Rifle fire from the gun range below punctuated Jerry Kau’s directions to the 17 children on how to shoot. The kids, as young as 7, sat riveted behind long tables. The floor tingled with each shot.
Now … we’ve had a few problems in the past with some parents that think you come here, you
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automatically get this card and you pass the class.
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That is not the case. If you are not safe
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when we teach you gun handling in this room
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you will not shoot live ammunition in the range.
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You can practice handling the gun without shooting bullets
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but if you’re not safe in here, you’re not shooting live ammo in there.
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… There’s always a few in every class that do not pass.
GAT Guns in East Dundee started offering these classes about a year ago because parents wanted to bring their kids in to shoot, manager Randy Potter said.
Another store — On Target Range and Tactical Training Center in Crystal Lake — offers a class to children ages 7 to 11 on firing .22-caliber rifles. At GAT, the children are trained on pistols.
“We couldn’t allow them to come in cold, not knowing what the parent and the child’s shooting ability was like,” Potter said. “Well, now what we do in the class is put them through and give them a card that fits in a wallet. They can show it at the counter, and the people at the counter will know that kid has been trained in safety and gun handling so it’s OK to let them shoot.”
The sound of gunfire is constant from the two shooting ranges inside the store, pistols upstairs, larger weapons downstairs. LED lights illuminate paper targets that glide back and forth at the command of the shooter and a touch-screen computer.
On the second floor, rifles line the walls and handguns fill display cases. To the side is a door leading to the classroom, which can hold a few dozen students. The first floor is taken up mostly by display racks of ammunition.
‘Everybody is 40 to me’
Before the children arrived, Wayne Inzerello sat in front of the room with a roster and a collection of bullets, ranging in size from bigger-than-your-thumb to smaller-than-a-fingernail.
In walked Sergio Meilman with his 12-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter, carrying a gun case, a box of ammunition and two sets of ear protection like airport workers wear.
Inzerello checked the kids in and made sure their names were spelled right, then asked them to take a seat up front. He repeated the routine as the room filled, trying to put the nervous ones at ease.
More than half of the four girls and 13 boys had fired guns before.
Kau, one of the instructors, explained that they weren’t going to be treated as children but as shooters.
“Everybody is 40 to me. We’re going to treat you like a grown-up with a gun,” Kau told his students.
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“You just have to kind of block it out,” he said, referring to the continuous gunfire below.
The children didn’t move or even fidget as Kau spoke in a voice that wasn’t yelling but wasn’t quiet either.
* “Always treat the gun like it’s loaded.”
* “Stop, don’t touch it, tell an adult, leave.”
* “You cannot be too safe with the gun.”
Before they were allowed to shoot, the children broke into groups and “dry fired” the weapons toward blue human silhouettes on yellowed white paper as Kau hammered his points home.
* “Finger off the trigger.”
* “Finger off the trigger.”
* “Point that barrel toward the target.”
Parents corrected hand positions and helped smack ammo magazines into place if they didn’t stick at first.
“How old are you?” Kau asked a child in the front row.
The child froze for a second and spit out: “9.”
“40!”
‘No, no , no’
Sergio Meilman stood with his son as the kids dry-fired .22-caliber Ruger pistols. When instructor Inzerello told them to drop the slide, some of the children turned their weapons away from the targets.
Meilman stopped his son — “Keep the gun pointed at the target” — and adjusted the boy by his shoulders before he squeezed the trigger.
Meilman made muzzle-loading guns as a kid, on his own, much to the chagrin of his pacifist parents. He grew up in Philadelphia. Still has both eyes, he joked.
He wasn’t sure what drew him to firearms, but he has enjoyed them since his youth.
“So maybe it was just to piss my parents off, I don’t know,” he said. “But since then, I’ve really enjoyed firearms and target shooting and hunting, and I’m trying to install the same values in my kids.”
The class was an opportunity for his children to learn how to handle weapons they might encounter, even if they have no interest in shooting. Son Brent has shot with him before. Daughter Sophie fired a couple of rounds a few years ago.
He’s told his kids “a million times” that guns are weapons and tools, not toys.
“You can either drive a nail with a hammer and use it properly or you can bash someone in the head with it, use it improperly,” Meilman said. “And with a firearm, if you use it properly and safely, it’s a lot of fun. At the same time, you can hurt someone if you use it improperly.”
Sophie was curious when it was her turn to dry-fire. The gun was loose in her hand. She tilted it up and away to look at the ejector port — where the shell casing kicks out after the gun is fired — and her father corrected her.
“No, no, no.”
Meilman continued the lesson back at the table, showing her how to line up the single iron front sight between two upright posts in the back sight before firing.
‘Shoot five, nice and slow’
It was finally time to file into the shooting range. The kids stepped into their firing lanes, then donned clear plastic glasses and ear protectors. Some of the smaller hands didn’t reach the bottom of the pistol grips.
Kau told them to fire once.
A single shot echoed through the room and down the range after a child squeezed the trigger. Parents and children flinched even though they had been waiting for the sound. Then shots from five more shooters, almost all at once.
Kau got the next round of kids ready.
“Shooters, turn around, set the magazine down. Hold that gun out facing the target with your gun hand, one hand. Finger off the trigger. Next step, load that magazine.”
Brent slid the magazine into the pistol’s grip. He slapped it once but it didn’t click, and he slapped it again with the heel of his palm.
“The gun’s facing the target, not the ceiling, I said,” Kau reminded a child who let the barrel wander.
“Next step, release that slide.”
Five slides clicked into place.
“Good. Release the slide. (One more click). Very good. Next step, two hands on that gun. Ready position.
“Ready position. Next step, safety off. (Clicks). Safety off. Next step, point the gun toward that orange circle. Double sight. Next step, finger on trigger. Shoot five, nice and slow. Nice and slow.”
Shell casings kicked out and bounced off the bulletproof glass that separates the lanes. Meilman picked one off Brent’s shoulder that landed there while he still had a few shots left.
Sophie pushed the paper target toward her father. She placed one of the first rounds at the edge of the orange bull’s-eye and another within the outer rings a few inches away.
“Wow,” Meilman said.
Other parents took pictures of their kids before they shuffled out of the cramped range. One man took a selfie with his child holding the target. A girl held the target up to her nose as her mom beamed behind an iPhone.
When is too young?
Rich Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, knew of no other stores offering similar classes near Chicago but said it’s a little easier to find gun classes for children west and south of the city.
“We all know prohibitions don’t work well,” he said. “If you actually teach people about these things, then that mystique goes away and they get a better handle on reality.”
While safety is always good to teach, Dr. Louis St. Petery still has concerns about such classes.
“For the younger age groups, I think it’s inappropriate,” said St. Petery, a pediatric cardiologist from Tallahassee, Fla. and a strong advocate for gun safety in homes with children. St. Petery is the Executive Vice President of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“I don’t think a 7-year-old can shoot a gun any better than they can drive a car,” said St. Petery, who raised three children with a gun in the home. “When you get into the teens, and they’re going to go hunting with parents, you want to get them trained in the use of a firearm.
“You’re into an age of reason where you can do that,” he said. “But it sounds to me like the younger age group is inappropriate.”
Potter said his instructors remove children they think are not ready.
During the class, a 7-year-old girl fired two shots with instructor Inzerello’s hand over hers before he stopped her. The child looked unsure of herself. There were a few tears, but she didn’t break down.
Inzerello tried to console as well as explain. “It’s physical, it’s not mental,” he said. “Good job. You hit a bulls-eye.”
