Originally Posted by
TNsailorman
May not tell you a lot but at least it tells the truth. I at one time, taught marksmanship along with my Marine brother (who had got back from Vietnam a few years earlier) to young children after a local child accidentally shot and killed a playmate with a pistol they found loaded in a dresser drawer. We got a teaching course from Daisey and also the local Ruritan Club bought 4 of Daisey's "skill" air guns (rifles without sight) to be used to teach both youngsters and adults how to hit targets tossed up into the air. We taught using regular air gun 10 ft targets(memory here) at first. My brother was really good at teaching trigger control and also how to annalize and correct for misses. But the course was really heavy on safety. To the point that we put red tape on the muzzle end of the barrel, teaching them that this was the dangerous end and to never point it at anything they did not intend to shoot. Teaching children to put a loaded gun down and notify a parent and we also taught them how to unload different guns by taking several guns to class and using dummy rounds for classs demonstration and the kids actual use. Those kids minds were like sponges, tell them one time and they usually could repeat what you had told them on the first try. A couple of the older boys and girls got pretty good at hitting tennis balls thrown into the air, and that was without sights remember. One of the girls got quite good at both target shooting and also at the tossed tennis balls. Some of the women in the community wanted us to teach a course for them on how firearms were loaded , and also more importantly, how they could be safely unloaded. But then the local club got cold feet and stopped our courses for liability reasons. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Daisey as they went way beyond what we expected in helping us with training material free but also giving us those rifles almost free. This was back in the 70's and that Ruritan Club has slowly went out of busines as the older members died and the younger member of the community just were not interested in doing any community service. A shame but that is the world we live in these days. It closed sometime in the 80's if my memory is correct. james