Mate of mine has a teenaged daughter who struggles with serious anxiety episodes. She recently expressed interest in joining him at the range but he doesn't have anything that he thought would be a good starter firearm for her to ease into. He therefore asked me if she could shoot my 22 rifle and pistol and that had me at the range with them on Sunday for her first ever shots. Being a bit of a grumpy, selfish bugger I wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of a potential teenage range meltdown but put a brave face on it and setup for business. She started with the 22 pistol and by the second shot was squealing with delight. She shot really well and did exactly what I told her to. By the end of a box of 22s she asked if she could have a go with the 'big silver gun' which is my ghetto grade pre-B CZ75 sport gun that I have upgraded with LPA sights and a bunch of Cajun parts. I loaded individual rounds in the mags and once again she did fantastically well. She ended up shooting all the guns we had with us and had a great time. Was such a lekker experience and it appears to have helped her in terms of gaining some confidence from doing something challenging and scary and doing well at it.       

Brilliant!

A few years back I took a teenage boy with all manner of issues to the range. His mom (who came with) was a bit surprised that I was willing to take him on but my theory was "this requires focus, I think he needs that". In reality I wasn't quite as confident as I sounded but at the end of the day he loved it and I'm sure that the focus required to aim at a target, squeeze the trigger gently and do all those things that we take for granted really worked for him. In this day & age, very few kids actually get the opportunity to shoot with "real guns" so the mere fact that they have done so gives them credibility amongst their peers that have only ever played with X-box guns via said X-box remote control.

I too took a kid with more issues than hair on his head shooting, he too loved it. Guns are cool, kids dig em, and they seem to calm people down from the shooters side to the person being convinced to calm down on the other end of the barrel.