Need advice, exchange student wants to shoot

Might as well let her have a cigarette, drink a beer, smoke a joint, give 'em a porno mag, let her have sex, drive a car, ride a motorcycle, get her nipples pierced, have an abortion, maybe snort a few lines while you are at it.

Heck maybe her family is atheist, you could take her to a southern Baptist Church for some re-education.

They are just rules and rules are meant to be broken, right.

 

@DW , sounds like you have used your and her best judgement in making your decision.She is not 10 and you have a life behind you making decisions both good and bad.You stated that the agreement between her parents and yourself is she is your kid while here.So from a parent,grandparent,and a great grandparent(twice now),let her go through the training you've set up and then on to enjoying being a mentor on the range.And more importantly off.All the for and against comments here kinda sound like any small town neighbors except we have more colorful names don't you think?So get busy. You have a young adult who is about ready to transition to full adulthood and you need to help guide her.just the opinion of one codgered up oldawg.

 

As a parent of 2 teenage girls, you begin to realize that sometimes your rules will be broken no matter how hard you try to enforce them. As a parent all you can do is educate about the possible consequences through good and bad examples and hope that your kids take those lessons to heart. If you trust your children enough to allow them to travel across the pond to experience life in a foreign country you have to trust that you have instilled in them the ability to make good choices, and pray that when they make bad choices they will live to regret it, the newspaper are full of headlines of kids who didn't live through a bad choice
My 16 year old just gotr her first piercing that I was dead set against, but she reminded me that she was of legal age and could get one with or without my consent, so I made sure I was there to make sure it wasn't a very bad decision
I think the poor guy who did the piercing is still shaking just a bit a week later

I think DW weighed all the options, admitted her place as a surrogate and did what was best with allowing an informed decision.
I don't believe that possible consequences were witheld from the choice.
so in other words, acting like a parent. Good on you DW, and allowing someone else to teach because you think she will get more from it shows some forethought to making it a positive experience.

CC, I would hardly ask you to follow a rule arbitrarliy if it was to hand in all your guns to the goobermint. and while this is not the same as that, you have lumped all rules together in your reply

I will say that as a a parent, if it were my kid.....I would be glad that the host parent took such a positive interest in my kid rather than let them find out what it's like to do a line/smoke a joint or .........God forbid, attend a Baptist Church.

And DW....sounds like your a positive role model now, so good on ya

 

Sometimes it's better to have to apologise then to get permission. If it was me, I'd be having range time like there was no tomorrow. What a lesson for her to take home! "Hey, guns don't jump off shelves and kill people and Americans are pretty responsible with their second amendment rights."

 

I am a parent of two. My daughter is 16, and it is tough to watch out for all the things that can go wrong with a young life. If they want to go camping, there is a level of trust required. A high ropes course? a little more trust. zip lines 30 feet up and moving like a bat out of heck? a much higher level of trust....not in my daughter, but in the folks in who's care I have entrusted her. I am a firm believer in letting kids grow, and teaching them all they can learn. I happen to know of a 9 year old girl who could field strip, clean, and reassemble an uzi. (When a concerned person once asked her if she wanted to show it off to her friends, the girl said "Are you nut's lady? These things are dangerous!") but I digress.
My problem with this activity is the fact that there was no attempt to contact the parents and discuss it. So wiether or not this was a breach of trust depends on the level of trust between the parents, not the young lady.All of The parents and the young lady should have discussed it as a group.(IMO)
I am reminded of the boy who dated my daughter. I had him and his Father on my front porch. I told him we needed to have a little chat. I told him " This is my daughter, my ONLY daughter. You will treat her as a young Lady, do you understand me? (he nods) because if not...I have an ax, a post hole digger, and a dozen randomly selected counties will solve the problem. Do we understand each other?" And I swear...His Father spoke up and asked his son "Do you understand the man?" (priceless)
I think all the issues of right and wrong/ trust/ and given word could have been solved at the same time by a group discussion of the only parties that really mattered (her parents-herself-segregate parents) At least all the cards would have been played face up.

