Okay, so I haven't written in this space for almost five months, but you'll have heard that for three of those months I was cruelly imprisoned at a
Soviet-style re-education camp training course. It was boring and loathsome. There's little to tell. But I did shoot some guns. I can tell you about that.
Spoiler: It was awful.
Before that day, I had never held a gun. Never even heard gunfire outside of a movie or TV screen. And I was totally cool with that.
But on that day I fired five different guns, including three straight-up, bullet-spraying, machine guns. I did not enjoy myself.
When we arrived at the shooting range, I was nervous. That feeling escalated to full-on panic when we sat down with the instructors for our primer. The lead instructor started saying things like, “Glock,” “Sig,” “9 millimeter,” “something-caliber,” and a bunch of other terms I didn't understand. They all jumbled together until they were unintelligible because of the blood rushing through my ears. I thought, “I cannot pass out before we even approach the weapons. I have to save my passing out for the shooting range.” It didn't help that everyone else in the group was nodding along as though “something-something-millimeter-caliber-flippity-flang-blah” made perfect sense to them.
Then a second instructor stepped forward. “What do you do if you find a gun?” he asked. “Clear it!” everyone but me shouted in unison. I looked around thinking, “What does that even mean?” Apparently, it means to take the bullets out and make sure it’s unloaded. Then he reached into a brown box and began pulling out pistols like it was a clown car. He launched into a tirade even more impenetrable than his predecessor. He pulled the guns out rapidly, demonstrated how to open them or eject the magazine (that is, case of bullets), but he was going so fast I actually got light-headed. “
Get me out of here, get me out of here,” my internal monologue shouted. But I didn't want to jump up and bolt out of there, lest I startle the man holding all the guns.
Every once in a while he tossed in a “you all know what this is,” or an “I’m sure you've seen this before.” I looked around to see everyone nodding as though he was putting something as pedestrian as apples or teacups in front of them. “Yes,” they seemed to be saying, “these object are in no way foreign or terror-causing to me.” At this point, I won’t lie to you, I wanted to cry. But I’m, at least in theory, supposed to be an adult and there are limited situations that afford humiliation-free sobbing. This wasn't one of them. Especially since there were a few 6-year-olds in the crowd, visiting the range for the day. Children who looked like they knew how to handle themselves. I needed to, at the very least, match the poise of the first-graders.
We headed down to the range. There were five guns. A pistol, a shotgun that looked incredibly menacing, and three of what I can only describe as machine guns. I promised myself that I would shoot each of the five guns. That may not seem like a tall order, but in the moment, when someone is handing this huge weapon to you and it’s really heavy and it’s hot from having been fired and bullets are exploding all around you, it’s a terrible thing to face.
Part of the reason I did it is because whenever I hear people talk about gun control, the people against it always tout the second amendment, but I truly believe that for a lot of them, the primary reason is that they just like guns. They just plain enjoy them and don’t want anyone to limit their access to them. And that’s something that I wanted to understand.
I thought I’d start with the pistol because it would be easiest. Big mistake. When you hold a pistol, every single finger and part of your hand has a specific place it needs to go, and remembering all of this in addition to how to stand and how to aim is a nightmare. And the kick it had? Insane. It popped up a good six inches into the air after every shot, which was so loud and jarring that I just wanted to crawl into bed and take a nap.
When I finished with the pistol, my friend had a big smile on her face and said, “Did you love it.” She was shocked to hear that I hated everything about the experience. Pistols are miserable. They’re the worst. I would rather not shoot one again.
I watched one of the guys firing the shotgun and getting his shoulder slammed back by the kick. I decided to save that one for later and moved on to the machine guns.
“Deep breaths,” I thought. “Deep breaths.” This was a huge mistake, because when you shoot a gun the overwhelming, choking stench of gunpowder permeates everything. Everything. Hours later my hands still smelled like cheap 4th of July sparklers. I was standing in the middle of a Virginia field yet there was no fresh air to be had.
The next two guns I shot were something you’d see in a Rambo movie; press a trigger and bullets spray every which way while you shake like a rag doll. Each time I approached the instructors, I tried to wear a look of confidence, and each time, the instructors said to me, completely unbidden, “You don’t have to be afraid.” It’s a little deflating to find out I can’t even fake confidence. I pressed the trigger, bullets sprayed, I shook like a rag doll. Those guns are about as easy to control as Julia when she’s eaten sugar.
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| I am the picture of confidence. |
Next up was the shotgun. The instructors had told us that just the noise of racking this gun was often enough to get criminals to throw down their weapons and come out with their hands up. This thing was a monster. The ammunition was the size of circus peanuts.
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| "Reach for the sky!" |
The instructor had me load it, which was not easy. The entire thing moved like the Tin Man before Dorothy and Scarecrow oiled him. Then I shot it. It was like the world exploded. The noise was unreal and the kick rocked me back so that I almost fell off my feet. He told me to rack it and shoot again. I wondered how I might get out of doing that, but I couldn’t think with my ears ringing and gunpowder filling my lungs, so I did as I was told. More exploding, more rocking back. He grabbed more ammo for me and was surprised when I held out to gun to him. “Really? You’re done? You don’t want to shoot it again?” he asked incredulously. The shotgun was most people’s favorite and the line to shoot it had been long. “Thanks. I’m all set.” I replied, and hightailed it out of there.
Four down, one to go. But I was all Mr. Darcy with my "I shall conquer this!" (Nevermind that he didn't actually conquer it. That is not the material point.)
The final gun was another of those “spray and pray” automatics. An AR-15, I think the instructor said. I had to wait in line to shoot it. Ahead of me in line were four children and their father. One of the children was, I swear, no more than 5 years old. “This is ludicrous” I thought to myself. “Can the children see the fear in my eyes? Can they tell how uncomfortable I am? Do the little,
tiny children know what the early stages of an anxiety attack look like?”
After the kids had had their turn, I stepped up to the plate. I barely remember shooting that one. I just remember thinking, “I have to hold this trigger down until the bullets stop spraying, and then finally, FINALLY, they will let me leave this wretched place.”
In the end I just felt like this:
