10 minutes when he started, so I calmly told my son it was time to go. On the way out the door he told me to stop acting like a “Jerkoff” while my son was next to me.
Now that I am a parent, I have very little time for the co*ksucker anymore. But I still love to shoot.
I know! you know the type, they always roll up in like a saab or audi wagon and are smug as fuck. Im always polite on the mountian, but I wont hesitate to take your line or accidentally run over your tips if your being a douche and acting like the mountain is yours.
I don’t understand the guy either. I took my daughter out last year; the first time, I didn’t get to send rounds down range because I promised her that ‘she’ would be on target within 5 rounds at 150 yards. After she got on target on her 4th round…there was no stopping her. The two biggest learning objectives that we worked on was:
Only she can pull the trigger.
You can’t change a round that has gone down range, don’t lose your composure when you miss the target. Apply what you learned and send the next round down range.
Unfortunately for me, she now shoots on the NC Junior Highpower team…so daughter and dad range time consists of us shooting in our own worlds…very little chance to mentor her now:(
I almost have my wife convinced that I need to get a CZ 452…for the younger children so that I can have ‘range bonding time’ with them. They can’t join a highpower team until they are 12 sooooo, I should be able to get some good range time with them before they spread their wings.
I chewed em out for a good 1-2 minutes
That could have been a terrific memory that he would cherished.