You aren't American are you? Many families here teach their children to use guns. It's considered irresponsible to keep guns in a house with children and not teach them to use them (though you should keep the guns locked up and away from them when not in use).

Also it's really easy to shoot a gun without training if you don't give a fuck about not wasting ammo or who or what you hit. Especially if you're aiming at a crowd. It's rare for school shooters to be decent marksmen, rather they just bring a gun with decent rate of fire and a ton of ammo and shoot into a crowd

It's really a no brainer in how to use guns. The part that really determines how well they can use a gun is how fast they can reload like a trained marksman who spends considerable time at a shooting range. That and how well they can prevent some guns from jamming.

But taking one, knowing it is loaded and just shooting away, that's a no brainer. Anyone can do it.

It's not exactly hard to operate a firearm. They are designed to be used by the lowest common denominator of person - total morons.

They're not hard to use, they're hard to use well. And really, not that hard. I'm a pretty good shot, and I'd say I spent much less time learning to shoot than I did, say, computer-related skills which took way more practice, and study.

It's a blessing that most mass shooters are not skilled shooters. The shooters that are skilled tend to favour the rifle. They make each shot count, and typically only fire once. But, that's more of an assassination. People using handguns tend to miss a lot — I think they're really going for terror/fear and not a high casualty count.

The "problem" with being a good shooter is, you have certain safety tenets drilled into your head. Know where each shot is going to go, because you're responsible for the bullet once it's fired, and you can't get it back; don't point at anything you don't intend to destroy/don't have the right to destroy/don't have the legal right to destroy; shoot to kill, never to warn or maim; don't shoot if you can't be sure you will hit your target; etc. Specifically because I think it begs the question, about warning shots: they're dumb. The idea of shooting up to warn people. That bullet will eventually come down, at terminal velocity, and if it hits someone, it will do serious damage. If it hits the head just right, that warning shot absolutely can kill a bystander.

Most learn at home. Firing a firearm accurately does require some practice and skill. Shotguns are the easiest, pistols are by far the hardest. In an enclosed space though it isn't that hard to hit a human sized target. Most people who shoot guns probably know how they work. They aren't all that complicated. Usually just safety, a mekanism to cock it, a trigger, and a magazine release. It doesn't take that much training to learn how to shoot something a few feet away from you. It does take a bit to hit targets further away than say 25 feet. This is often why cops end up smoking gangsters. Many gangsters don't practice with their firearms and cops do, so in a ranged fight, cops usually win.

Hitting a moving target is difficult. Most people don't realize how easy it is to actually take down an armed person who isn't skilled and practices things like the 30 ft rule which most cops will practice. (If you get within 30 ft, they will assume you can disarm them before they can land their first shot) Aiming usually takes a few seconds if you want to land your hits, even with a stationary target 25ft away. Some people practice a lot and john wick it, but real shooting is more like an entire body composure, carefully leveling the sights, squeezing, not pulling the trigger (rookie mistake) because if you pull the trigger to fast you will miss unless someone is very close to you.

I'm just a regular nonbinary person, I learned to shoot skeets out of the air before I hit puberty. I can throw up a soda can and shoot it with a shotgun which is a fairly skilled thing to do. I practiced a lot for years, and hunted a lot. (Not into hunting these days because I'm a different person, and love animals) I might if I were hungry enough. I'm better than most people at shooting.

It takes a bit to initially learn how to load, chamber a round, and disable a safety. Every new gun you handle will require relearning those things for the most part. Also, the first time you handle a gun you’ll probably be a bit intimidated by the whole experience and want someone to show you. I agree most kids would have been taught by an adult if they got so far as to shoot up a school. That said, if a loaded gun is lying around the house, someone can easily pick it up and do some damage with it without any training— at least until it is time to reload.

In the US, it's not uncommon for parents to teach their kids how to shoot. I sadly was only ever allowed to shoot a bb gun. I'd like to own a gun someday. It's low on my list though.

I shot my first guns in kindergarten. My uncle's handgun and my grandpa's shotgun. Lived on the farm, it was just normal. But it was just in the farm, supervised of course. The moment my cousin and I were old enough we were in a firearms safety course so we could go hunting. Hell we used to help make ammo (just reloading shells).

Guns are really simple to use. Reloading for most guns people will ever encounter outside the military is simple. You got the safety switch and the trigger and it's really point and click at that point. I tell you the hardest part is learning how to hold it correctly. We've all seen videos of people holding a gun wrong and shenanigans ensues when they lose control of it. https://imgur.com/gallery/shotgun-fail-odC6s

Point 'n Shoot

or, in a Christian state, Spray 'n Pray

The most successful gun designs are those that could be put in the hands of teenagers to turn them into killing machines

my friends and i played with guns as kids in a completely unsafe manner with no experience or instruction. chamber a round and pull the trigger. they're designed to be simple

They just aren't that hard to use.

