BOOM!!!

Last weekend I had the weekend to beat all weekends in terms of varied interests/activities, including but not limited to belly dancing, Armenian food, shooting guns (!), buying new jewelry, girl time, gambling and vampires.

Since it is the only thing I took pictures of and I know y'all love pretty pictures, I will tell you about my first time at the gun club (not to be confused with the gun show, which goes on every single time I stand in front of the mirror. Every time.)

A couple of my dude friends are members at these gun/shooting clubs, and they go there all the time. There have been some talks going around about me joining them because I thought it sounded fun and I love to shoot bb guns out in the back yard with my family. HOWEVER:

Let us just pause for a moment to review some very important facts prior to proceeding with this story.

1. I hate (hate!) being startled. It makes me cry.
2. Trying new things/not knowing what I'm doing makes me anxious and sometimes bitchy.
3. I desperately want to look cool always, so I try to avoid things that include #1 and #2 around people I know, all the while challenging myself to get out there and try new things. This leads to a lot of solo vacations and whatnot.

Ok. So I picked up my friend George, who is a licensed gun carrier. He is also an incredibly thorough and patient teacher (and very safety-conscious), and I will be eternally grateful to him for the way in which he dealt with my fears. Anyway...George comes out with a giant bag of guns and a giant box of ammo. Like whoa. Off to the gun club we went.

As we drove to the club, I became more and more subdued as my fears started to creep in. The thought of me getting startled and CRYING in a predominantly male-populated room was enough to make me want to puke. But I didn't. So there's that. While we were in the parking lot, George descriptively walked me through what would happen in a logical yet sensory fashion: we would walk into the 'get ready room', which would smell like smoke, and I would hear some pops. I would be able to see people shooting at that time through a window. I would be able to take all the time I needed before we went in. George also went over the goal for the day:

• His goal: To teach me basic gun safety and how to handle different types of handguns, so that if I were ever to be in an emergency situation such as a bank robbery and someone kicked me a gun I would know what to do.
• My goal: Not cry, pee my pants or embarrass George. (Also...if the 'kicking the gun' thing happened, I would hope I had practiced my soccer skills because I would be kicking that thing right over to the next person in line. Eff that noise.)

We entered the get ready room (I love that name...at my house it's also called the bathroom) and it was just as George described it. Smoky (from cigarettes and not some sort of gun powder which I had imagined), with a big table and vending machines. We could see one guy through the glass shooting at a target, and sure enough I could hear the pops. It wasn't too loud, at least not from where we were standing. I did some deep breathing and, as I heard later from George, apparently gave a running commentary of what I was seeing/thinking out loud. I did not realize I was doing it, and realize that given my thoughts half the time this could be a VERY dangerous if not amusing nervous quirk.

I had my first lesson: how to properly insert the little orange ear plugs. First rule: roll it like a booger. At first I panicked b/c my sound was not being muffled, but slowly the earplug boogers began to expand in my ear until I felt as though I was under water. I told George quietly (probably yelling) that I was ready. We put on our safety glasses and went in. Actually, first George went in and told the guy shooting that I was a newbie and startled easily, and the guy was very cool about it.

My first gun to shoot was a pretty little .22, which looked like you'd see it in an old Western movie. It was light and easy to handle.

 

I learned how to load it, aim it and eventually shoot it. Somehow I even managed to hit the target once in a while.

Once I got that down to a science, things started to unravel. I had just reached a point where I felt comfortable with my surroundings. The other guy left so there were no more unexpected booms, and I felt okay with my own shooting. Then a couple of things happened at once which tripped me up:

• George decided I was doing well enough to move on to a bigger, badder gun and pulled out a 9mm Sig Sauer. It looked like the guns you see in movies with bad, bad boys. A lot heavier and kind of intimidating. Just look at it:

 

• Two young guys came in. One looked to be wearing some sort of rent-a-cop uniform with double hip holsters and was apparently giving a lesson to his friend. When his friend came in, he snapped at him with some sort of "what did I tell you about that?" flip comment and I was instantly uncomfortable being in the same room with several guns and an asshole.
• George gave me a thorough lesson on different ways to shoot this gun and explained why it didn't have a safety. Normally I love trivia like this, but then the jerk guy started shooting a VERY loud gun and I started getting nervous.
• I practiced pulling the trigger without any bullets and was getting to be ok, but then George mentioned that a) this gun would kick back a little bit and I should use my left hand to support/correct for that, and b) this gun would be louder than the one I had just been shooting.
• I had George go through a round just so I could hear and see what to expect, and with each shot I curled my hands more and more inward until I looked like some sort of bird with folded wings in the front. That was my wall of fear which I could not surmount.

I told my very patient teacher that I had challenged myself enough for the day and was about to freak out. I apologized for not being able to shoot any of the other guns (who I imagine were feeling very left out) as I was backing up towards the door. George told me that it was fine, and that when we first got there he thought the day's lesson might be "walking into the get ready room" so I had actually surpassed expectations.

That pretty much sums up my experience. Although I do not normally sensor myself or my blog contents, I do find it necessary to say here that I am not trying to glamorize the shooting of guns, nor to I condone shooting them in a murderous or otherwise irresponsible manner. All of the people I know who have guns are well trained on how to use them and, most importantly, how to use them safely. Also, I think shooting squirrels with bb guns is heinous. I love squirrels.

I see you.