Re: Starting out the little guy...
All of my kids started out shooting a crack barrel air rifle, but their first rifle was a savage rascal in 22lr. I put a cheap scope and a Harris knockoff on it so they could actually hit stuff pretty easily.
when my youngest was 6 or 7 I bought him the cheapest ruger 10/22, but it was stil too long for him so I had to put a tacticool stock on it with a red dot I had kicking around on my bench. He can burn through a few hundred rounds pretty quick with that thing in a short time. Zombie paper and reactive targets seemed to draw a lot of attention.
If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.