Can A 16 Year Old Keep A 22lr Rifle In Their Room

Would you be worried if you saw a video of a 15 year old shooting guns?

You want to hear something really scary? When I was 10 my dad gave me two guns for my birthday. A .22LR Marlin Model 60 and a Colt Diamondback .38spcl with snake loads. Of course I had passed my hunters safety course, my dads training for weapons and proved I could be safe and responsible with these guns.When on the farm/ranch I carried the Colt in a holster just in case I came across a rattle snake. The .22LR I kept in a saddle scabbard and if I saw coyotes or jack rabbits I would pick them off.Thing is my nephews (about the same age) and my friends would all get together and go rabbit, squirrel hunting. No adults. We never shot each other intentionally or accidentally. For that matter we didn’t shoot anything other than what we were hunting.So this ridiculous fear about “15 year olds shooting” is stupid. It’s another stupid fear mongering tactic being used to attempt to discredit or undermine pro-gun people. Not going to work… my children all are taught from the age of 4 gun safety. At the age of 7 they are given the advanced course and I put them on my private range and let them shoot their first gun under supervision.Because of this my kids don’t have an unrealistic fear of guns, they know how to be safe around them and for that matter so do my friends who are gun owners as we, their kids are raised the same way.Anyhow I see a 15 year old shooting it doesn’t cause alarm.

Why would a responsible gun owner want assault rifles?

Well because we are responsible.I am going to assume when you mean “responsible gun owner” you mean one that owns guns without entering financial debt over them, has no criminal record or history of mental illness that can make them a danger to themselves or others, and has the moral compass and sense to recognize that guns are tools that must be used responsibly and need to be secured from unauthorized persons when not in use.If that definition is what your going with, then such a person will buy an assault rifle, shrug their shoulders, and just say “it’s just another gun”.Gun owners don’t usually see guns on a spectrum of “most lethal to least lethal”. To us we see them as all being lethal, since they all can kill somebody if misused, and under certain circumstances some can be more effective than others under the right circumstances, hence the whole deal of “we own multiple guns because we need a different gun for a different purpose each”. And most of us don’t buy a gun with the thought of “Oh, tomorrow I’ll load it up and shoot people with it.”Folks could have them for any number of reasons. They might want one for home protection, since I know many former soldiers and cops that would like nothing less than the rifle they are most familiar with, the M4 carbine, as their gun of choice for the job.They might shoot competitively with it. Automatic fire, while difficult to control, would certainly be faster at downing a bunch of closely placed targets at close range than on semi-automatic.Some folks collect them. I know a few guys that exclusively collect belt fed machine guns from the First or Second World War just to complete their collection of firearms from that period of history.And with many gun owners, it’s as simple a case as walking by one and saying “That’s cool, I like it, I’m going to buy it”, and they walk out the store with a gun because they wanted it.To the responsible gun owner, an assault rifle is just another gun, no more or less important than the next one sitting the gun safe, so they don’t really understand why other people would run up to them and say “No, we don’t trust you with that, we’re going to ban you from owning one and threaten you with a jail sentence if you don’t give it up!”Because like I said, they are responsible gun owners and don’t understand why other people label them as irresponsible and toss them in the same crowd as criminals that have used guns irresponsibly to harm or kill people.

In California, how old do my children have to be before I can begin teaching them to handle firearms at a gun range?

(I am not a lawyer.)California law is largely irrelevant here (although there's a safe storage requirement for firearms, particularly handguns, if there are minors in the home), as the minor would be using firearms possessed by and under control of the parent or other adult (who must himself be a lawful possessor of the firearm).  There are certain people who are additionally banned from contact with firearms (felons, 5150'd people, etc.), but this is assuming your child is not a felon or 5150.  This type of very short term loan is very minimally regulated, even for "assault weapons", even in California.We're talking about temporary, supervised possession, initially, which is very minimally regulated.  Additionally, you can lawfully loan a long gun (rifle or pistol) to your child or grandchild indefinitely, and can loan a pistol to your child or grandchild for "the duration of an activity".  NRA actually has a gun safety program for children in grades K to 3.  It's essentially "don't touch, call an adult".  I think if you own guns and have children, some basic familiarization with "these are dangerous tools, don't touch or play with them" is valuable as early as possible.If you're talking about supervised shooting at a range, it'd probably up to the physical skills and responsibility of the child.  Some people have taken 6 year olds to the range to shoot .22lr, but I think that might be a stretch for many children, due to the weight of the firearm if nothing else.  8-10 would be a pretty good age.  I'd start with an air rifle and potentially move up to a .22lr single-shot or bolt rifle, youth sized.  Taking the child to the range and shooting the guns would probably demystify them and thus make it less likely even a 6-10 year old child would try to gain access to them unattended.Certainly teenagers and slightly younger children can responsibly shoot at a formal range, and in some settings, responsibly use air/pellet and even other firearms in other ways (hunting, "plinking" in a rural area, etc.).  They're not allowed to legally purchase, but if a parent is in control of the firearm, that isn't an issue -- I think indirect supervision of a responsible 14-18 year old with a loaned .22lr rifle is quite reasonable.Another question is the policy of the range itself.  Most have a requirement that those under 21 (or possibly 18) be present with a parent or legal guardian.

How many .22 LR shots to the chest/abdomen are needed to stop a rushing attacker?

They say the real world is where the answer lies. Well when I was a young fellow, our life was that of what was referred to back in the 50's as dirt poor families. There is a back story there that I need not go into, enough to say, we had little money, and my father, who loved his booze drank up what little he was able to scratch out of the North Dakota soil. So when it came to feeding his family, dad would grab the little .22 rifle he had, an old military training rifle that he had installed a cheap JC Higgins 4 power scope on, and take a walk out into the pasture, or field, where ever he though he might find game, and would shoot what ever he encountered with that .22. We ate well on deer, rabbit, pheasant and prairie chicken all taken with that little .22 that now hangs on my dining room wall. It served us well, and even the local game warden sort of gave us his blessings, he knew of dad's plight and offered him advice that so long as he took what the family needed for food and didn't overdo it, he would turn a blind eye to dads's poaching. That he did, until one year when dad's brothers and brothers in aw all showed up for a drinking party, then decided to go for a hunt in the fields. They took way more deer then we could use, and the game warden just happened to be in the area. When he seized all the deer, he took dad aside and told him that he would butcher and freeze the meat from those deer, and that all he needed was a call from Dad and he would bring some down for us to live on. Nice guy that game warden.So, I guess what my long tale of growing up in the Dakota's has to say about the subject, the .22 Long Rifle ammo is powerful enough to take deer and antilope in the field, it is surely powerful enough to take a human being, but as always shot placement is essential. I saw a fellow gut shot by a .22 from a 5 inch barrel single action pistol, and I am here to tell you, he was in a world of hurt, the doctors worked on him for over four hours, and we had to have blood delivered via the cop hotline, that being transferred from agency to agency from where the blood was, via the highway red lights and sirens full throttle from point to point just to keep the fellow alive on the table. That little pill is nasty when it wants to be.