The Time
I was no older than six when my Dad decided it was time I learned to handle a gun safely. All of my siblings, older than I, had been through the program, even though my sisters never went past those elementary lessons. As the Old Man saw it, there were guns in the house, and while they were put away, they were still in the house, and rather than try to keep them a secret, his notion was that every kid would learn to handle them safely: How to clear the chamber, how to handle them, and if necessary, how to load and shoot them. He had three guns: A pump-action Stevens 12-gauge shotgun, a .22 Ruger semi-auto pistol that was in Mom’s charge, and a semi-auto .22 LR rifle.
We were out on a camping trip, but I don’t remember where. One warm, sunny afternoon – I remember that – Dad called me to follow him. I did, curious; he had that old .22 in his hands. I had seen it before, I had seen Dad shoot it; I even saw him shoot a few rabbits in the garden with it, those rabbits generally became supper. But up to that point, I’d never been allowed to handle it. I was very young, but even then, I was a big kid, and Dad had decided I was big enough and old enough.
That afternoon, he showed me carefully, thoroughly, how to clear the old Mossberg’s chamber, how the safety worked, how to load it, and how to fire it. At last, he let me do it; he stood over me, watching closely, as I sat down (the rifle was still a little big for me) with the old gun in my lap, pulled out the tube mag, and fed five .22 LR rounds into it, which was all Dad would let me have for my first attempt. I chambered a round as he had shown me, shouldered the gun as he had shown me, squinted through the narrow, dark, steel ¾” scope on the gun at an empty pop can Dad had placed in front of a steep bank of dirt. I squeeze the trigger as he had taught me. And I remember the rush of joy as the pop can, hit at the base, flew in the air.
I was hooked. That was the day it started, and I’ve been a shooter ever since.
The Lessons
We spent the rest of the day plinking. Dad eventually let me fill up the whole 15-round magazine, cautioning me not to dump the magazine, to make each shot deliberate. I listened. I found I could hit those pop cans. We backed away a little farther, and I was still hitting them. I was getting the hang of it.
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Starting back then, when that rifle was still heavy in my young arms, Dad started hammering home the lessons on handling guns that he had learned from his father:
There’s no such thing as an unloaded gun. When you pick up a gun, clear it, even if you only set it down yourself a few moments before. Always know the status of every gun unless it’s locked away in the rack or a safe.
Never point a gun until you’re ready to shoot.
Never point a gun at something you aren’t intending to shoot.
If you’re not shooting, the muzzle should either be pointed at the sky or the ground. Always know where the muzzle is pointing at every single moment.
Never forget that a gun isn’t a toy. It’s a weapon. Take it seriously, every moment.
Later, when I started taking the old Mossberg out in the woods to hunt squirrels, Dad surprised me by telling me he had locked up all the .22 long rifle ammo. If I wanted target practice, he said, he would unlock it and lock it back up after, but when I was hunting on my own, he had other plans. On opening morning, which back then was in late August, he handed me ten .22 LR cartridges.
“For every squirrel you bring back,” he said, “you get one more round.”
I got through the end of the season with three rounds left, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of a better way to teach a kid not to go banging around. After that, Dad let me keep hands on my own ammo, and I spent a fair amount of my summer farm work and winter trapline money on .22 shells.
The Gun
The rifle was a Mossberg 151k, a .22Long Rifle semi-auto, which was only made in 1950 and 1951. The rifle had been a 3rd wedding anniversary gift from my mother to my father in 1950. He had taught my four older siblings how to safely handle a gun with that surprisingly big, long, heavy .22, and back in that long-ago day, it was my turn.
The 151 series was a tad unusual by today’s standards. As I mentioned, it wasn’t a lightweight plinker, but a full-size, 6-pound piece. As I grew, I learned to like the heft; it made it easier to shoot. Here’s a pretty good, quick look at how it works.
Like many of the Mossberg .22s of its era, this Mossberg fed from a tubular magazine in the stock. The engineering was remarkable. One could fill the magazine through a port in the stock, and then when you went to put one in the chamber, when you pulled the bolt back, a round literally just hopped out of the magazine into the chamber. The safety was simple but effective; the charging handle could be slipped into a shallow aperture in the receiver marked “SAFE” and it held the bolt just out of battery, preventing firing.Read More: Sunday Gun Day Vol. II Ep. LI - Fun Stuff in Old Gun Shops
It was a safe, simple design, with nicely blued steel and an actual, no-kidding black walnut stock. It was reliable, it was solid, it had a good trigger pull, and it was accurate to a fare-thee-well.
Where Is It Now?
I still own it. It’s in my son-in-law's safe in eastern Iowa, so I have a .22 rifle for plinking or small game hunting when I’m back in my old stomping grounds visiting friends and family. There are plenty of guns that are worth more on the market, but that gun belonged to my Dad, and Elon Musk couldn’t buy it from me.
Fun side note: When loyal sidekick Rat decided he needed a .22 rifle for he and his son to take plinking or for small-game chores, he, remembering my stories, didn’t go to a gun shop. He went to the online gun auction sites, and what did he find but an old Mossberg 151k, just like mine, right down to the skinny steel scope. I chose to be flattered.
I would love, today, now, to see all in one pile all the small game I brought back to the pot with that old .22 rifle: lean gray squirrels, big fox squirrels, cottontail rabbits, woodchucks, roosting pigeons, even a few incautious pheasants and a couple of raccoons. The old Mossberg was my constant companion in my rural explorations and escapades from the time I was about ten years old, and today, it still shoots just as straight as it ever did, even if it still does have that narrow, dim Mossberg steel-tube scope on it. It will keep that old scope, too; why mess with an obvious success?
I toted that Mossberg around until the summer I was 14, when I laid down my detassling and haying money for a Marlin .22 WMR bolt gun, then I had a choice of guns to tote around in summer. As for that Marlin, well, that’s a story for another time.
