When I was in high school, I joined the Rifle Club. The school had a (50? 75? foot) rifle range in the gym, with target butts at the end, and covers that folded up when the range wasn't in use. .22s only, of course.

An uncle was a member of a local rifle club in town, which used this range, and he suggested I might want to try it. I was able to borrow a .22 rifle for a period, and then bought a Stevens 11-pound barrel target rifle. We were taught safe weapons handling and range procedure, and of course how to squeeeeeeeeeeeze the trigger, how to be rock-solid in any of the three basic firing positions, etc.

Incidentally, the club was affiliated as a junior club with the American Rifle Association (if that's the name), and through them we had a subsidized source of ammunition, in the end underwritten by the Army, as I understood it. The Army underwrote it because they wanted to bring along a stream of experienced riflemen.

After I left high school I don't think I ever fired that weapon again, and finally got rid of it (I forget how) maybe forty years later because my wife didn't want a firearm in the house with my teenage son.

When I was in the Army, the first day on the rifle range, I remember being for the first time ready to fire, in the prone position. An officer came by and said to me: "Now that's good form!" I didn't tell him where I got it.

Dave Oesterreich