Yes.
Do not buy a gun unless you are willing to take the time to learn to handle it properly.
Now is a better time than ever. Buy several.
You just need to become educated on firarms and get tested as to which calibre is right for you.
Not everybody is meant to hold a 44 Magnum.
One does not shoot fish. One uses dynamite for this.
Get a 4" .357. Use it to learn proper shooting technique. Then put it in your car for a car gun.
Took a Brit friend shooting the other day. First time in his life he ever held a gun. He was pretty good too. Plus he was happier than a pig in slop :)
Everyone should own at least two or three guns, and keep enough ammo on hand so they’ll run for awhile.
Mmmmmm... Guns..
Several years back got on a freeper thread about home protection and the consensus came out to a particular shot gun for home protection and that's what I bought...Its home now and I am comfortable about it, but did shoot it several different times at the daughter house...She lives in the woods with a driveway 1/3 mile off the rural road...
I purchased a youth because the adult shotgun was too long for my arm reach. Its a Remington 870. Tried several others at the gun shop, but this was also the most comfortable..
Obama Pushing Shooters Off Public Lands
Michelle Malkin: Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Could have written This myself. I am 54. Shot a shotgun once. Gave myself a helluva black eye. ( yeah I didn’t know what I was doing either).
THIS Christmas I am buying a shotgun for EXACTLY the same reasons as this author.
2012 election.
My house was shot at during 2008 election.
They didn’t like my yard sign.
If you’re just starting out, you’d be well advised to begin with a revolver, rather than a semi-auto, and a .22 rather than a larger caliber.
A nasty initial experience can turn one off to further shooting, and a mild and simple firearm to start with is a good idea.
What kind of fantastical dream world has this guy lived in for so many years?
Or was it a subliminal morbid fear of firearms, which is in reality a fear of oneself, that kept him so clueless for so long?
Think of your future gun as a tool - a power tool. You need to know enough about it to select the right one for the job and you need to understand how to use it safely and effectively.
Talking with experienced gun owners will help you clarify your objectives and identify the kinds of guns that will meet your needs.
Find a gun shop and a gun range near you and talk to the people there for starters. They are usually quite knowledgeable and most ranges have guns you can rent or try. You can look at different guns, handle them, price them and get an idea of what appeals to you
If you have a friend or relative familiar with guns talk to them and pick their brains. Most gun owners will be happy to share info and experience with others and even take them along to do some shooting .
As others here have said, for personal defense you can’t go wrong with a .357 revolver (or a .38), and a 12 ga. pump shotgun for home defense to start with. These two weapons are probably the most common combination people start with.
As many people will tell you, a revolver is the simplest, safest, easiest to use and most reliable type of pistol. And the sound of a 12 ga. shotgun being cocked will strike fear in the most determined home invader.
Good luck.
Don’t stop at one.
Lone Star Arms specialized in modifying the Saiga 12 into various configurations including the shortest legal barrel length.
Spendy......but very effective. It's modified to accept low and high grade munitions.
What all this amounts to is the baptism of fire of what I have taken to calling the "liberal superstructure." This superstructure is the vast constellation of advocacy groups, think tanks, single-issue outfits, unions, and various other flotsam constructed by the left over the past half-century or so. There are literally thousands of these groups, ranging from the ACLU and the Sierra Club with their hundreds of thousands of members to the local "Friends of the People's Venezuela" outfit which amounts to a retired feminism professor and her six cats. These organizations are ubiquitous, universal, and networked to a fare-thee- well. They are also liberalism's last great hope of controlling politics in the United States.
It's scarcely arguable that, in the political sense, liberalism is on the ropes. Obama spent their last nickel. They have lost the House and will lose the Senate, with little chance of regaining them in the near future. The same is true of the White House once the messiah gets the bum's rush come 2012. Liberalism is on the skids, its programs uniform failures, its ideology barren, its slogans worn out, its long hold on the independents being relentlessly pared down by the Tea Parties.
So what is a political movement to do, particularly one as fanatic and apocalyptic as this one? Well, if you have an alternate system made up of outside organizations not subject to governmental oversight, a system populated with self-selected fanatics and true believers, a system poised and ready to march, you can do what was done in Wisconsin. You can turn the superstructure loose to threaten the public peace, smash things up, abuse the electoral process, create a media spectacle, and pressure the state to do things your way. You can use nonpolitical organizations (in the electoral sense) to get a political result.
All the groups involved in the Wisconsin campaign were superstructure groups. The unions, the very core organizations of the superstructure, without which it's no more than a pack of vegetarians and aging hippies. The media, which serves as its propaganda arm. And the judiciary, which is broadly infiltrated by leftist partisans whose allegiance has been awarded to something other than the law."..................
So there will be no liberal Blitzkrieg coming out of the Wisconsin civil war. But these are early days, and this is the first effort to utilize this enormous and complex system. It remains pregnant with possibilities, with its millions of members and effectively infinite levels of funding. It is also the only thing that the liberals have left. We will encounter it again, perhaps in a more liberal-friendly environment in the Northeast or on the West coast."......
Once you buy it, get to the range, learn to use it, and shoot 2 -3 boxes a week.
Buy a lot of boxes, lots
Yes. Also join a gun range. Take time to learn how to field strip and clean your gun as well. Have fun!
No John, you should not buy a firearm. If you are doing this much soul searching about buying a tool, you are not yet ready. You said it’s easy to hit something with a shotgun (ie aiming is not that important)and that is not true. you have not done enough research. I would suggest you find a gun range where you can rent firearms and try some out. Get some one to show you the safe way to handle the tool. When it is time for you to own a firearm, you will know it.