So as an eight year old child, did you ever walk into a gun store accompanied by a parent and allowed to break open your piggy bank and allowed to purchase an AR15 and ammo?
No. at eight or so, I had a .22 rifle. by 12 I had a .22 pistol, because I know I was trapping by then, and the pistol is necessary for dispatch. I knocked down my first deer sometime around 12, and it may well have been my own carbine by then. My first elk was somewhere around 15 and that was a scoped 7mm mag, and the shot was half a mile.
Y'all live in lala land. My story ain't very much different from folks all over the midwest, south, southwest, and rockies.