Thread: How young is to young?

Personally, based on my own experience being introduced to guns and hunting as a kid, I'd say earlier than 8yo is potentially great, but perhaps only on air guns. One of the things I learned about young using air guns, was ricochet, as pellets would occasionally bounce back from tin cans etc and hit us! Obviously, this taught me about the safety aspect of checking firing zone and my father also made it clear that gunpowder cartridges were far more dangerous and wouldn't be forgiving if the projectile ricocheted back or hit anyone or anything else. Once we started shooting rabbits with .22 at about 8yo, I quickly developed a healthy understanding of "one shot kill" importance and aiming to achieve a quick, humane death. He bought me a BSA single shot .22 for my 9th birthday and I was absolutely hooked on guns and hunting from that point on. He encouraged me to strip and rebuild the BSA, bluing the barrel and oiling the stock, which taught me about the engineering and also the pride of ownership. Shooting a SMLE .303 was my next graduation and again, a very healthy respect was learned for the immense power I held in my hands (I'm not sure a smaller cartridge with less recoil would have taught me quite the same respect??) and pointing it in a safe direction at all times, as if it was permanently loaded.
However, in my early teens, I became quite irresponsible with our firearms and did some really dumb things I regret and in hindsight, my father was quite stupid to allow me to know how to get access to our firearms at such a young age. It was only luck no serious harm was caused by dumb-arse teenage boys. So, as long as adult firearm owners are giving immediate supervision to kids, I see no harm and only benefits from introducing them at any age over 5yo.