 

Believe it or not I'm not trying to be argumentative and have obviously done a piss poor job of trying to convey my thoughts. I do not how to put any other way, in that I just do not get involved in parent/children affairs regardless of their age or the issue. I have seen lesser activities, much less firearms, strain or ruin friendships of adults. So, I always err on the side of caution and make it a practice to talk to the actual parents.

I could not agree more with you guys on that she might shoot firearms elsewhere, if not afforded a safer environment to learn. I am all for that and have used the same reasoning to parents about educating their own children. What I do with my children and what I would do somebody else's are two entirely different set of circumstances. Heck, both of my sons were about 8 yrs. old when they shot their 1st firearm.

I wish I could have found the words in the quote below to say myself and have been done with it but I did not. If I wasn't willing to be challenged, told my opinion sucks, shut the he!! up or have somebody throw egg in my face, I would have never opened my big fat mouth.

 

I actually wasn't going to come back to this thread. If you guys had any idea how many posts I've started, only to delete after the fourth, fifth, tenth revision... People have told me on more than one occasion that in person I'm easy going and always in a good mood, but in writing I come off like a real witch. Actually they use another word.

When I was 17 there was no parental rule you could make that I would not just about kill myself to break. I recognize a lot of my younger self in her. Independent. Defiant. Knows EVERYTHING (yes what seventeen year old doesn't but she and my 17 year old self could put 'em all to shame). I don't want to encourage it by being a hardass about something that frankly, I think is a joke. (after all, that route failed miserably for my parents) She can ride a horse but not shoot a gun, because of safety reasons? If I had a nickle for every time I got busted up on a horse....

Anyway, enough of that.

Range report. My buddy spent a solid two hours with her bending her ear about safety and laws and common sense, as well as taking her over every inch of the six shooter I brought for her, showing her how everything worked and how to clean it, load it, unload it, etc. He also showed her the same on a little .22 Marlin rifle, a 12 gauge Mossberg pump, and my Glock 21. Then we loaded up and went to the range.

More safety talk... sorry, I zzzzz'ed out on most of it. He got her target up, mother hen'ed her as she loaded the .22 revolver, talked her through sighting on her target and breathing and finally had her take a shot.

Fortunately we were the only ones there because the minute she heard it go off she screamed and sorta half dropped, half tossed the revolver into the dirt.

After some hysterical giggling and OMG never thought it would be so loud! I handed her my shooting earmuffs, cussing myself for not thinking of that in the first place. He got onto her a little about tossing the pistol, but ok she has never heard one fired before... we just assumed she'd seen enough movies but I guess it's not really the same.

Well he worked with her for a bit and she went from hitting all over the place (pretty sure I heard one ding off the metal roof) to consistently putting them at least in the target circles by the 30-40th rounds. She's got better eyes than I do, and steadier hands. By the time 100 rounds were spent she was putting everything within a 3 inch grouping, with a fair degree of speed.

He tells her he's real proud of her and that's enough for the day. But wait, sez she, I wanna see you shoot. I told her mine was a lot louder and she better not scream. She promised.

Liar.

Man is it normal for teenage girls to scream like that? I think I'm still missing some hearing in my left ear.

Before we left she squeezed off a few rounds on mine just to see what it felt like, but she didn't really like it. We had another meeting with him a few nights later and he brought a 9mm for her to try out and that one she seemed most at ease with.

And since someone mentioned it, I'm atheist, she's atheist, and so are her parents, but I'm letting her go to the local Methodist church with her friends because, well, religion is a fundamental part of American life too and that's what she's here to experience. Whether she believes it or not, that too will be a decision left up to her.

 

you didn't come off like a witch at all

Kudos to you for caring enough to see, recognize and evaluate that level of defiance. Better yet that you were able to harness it and guide it in a positive way.
It sounds like a good day was had by all, good job

but seriously....a methodist church??? just kidding.

hope your hearing returns

 

Rhetoric is a wonderful tool. When it becomes ridiculous it not only loses its edge, it becomes a hindrance to the work that's being attempted. That kind of backlash isn't very conducive to a free exchange of ideas, nor to the spirit that I thought was meant to exist in this forum. Reminds me of leftist demagoguery, though I'm sure your no leftist.