A friend of the families' son is going into law enforcement as a career. He is 20 tears old and actually a reserve officer for the local PD. Normally for the local PD you must be 21 to be a reserve officer, but he has shown his merit in the community over the years and as far as I know is and has been the only one to have been waved from the 21 requirement starting when he was 19. My only problem with the whole thing is that he dress as a full officer, but he is not allowed to carry a weapon. I'm not sure if the prohibition is department policy or state law. He also has not been given any firearms training. He has previously shot clay birds with some uncles, but that is the only shooting he has ever done. Awhile back I loaned him a copy of the NRA's Basic Pistol book and told him to read it and we would go to the range some day. Well, some day finally got here and today we went to the range. My own skills and techniques are probably not the best and I'm probably a poor choice for a teacher, but I at least wanted him to have a chance to become familiar with firearms and get a chance to shoot a handgun. We didn't shoot so much for extreme accuracy as we did for center of mass using paper plates to simulate.
I haven't been out myself for some time, so it took me awhile to round up some things. I decided to concentrate on safe gun handling skills, familiarity with different firearm types, and just a few basics. I also didn't want to taint the future training he is suppose to get eventually from PD sources.
We started out with a Ruger Mark II target pistol, then a single action .22. From there we shot a Walther PPKs in .380 that I bought from a member of the PD. I have an old Browning Hi-Power in 9 mm with a 3 digit serial number that we messed with a little bit. The 9 mm will fire 2 or 3 times and then fail to extract, eject. Frustrating to shoot, but good for learning about malfunctions. I thought perhaps it was a magazine problem, but we tried a new magazine with the same results. Need to look at that one to get it working properly.
From there we moved to a double action revolver, first in .38, then in .357. After that we continued with another Hi-Power in .40 which is the caliber the local PD uses. That one functions flawlessly. After that we fired a couple of Colts, a full size government model and a lightweight Commander. He really enjoyed the the .45s especially the Commander which I bought years ago from another local officer when he retired. We finished the day with a couple cylinders of .44 magnum from the Redhawk which he also enjoyed greatly.
All in all it was a good day, and he did well. He still needs thorough training, but at least now has some familiarity, some very, very basic instruction, and can say he at least has shot a number of different types and calibers of handguns, which was the goal.
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