Silvio Calabi - The Gun Book for Parents

Silvio Calabi was a magazine editor and publisher for 30 years. He is a Knight of the International Order of St. Hubertus and a member of Safari Club International and the Namibian Professional Hunting Association. With Roger Sanger, he co-founded the Gold Medal Concours d'Elegance of Fine Guns. With Sanger and Helsley, he wrote Hemingway's Guns and Rig-by: A Grand Tradition. He lives on the coast of Maine.

Steve Helsley, of El Dorado Hills, California, is a retired law-enforcement executive, a consultant to the National Rifle Association and a technical adviser to the Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners. He is also a firearms historian and photographer and a widely published authority on vintage and tactical guns. He has collaborated with Sanger and Calabi on other books and many articles for shooting magazines.

Roger G. Sanger founded the California Side By Side Society and served as its president for many years. In 2001, with Calabi, he co-founded the Gold Medal Concours d'Elegance of Fine Guns and then, with Helsley, the Western Side By Side Championships. Sanger is a Knight of the International Order of St. Hubertus and has written for Shooting Sportsman Magazine. He lives in Carmel, California, and Sun Valley, Idaho.

Copyright 2012 by Silvio Calabi, Steve Helsley, and Roger Sanger

ISBN 978-1-60893-201-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

Printed in the USA

5 4 3 2 1

Books

Distributed to the trade by National Book Network

Designed by Rich Eastman

This book is dedicated to our parents, who aided and abetted our fledgling efforts as shootersalthough they werent shooters themselvesand to the knowledgeable gun men who became our mentors. Thank you all.

The Shooting Sports in a Post-Modern World

T he Gun Book for Parents is a companion volume to The Gun Book for Boys, by the same authors and from the same publisher. The boys' book is for bright, inquisitive youngsters who want to know "all about guns," and it includes what he (or she) must know in order to have fun shooting safely.

This book is a straightforward treatment of common parental concerns about guns and shooting, from safety and legality to costs and benefits. (Shooting can be an engrossing family activity, and it offers a surprising range of career choices.) It is meant to reduce a parent's anxiety by answering questions such as how to buy a gun and store it safely, where to shoot, and how to assess a child's behavior with guns.

Egad! Is this thing legal? This is a Russian military Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova, the Dragunov sniper rifle, and it is perfectly legal in the USin some states. Fear of guns is rooted in ignorance. This book is intended to replace fear and ignorance with knowledge. A youngster who absorbs The Gun Book for Boys will have a grasp of shooting fundamentals that few adults do; and an involved parent who backs up that youngster with what's in this book will understand what's going on.

We're not here to convince you or your kids to take up shooting; often that seems to happen all by itself, sometimes to the puzzlement (if not the dismay) of non-shooting parents. Where did this come from? It seems natural, somehow. Guns can be fascinating historical artifacts and outstanding examples of craftsmanship, design and engineering. And shooting is not only enjoyable; like any sport, it emphasizes skill and personal achievement through discipline. Hunting aside, there are dozens of well-established, safe and regulated forms of shooting that can take a youngster all the way to the Olympic Games.

However, shooting requires a degree of responsibility that is sometimes more than adolescents can reliably manage. This book, then, is for you, the parent, and it presents the adult side: what you need to know in order to keep your young shooters out of trouble and to support them in their interests.

We, the authors, grew up in the 1950s and '60s and learned to shoot and handle guns the time-honored, old-fashioned way: haphazardly and from an odd variety of sourcesat least half of which, or whom, were wrong at least half the time. In other words, the same way many of us learned about sex, money and alcohol. Somehow 99.999 percent of us survived this trial-and-error process, but we don't recommend it.

As well, that was a very different time in America. Many large high schools had shooting ranges. The sight of a 14-year-old boy with a .22 rifle across the handlebars of his bicycle didn't prompt hysterical reactions. No one called the police.

Times have changed. Nearly three-quarters of Americans live in urban areas now, and guns, hunting and shooting are much less commonplace. Too many people have become afraid of guns.

But guns are just tools. Use any tool, from a hammer to a lawn mower, the wrong way and it can become dangerous. No one has a problem with chain saws, but no one would use a chain saw to carve the Thanksgiving turkey, either. The same thing is true for guns. They're not toys. They don't belong in school. They shouldn't be used to settle arguments.

Fear of guns is rooted in ignorance. These books are intended to replace fear and ignorance with knowledge. A youngster who absorbs The Gun Book for Boys will have a grasp of shooting fundamentals that few adults do; and an involved parent who backs up that youngster with what's in this book will understand what's going on.

But don't just take our word for it. Karim Baker and Lisa Mayers are two suburban mothers who went through what you may be facing right now. They and their young sons, Hayden and Chris, gave us input on both of these books. You should hear from them directly.

Karim Baker and son Hayden (holding his GSG-1 911 .22 pistol; note trigger-finger position and open action). "We come from a family that was not involved in shooting in any way."

Karim: For me, one of the most challenging moments as a parent proved to be coping with a son who decided that guns had become his true passion. I'm not even sure how this happened, as we come from a family that was not involved in shooting in any way. Naturally, this put me (and my husband) at a huge disadvantage when it came to guiding a 14-year-old in the right direction in his new hobby. Unfortunately, we adults cannot claim ignorance when it comes to our children's safety. Knowledge, as they say, is power, and so the quest for information about guns became my new undertaking.

The Gun Book for Boys is a parent-friendly/ child-friendly user's guide. It is a thorough introduction for kids who are interested in firearms as well as for adults who are new to the gun world. Not only does this book explain the who, what, when, where and how of firearms, but it also incorporates considerable history, not to mention some good fact-checking and true-story telling.