Hello everyone,

I thought you would enjoy this story: I am finishing up a graduate MBA degree at the U of M this week. As part of the conclusion of this program, we have a number of international visitors here for the week before graduation. The international students are from our sister programs in Guangzho China, Warsaw, and Vienna.

When we were visiting our teammates in China last month, I overheard two of them say that they would really like to shoot a gun when in America.

... So, on Monday a few of my local classmates and I took 6 of them to Bills in Robbinsdale, rented 3 lanes, bought a bunch of ammo, and let them have at it (under close supervision, of course). They had a ball! They got a chance to shoot 9mm FNP, 9mm Ruger, a .38 special S&W, and a .40 Glock. We tore through almost all the ammo . Funny enough, as Joel mentioned during a class once, the women were the best shooters. This slight woman from Poland (who didn't even want to go initially) shot nothing but headshots almost all night. Amazing.

If any of you saw us Monday night and wondered what that strange crew was doing... Now you know.

Later!

Good on you! Way to go introducing new folks!

Here's a couple Russians who had to come to the U.S. to shoot:

The company I used to work for would have the salesmen from Japan, China, and Korea over once a year. The usual social events in the evenings were planned. Sporting events in the metro, theater in the metro, nice places to eat. The account manager lived in the country and had a small range.

He had them to his house once. Talk got around to guns and they all wanted to shoot, since they couldn't in Japan.

Every year after that, the salesmen all made sure they could go to his house several evenings to do two things. Shoot and mow lawn. Neither of which they could in Japan. Amazing, but they sure loved to mow lawn with his rider mowers. They could do the other things when at home. They couldn't shoot (own guns) and none had a lawn to mow.

Shotguns and rifles are legal and fairly available in Russia, with some available there that are rare here. Now, if they were shooting pistols, I would say they really had to.

Good job, I did a similar thing last fall with a group of my daughters girl friends visiting from college one weekend.

My wife and I took about 5 of them to the range and shot a ton. They had a great time, they all wanted to take their targets back and hang them in their rooms.

I thinking getting new folks invovled in shooting is one of the most personal rewarding things I get the chance to do.

Good on ya!

Same here. Since Christmas, I've taken a couple people to the range, instruct them on safety practices and let them shoot.

that had to let a few father sleep a little better if they saw those targets

Very, very cool.

Great job!. That is something they will remember for the rest of their lives.



I've been around guns and have had guns most of my life. While my daughter was growing up, she knew I had guns but never expressed any interest. I would go out shooting with friends occasionally and I hunted and was in a trap league. She knew all this but never asked to shoot. A few months ago a friend that I work with asked me to a "cowboy action shooting" meet. When she heard, she said that she too wanted to go. I took her along and she had a blast. I did take her to the range before we went there to drill in the gun safety stuff and so she could shoot one of my handguns. We also drilled in loading the SAA revolver before we went out there. She had never shot a rifle before and only shot my handgun for one range session.

She turned out to be very good at it. There was an NRA instructor there that showed her how to hold the SA revolvers and run the hammer and trigger. Most of the stages required you to draw one gun, empty it into the target and then holster it (five rounds). Then you had to draw the other revolver, empty it and reholster. After that you had to run over to a table and grab a rifle and empty it into the target (10 rounds). She was doing this is in 30 seconds by the time we had run a few stages! Oh, to have young hand-eye coordination again. . She sure showed her old man up. You can see the big grin on her face here.



She is a confirmed gunny now and often invites friends over with us when we go out shooting.
She also teases her boyfriend because she is a better shot than him.

I hope you'll take this respectfully, because I do mean it that way, honest: a pretty girl with a big smile on her face and a gun in her hand is prettier than a pretty girl without either of those.

+1 Joel.

I was having a tough time trying to articulate in words what you just said without sounding sleezy.

Taking people shooting is the easiest way to make someone understand us gun nuts are normal people that like to have fun.

Keep up the good work.

Ahh, respectfully, I believe that would be "firearm" and not that other word.

Absolutely! I couldn't agree more.
Oleg has shown us that many times.