Never been clocked

What would you have done differently had he been gunned?

Most likely the answer is nothing.

In that case, there is nothing to be gained (or probably lost) by being gunned.
Other then to satisfy curiosity.

It is no more beneficial than a stop watch for runners. Or, say, any other tool to measure a players performance from time to time. It is a great tool used wisely. Analogus to drugs, which can save lives or ruin them.

I’m not a big advocate of the gun for the simple reason it focuses all attention on velocity, but there are times I do see the benefits. The first time I ever clocked my son was prior to his first showcase. This was the fall after his freshman year and he had just turned 15 at the time. He was going to showcase as a pitcher and as a catcher and I was curious as to what his velocity was. I borrowed a gun from the local college coach and gunned him at home throwing into a net...82 mph. I felt he needed to improve his velocity so we focused the next five weeks on pitching mechanics without the gun. On the day of the showcase he was clocked at 89 mph. In this case I felt the gun was beneficial because we were focusing on velocity ONLY. From that point on I never made it a point to check his velocity although the school and his summer team both had guns and it was a common practice to gun all pitchers so it was no secret. If I were you I would at least satisfy my curiosity about my son’s velocity, but I would caution using the gun as a training aid because it does put the emphasis on velocity...It can also be depressing to a developing pitcher.
Fungo

I think i will wait another year or so before using the gun. I see it more for ego at this point. I like the idea of using it as a training aid for training prior to a showcase - that makes sense to me.

Fungo, if you had kept that training program up (assuming your son is 20 yrs old now) - he would be trowing 502MPH (7MPH increase for each month for 60 months). You are opening a pitching school I hope!

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I borrowed a gun from the local college coach and gunned him at home throwing into a net...82 mph. I felt he needed to improve his velocity so we focused the next five weeks on pitching mechanics without the gun. On the day of the showcase he was clocked at 89 mph.

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Unless his mechanics were awful, the increase probably had to do with using radar to maximize his effort. There's throwing hard and there's throwing really, really hard, which can hurt and has to be learned. Same thing with running.

Running coaches never question the occasional use of a stopwatch. Why is metering pitching speed so controversial?

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It can also be depressing to a developing pitcher.

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THAT is a major risk. Ever watch a pitching booth? You never see anyone who is pleasantly surprised. While that also has to do with lack of warmup and no mound, 90% of kids (and adults) don't realize how hard it is to pitch fast.

My original intention of this post is when this should be done - is it right for an 11 year old, 12, etc. Saw a previous post where people were gunning 9 year olds. That scares me.

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Saw a previous post where people were gunning 9 year olds. That scares me.

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Why? They keep score at 9. They get report cards in school at 9. They run timed races at 9 with one winner and many losers. In grade school gym we competed in every manner, including how far we could throw a softball, which is about the same thing as seeing how fast we could throw it.

Worried about overdoing it? Did your kid overdo it in school after his first report card

After he uses radar a few times, he'll get bored with it.

There was a local team in my area that used the gun pretty cleverly I think for a 10 year old ball team. They clocked all their pitchers after about 1 month of practice and offered a prize to kid who was able to increase their velocity by the highest percentage by the end of the season. None of the kids knew there was going to be a prize given when they were first getting clocked and they all threw at their fastest possible speed for two stikes in a row (young ego's). The coach told me all those kid's increased over 20% during the season, all on their own accord (prize driven, of course) and he went on to use the results as a "soap-box" speech to his kids on how much they improved just because they worked on improving themselves in other than the normal practice times). I thought it was clever use of the gun at that age.

I personally think the Gun is good (just bought one but have not used it with my son yet) to use as a measuring stick for both velocity and change of speed pitches (the latter is why I bought mine for, we are trying to develop a good change-up this year (11 year old)). I think it could be used to show improvement when working on mechanics at this young age even if you were just throwing fastball's but again Adult supervision should always be present to ensure that the boy's don't abuse the purpose of the gun in these instenses. Just my thoughts

Dave,
This was previously discussed as you mentioned. If you need to satisfy your curiosity, do it.