Teaching a New Shooter: How to Run a First Range Day That Makes Them Want a Second

The first range day decides whether a new shooter becomes a safe, confident one or someone who never wants to go again. It is usually taught by a family member, and most family members teach it the way they were taught, which is to say badly: too big a gun, too far a target, too much advice, and a bruise to remember it by. This guide is a plan for a first day that ends with a smiling new shooter and a target with holes in the middle of it.

Before the range

Teach the four rules at the kitchen table, with an unloaded gun and the ammunition in another room. Treat every gun as loaded. Never point it at anything you are not willing to destroy. Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target. Know your target and what is behind it. Have the new shooter recite them and demonstrate them: pick up the gun, check the chamber, keep the muzzle downrange, finger straight along the frame. Then show how the gun works, how it loads, how it is made safe, and let them do it with dummy rounds. Twenty minutes at the table saves an hour of shouting at the range.

The gun

A .22 rifle, and if the shooter is a child a single-shot .22 with a youth stock. Not a 9mm, not a shotgun, not the deer rifle. The .22 has no recoil and no blast, so all the new shooter has to think about is the sights and the trigger. A .22 pistol is the second gun of the day if the shooter is an adult; a centerfire pistol waits for the second or third visit. A shooter who fires a 9mm on the first day learns to flinch; a shooter who fires a .22 learns to shoot.

The range

An outdoor range on a quiet weekday morning, or an indoor lane at an off-peak hour, with no one hammering away in the next bay. Double hearing protection, plugs under muffs, because muzzle blast from neighbouring lanes is what frightens new shooters, not their own gun. Eye protection that fits. A bench and a rest for the rifle, so the shooter can concentrate on the trigger and not on holding the gun up.

The target

Large, close and rewarding. A full-sheet target at ten yards for a rifle from a rest, five yards for a pistol; a paper plate, a balloon or a reactive target that shows a hit. The purpose of the first day is hits, not groups. A target at twenty-five yards that a new shooter cannot see hits on is a target that teaches nothing.

The first shots

Load one round. Talk the shooter through the sight picture and a slow press, and let them fire. Look at the target together. Load one round again. Five single shots, then five in the magazine if the gun has one, then a break. Praise the hits, ignore the misses, and correct one thing at a time: the grip, or the breath, or the trigger, never all three. The most common fault is jerking the trigger in anticipation; the cure is a slow press with a surprise break, taught by dry-firing beside a live round with the shooter not knowing which is which.

How long

An hour, including breaks. Fifty to a hundred rounds of .22. Stop while it is still fun, and stop on a good shot: when the shooter puts one in the middle, that is the last round of the day. Nobody ever regretted a short first range day, and many people never came back after a long one.

What not to do

• Do not start with a centerfire gun, a magnum or a shotgun, and never hand a new shooter a heavy-recoiling gun as a joke.
• Do not stand behind them talking; stand beside them, quietly, hands free.
• Do not correct everything; correct one thing.
• Do not shoot yourself for the first half hour; the day is theirs.
• Do not let the safety rules slide for an instant, and do not shout when they do slip; stop, fix it, carry on.

Children

Everything above, shorter. A child of eight to ten manages thirty minutes with a single-shot .22 from a rest at a big target. Let them load each round, check the chamber, and put the rifle down between shots. The child who is allowed to stop when they want to will ask to go again; the child who is kept on the line will not.

Ear and eye protection for children

Adult muffs do not seal on a small head and adult glasses slide off a small face. Buy child-sized electronic muffs, which let the child hear your voice while cutting the shots, and wrap-around glasses in a youth size. Foam plugs under the muffs double the protection on an indoor range. A child who finds the noise painful on the first day will not want a second, and hearing damage is permanent; this is the one part of the kit not to economise on.

After the range

Clean the gun together; it teaches how it works and makes it ordinary. Lock it away together, which teaches where it lives and why. Book the second day before the first is forgotten. A new shooter who fires a .22 three times in a month is a shooter; the youth gun guide covers the next rifle, and the first handgun guide covers the next step for an adult.

Browse rimfire rifles and youth guns in the catalogue, and find the nearest public range on the city pages.

General information, not legal advice. Current as of September 2026. Laws change; check the official source before you act.