As Thelma says, "can't be that hard, idiots use them all of the time".

You can learn how to use almost any gun in about five minutes. Have a friend or family member that lets you take some practice shots in their backyard? Now you know enough to be dangerous.

I've been shooting twice. From my experience it's shockingly easy the only kinda complicated thing is loading it. I'm sure YouTube has guides on anything that might be complicated.

parents and family introduce them to guns.

The point of guns was to make warfare easier

It takes real, practiced skill and/or quality equipment to hit a bullseye at long range, or to kill an armed opponent at short range quickly and cleanly enough to not give them the chance to shoot you back. It takes no skill to hit an undefended, person-sized object at <10 meters, the distances involved in most indoor locations.

Shooting is like driving a car. A baby could do it. Few can do it safely.

Using a gun is really easy. And I suspect school showers aren't particularly concerned about safety, so that's not an issue for them

I heard they make them pretty simple now. Some are even just point and shoot /s

I am from Croatia, we have 1 rifle at home (hunting) and as a child I remember we will sometimes put plastic bottle and aim for bottle, so I guess similar is in USA? In rural places specifically. Of course it was all done with multiple of adults nearby. But I was always bad at it, and I am still scared to go near guns (intrusive thoughts)

Kids know computers and just like guns it is a point and click interface

This is the US we're talking about, so there's no shortage of guns or people willing to teach other people to use guns. Sure, I doubt an eight year old could rock up to the local range and lease a weapon, but... there's always a crazy uncle. Besides that, there's no shortage of instructional material to be found online and elsewhere. Guns are not particularly complicated devices. Fill magazine with ammunition, insert magazine, pull and release charging handle (or slide), disengage safety (if any), point and pull the trigger. It's not particularly difficult. Hitting something is a different matter though.

I mean, I'm Danish, and guns are not exactly commonplace here, but I used to shoot pistols for sport in the indoor range beneath a local school starting when I was eleven.

I learned to shoot at Boy Scout camp when I was about 13. We shot .22 long rifle and 20 gauge shotguns. Many of my friends hunted (never appealed to me) and learned even earlier.

Not to blame video games but genuinely having never even held a real gun I could definitely work out how to operate one from the thousands of hours I have interacted with them digitally lol. They ultimately are designed ground up to be user friendly and simple. Yes I would be a terrible aim etc but still not the point, an idiot can still cause chaos.

I mean, my dad took me hunting when I was young...

I knew how to operate a hunting rifle by the time I was 12, and I'm not even American.

And if you can operate a hunting rifle, you can operate an assault rifle to a reasonable degree. Not much training needed.

And the principle is easy to figure out. When I was in the army, while I was a recruit, this guy in my platoon had never touched a weapon before, and he was pretty nervous the first day on the shooting range because he was on a different training course the day we got introduced to the basics. But he figured it out by intuition; get the cartridge into the chamber, and get the hammer to hit the firing pin.

There are only so many mechanical things one can do with a rifle, and if you try a few things you're likely to figure it out.

Learning the manual of arms (procedure of loading, firing, unloading a type of firearm) is a YouTube video away and isn't hard. If you can use a drill, a stapler or a nerf gun you can figure out how to make a gun go bang.

The difficult part is technique that makes the bullets go where you want them to. Shooting fast is easy, just mag dump in a general direction and you'll eventually hit something. Shooting slowly and accurately is way more effective and responsible. Basic marksmanship takes a bit of practice to hone but anyone can do it, including you reading this.

But shooting fast AND accurate is a skill that takes consistent practice to hone and keep. That's what makes competitons like USPSA so challenging

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+use+a+gun

It's not like they're complex devices to operate. and the internet has tons of resources.

1st time i have so many comments on a post... in an hour@

Plenty of guides online but also it just isn't that hard.

TN students now required to learn gun safety beginning in kindergarten

YouTube videos?

Hand guns are difficult to be accurate with if you've never shot one, and still not easy if you have. Nobody is going to fire one for the first time and be good at it, but within 10-15' the difference is probably just if the shot was lethal or not. Anything with a longer barrel like a shotgun or rifle, as long as you're pointing in the general direction it's as simple as pulling the trigger. The recoil is easier to deal with and it's easier to aim. Loading could take a second to figure out, but that's something that can be worked out before ever pulling the trigger.

I think the fact that most school shootings don't end up with dozens of kills is because it's not super easy to be skilled with all aspects of a firearm, but it's easy enough for quick damage.

The Internet

edit: I'm being snarky but serious. We have invented instant access to information, you can literally go look it up if you're wondering? I'm not being "anti-internet" in any way, I'm just saying times have changed. If you think not knowing how to use a gun is going to stop anyone with access to one and the will to use it, I don't know what to tell you