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Today I shot a gun · 23 June 05

The nearest I have ever been to a gun, before today, is the other side of the glass in a display case. I have never touched one, let alone fired one before. But an opportunity came up with my local outdoors club, and I thought “well, why not”. Not straight away though – I passed up the chance several times. In fact, when I first saw the trips emailed, I assumed that they’d get a very low level of interest, not become the second most popular trips in the outdoors club. However, after hearing from several different people of the great time that was had by all, I finally decided to go for it. “Try everything once” certainly came into it, “Know thine enemy” may have been more of an attempted justification.

On the way to the range, the four of us chatted a little. It turned out that myself and one other girl had no previous experience. This other girl happily volunteered her reason for trying. Apparently some delivery man had been walking up her driveway a week or so previously. When he saw her step out of her house and glance at him, he made a joke along the lines of “are you going to shoot me now?”. A somewhat bizarre joke I will grant. So did she think “You what??” in response to this? But no. She thought (and I paraphrase) “Wow, he is right! I have no idea how to shoot this random person who is walking up to my house! Oh dear, how unfortunate this is.” This trip was therefore her golden opportunity to remedy this.

As we reached the range and wandered over to the firing area, all our paraphernalia in hand, the third girl’s story unfolded. She, as it turned out, was an ex-marine. Four years service and they then put her through college. Not such a bad deal I would acknowledge. But as the evening went on, she started changing. I had previously thought of her as a nice, somewhat cutesy, but generally reasonable person. But one could feel her getting more aggressive, more charged, more fired up as time went on. When I shot the top off a soda can, so that it started to spray she cackled “just imagine that was somebody’s artery!”. She ended off the session by requesting that the organiser bring along something head shaped the next time. Not, she assured us, that she wanted it to look too realistic – she could just imagine, after all.

I don’t know what I was expecting, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it all. The words that came to mind, when asked, were “weird, fun, disturbing”. Followed soon after by “I’m good at it”. Don’t get me wrong, I am no less anti the US gun ‘legislation’, and no less of a believer in the UK policy to not arm the police force. If anything, I have even more of a fear of guns, as I didn’t expect it to be so easy. After effortlessly picking off 10 spent cartridges in a row from 30 m, I had to put the rifle down and step away from it. It shouldn’t feel that good.

  1. I just want to say I’ve always agreed with everything you’ve ever said, ever. And you’re a fabulous girl. Er, I mean woman. PERSON! Yes, person. And I totally respect your right to be different. But not that you ARE different, no, you’re totally normal, uh-huh yes, totally normal, can’t think why I even mentioned it in fact. And of course all those silly arguments were all my fault and you were always in the right and OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SARAH PLEASE JUST PUT DOWN THE GU-
    — AJS    Jun 23, 19:49    #
  2. I don’t believe in specialization. A person should be able to build a fire, create a webpage, build a shelf, plumb, know how electricity works, fix a car, cook, sew, play some sort of musical instrument, create a poem, identify a bird, know some constellations, appreciate art, make a toast, know a religion, operate a compass, know the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything (it’s 42) and fire a gun.

    Firing a gun doesn’t make you good or bad (and you know this). It’s just that you were good at something that is full of emotion. I had the same feeling when I first fired my grandfather’s .22 rifle when I was 9. I killed a rabbit. It felt good. It felt powerful, and we ate the rabbit.

    Regards,

    Soony
    — Soony    Jun 25, 20:11    #
  3. Hey Sarah I love the blog, have you been running this alongside Spymac or did you just transfer all the old stuff over?

    Always interesting reading about your experiences in America and seeing it through the eyes of someone who comes from a similar culture as mine.

    Keep up the good work. This will have to be a regular stop on my jounrney around the infobahn. :-)
    — Jaqian    Jun 28, 03:39    #
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