Jack's first .22

As I have stated in a previous post, I bought my son his first .22 for his 9th birthday. It is an inexpensive little NEF single shot .22LR with open sights. I had great hopes for this gun, as a kids first gun is a momentous occasion. We went to the range today armed with a box of .22 ammo, a big box with 3" round targets pasted to the side & a nice summer day. I gave Jack all of the prerequisite safety lectures I could think of as he was sitting down at the shooting bench until I felt I was starting to nag him too much. I showed him how to break open the barrel to insert a round into the chamber. I then had him close the barrel and engage the safety. As he sat there beading down one of the small 3" targets I had him try to pull the hammer back with his right thumb as he shoots right handed. This is where the trouble starts. The hammer is so stiff that he is unable to pull it back with just one thumb. He need to either use both thumbs or the palm of a hand. I know that he will grow into it and figure out the pressure it will take to depress the hammer. He takes his first shot and shoots high of his intended target. The second shot reports and he has hit the highest target on the box. I am thinking that was a good shot, from what I believe he has hit where he was intending on shooting. But, he looks up and says that he was still aiming for the target below the one that he had actually hit. I kind of disregarded his statement and asked him to shoot another shot at the lower target. Sure enough he hits the upper target dead on. It looks like the gun is shooting about 6" high and 1" to the right. I took the gun and and fired 2 quick shots at the lower target and for me it is shooting way high and to the right. So, I grabbed my limited supply of gun smithing tools from my truck and brought the sight down to where I thought it should be and moved it over to the left about an inch. I then fired off 2 more shots to see where it was hitting, and repeated these steps 3 more times before I got it to where I thought it should be shooting. I got Jack back over as he had been chasing Grasshoppers around for the past 1/2 hour, as I messed with his gun. He shot a couple more times and the shots were still hitting about an inch high for him. But, the damage was done and he was not going to sit around and let me fiddle with it anymore, his attention span was screaming at me! So, we left it at that, with a mental note that the gun is still shooting high at 20 yards. Jack thinks that we need to invest in a fixed power scope for his gun, he is probably right, but that will have to wait until a Christams present I think. I have posted a slide show to the side of our outing today.