bang bang

I’m not sure where Taylor got the idea to go to a shooting range. I know I’ve always been open to the idea, its just something that’s never happened because nobody said “hey, lets go shooting!”

When I was at scout camp, I shot a rifle and shotgun, but it was years ago, and I’m not sure it still counts if the guns are bolted to the table. Nobody else has any gun experience, apart from Larry’s trips hunting as a child.

Tay did the research and picked out Shooters World in the west valley, and the rest of us piled into the car and drove out after researching what it would cost. We went inside and were directed over to the gun rental counter, where we filled out two very short forms and handed over our drivers licenses. We told the guy at the counter we had never shot before and wanted something with little recoil, and he suggested a .22 revolver.

I was happy with a revolver- there’s something about the simplicity of the design and the exposed mechanism which I found comforting and interesting. With a clip gun, you pull the slide back to chamber the first round- you don’t really see anything happening. With the revolver, you cock the hammer, and then you’ve got a hair trigger, and when the gun fires, the barrel rotates.

The ammunition it shoots is .22 which is about the smallest bullet you can imagine, so when we finally got it out there, the recoil was very manageable. The guy at the counter basically showed us how it worked- how to open the cylinder, how to load the rounds, how to close the cylinder and two ways to pull the trigger. Then he handed us four pairs of earmuffs and basically said “have fun kiddos.”  But first, we bought 100 rounds of ammunition, and a target.

I was thinking, ok, silhouette or bullseye, but Tay wanted something a little more fun. Although the company offers targets of cartoon Easter bunnies for the seasonal holiday, Tay opted for a zombie target. Actually, they offer four or five zombie targets. One of them is a Nazi zombie, one is the generic type, but we got the Arab terrorist zombie.

We may have put him down when he attacked our country, but we couldn’t keep him down. Old Adubl bin Dayd al-Zombi with turban and brain target separate.

I was a little nervous at basically going in and shooting without someone who knew what they were doing, but I ended up standing at the front of the range slot. I opened and closed the cylinder. I worked the action of the gun a few times first- it was a great confidence booster. I knew I could pull the trigger. So I opened our box, loaded the rounds, closed the cylender and rotated it to make sure it had locked and then squeezed off the first shot after cocking the hammer.

It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. There was some Steven Segal in the corner blasting away with a .50 cannon, but what I got was more like a loud “pop!” and a slight jerk. I felt a lot better. This was something I could handle. Apparently, .22 ammunition what you’d use “varmit” hunting and possibly for self defense if you can empty the barrel.

That first clip went slowly as I got a feel for the gun and the shooting. Then I emptied the spent shells and handed the gun off to Tay, more of giving moral support for his first time loading and shooting. Mom hauled me up there too to make sure she was doing it right, but like me, she realized it was actually really easy, comfortable, and actually pretty fun.

“It’s just another skill game,” she explained later. “Instead of throwing darts at a board, you’re using a gun.”
We put that terrorist zombie down for good and I got a real bullseye target so we could try to hone our target practice skills. I fared the best in the shooting, although I never did hit a bullseye. Larry was about as good as I was, followed by Tay and mom was pretty hopeless. “Shotgun,” she said, grimly, envisioning the kind of weapon she’d like in a life-threatening home invasion.

“Skill game” or not, I’m still conflicted. On the one hand, there was something about the accessibility of the gun- the way that you held this precision metal machine in your hand, a combination of chemistry, physics, and solid gadgetry that was so simple and straightforward- that I really enjoyed, like using a bicycle, a machine that translates your intent into power. To be fair, there are few items on earth that have been as designed as guns. When I held that revolver, I was holding the accumulation of literally 2000 years of continually progressing technology and craftsmanship.

At the same time, there is a fascination with the morbidity, a kind of enthralled horror at the ability of our minds to conceive of doing horrible things with that gun. I could, for example, have easily and simply shot and killed my own brother or mother. Although I didn’t think of it at the time, it occurred to me later. It’s very much like the thoughts of when you are on a plane and, unbidden, in your mind play the scenario where you open one of the emergency exits in midflight, or instead of taking a large step away from a lethal drop, take a step forward instead.

As a pacifist and a humanitarian, I feel morally obligated to recall the fact that guns exist solely to kill and injure. There is a pedigree of death as well as design. The design of a gun stems from its purpose to send a hot chunk of metal to rip the skin, shred muscle, mangle organs, and splinter bone to the purpose of causing maximum pain and the extinction of life. I wonder can one admire the architecture of a death camp?