Guns: Savage Mark II F .22 LR rifle

Learning to shoot doesn't have to be expensive. For around $117 (the price of a couple Xbox 360 games), you can pick up a Savage Mark II from Wally World. The Mark II is a bolt-action .22 rifle that can help anyone learn (or in my case, relearn) the discipline needed for rifle shooting. Add in a bulk pack of .22 LR ammo, ear and eye protection, and targets, and you have literally everything necessary to get the basics down on almost any range, indoor or outdoor.

The Savage series of bolt-action rifles has always had some good bargains (their centerfire rifles in particular have long been the darlings of the "need an accurate new production bolt action without breaking the bank" crowd), and the Mark II F is no exception. The gun comes with iron sights and a black synthetic stock. The newer versions are also equipped with the AccuTrigger (Savage's user-adjustable trigger system), but my closeout version from Wal-Mart has the older, plain Jane trigger.

I tend to go with bolt-action rimfires over semiautos for teaching purposes because nothing encourages bad shooting habits like having more than one shot on tap. There is a tendency to blast away when you don't have to do anything to cycle the next round; working the bolt forces you to shoot one straight trigger press at a time. Additionally, learning to work the action with authority on a Mark II will help a newbie learn how to properly operate other manually operated shoulder guns, like lever and pump actions (that is, forcefully).

Accuracy was good enough in my book - the big front post completely covered not just my target, but the cardboard it was stapled to at 50 yards, so the fact that my groups opened up to a few inches at that distance didn't really bother me. I had to drift the front sight a bit to get the proper point of impact, but other than that, the rifle was ready out of the box. I wish Savage redesigned its magazines and magazine latch (compared to Marlin's system, they feel cheap and not very positive), but as a whole, I think they did a good job here.