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"Though she be little, yet she is fierce."
Misha says that's the perfect title for this post.
I don't know. It's going to be hard for me to figure out exactly how I feel until the adrenaline buzz has sorted itself out.
We went pistol shooting today. I'd never even seen a handgun close up before, never touched a gun of any kind except for the shotgun that's been leaning in the corner of the closet ever since Misha moved in with me. And I'd never touched that except in reaching past it for a pair of shoes. But today I fired a pistol - put about 60 rounds into a paper bullseye. Huh. What a strange thing for me to do.
Bill was in charge of the expedition, of course. He started us out still seated around our dining room table, running through the lesson he's probably given to a hundred Marines. Range safety. Sight alignment. Sight picture. Breath control. Trigger control. We ran through the rules of the local indoor range. We practiced stances.
I was... well, part of the reason I wanted to do this is because guns scare me. I was scared. I was embarrassed about how much I didn't know and the stupidity of the questions I was asking. I was expecting to be humiliatingly bad at shooting. If either Misha or Bill had shown the slightest interest in cancelling the trip, I probably would've eagerly backed out.
The range was in the back of a gun shop. Bill said to the guy behind the counter, "We're going to teach her how to shoot." And after a quick flurry of questions and paperwork, and leaving all three of our driver's licenses at the counter, we had a gun, two paper bullseyes, two pairs of earmuffs and goggles, and a box of 50 rounds of ammunition. The gun was a .22 Ruger heavy-barrel semi-automatic pistol with a ten-round magazine, in case that means more to you than it does to me. It was supposedly much like what Bill was used to from the Marine Corps in size and shape, but (obviously) smaller caliber.
I'm embarrassed to say how little I had anticipated what it would be like. Even with ear protection, going into the range I was startled by the noise. The guy at the next position fired and I jumped about a foot. I could barely hear Bill. Over time, I became accustomed to the noise, and it sort of faded into the background - but at first it was overwhelming. Other things I hadn't anticipated: how small the cartridges were. How little difference my arm length discrepancy would make. How there would be a flash of light when I fired. How the fact that spent cartridges are ejected from the back of the slide meant that they would bounce towards me and possibly hit me. How the spent cartridges would be hot. (I have a small, painful cartridge-shaped burn at the base of my spine. I leave that story to your imagination.) How much of an adrenaline rush I would get from the whole experience.
How good I would be.
I had some trouble loading the magazine, at first. Later I figured that I need to pull the lever down with my left hand and put the cartridges in with my right, even though that means a slight loss of dexterity. That was the only way in which my small right arm made any real difference. I didn't have any trouble taking the stance Bill recommended, with my right hand under my left hand, bracing it, and my feet spread wide. Actually, the fact that my right arm doesn't bend at the elbow probably made it easier to keep my hands steady.
I had trouble remembering all of the things I was supposed to remember at once. Range safety, I did all right - except for once when I put the gun down without putting the safety on. I remembered pretty consistently to focus on the front sight and let everything else go out of focus. I had pretty good trigger control. I had more trouble remembering to exhale before I fired, and lining up the sights properly. I think I probably spent too much time at first setting up my shots, reluctant to fire. But after the first couple of shots, I wasn't really scared.
Bill started me off with the target very close - maybe 10 feet away (combat range, according to him). Later we moved it out to 25 feet, and that was as ambitious as I got. Oddly - and this is odd - I actually did very well. Of 59 shots, only 6 of them were outside the black circle (which is 5.5 inches across), and 36 of them were within the 10-point ring or better (3.5 inches across). Only one was outside the 7-point circle - and just barely. I can cover 90% of my shots with one hand, fingers together. Bill said, "that's about as good a first time on the pistol range as you see." He said something about "natural talent." He said that with a little practice I could qualify as expert. I have to admit that this part is genuinely hard for me to comprehend - it took a fair amount of repetition on his part to get it across to me that I'd actually done well. (I hope he and Misha don't think that I was fishing for compliments. I was mostly just stunned.)
I feel weird about being good at this. I'm ambivalent about whether this is even something it's good to be good at - for reasons which are hard for me to articulate. I... never would have thought of myself as someone who would want to have anything to do with guns. Certainly I never thought of myself as someone who could be proficient or talented at handling guns. I've never been good at anything physical, much less a physical skill which I find to be morally questionable. So I'm struggling a bit with the dissonance from my self-image. I'm also a little uncomfortable with the adrenaline buzz I got from it. I guess some moral pacificistic corner of my soul is teling me that this is hardly something a person ought to enjoy. But I did.
Well, the NRA is still just as unappealing to me as they always were, so I appear not to have been totally brainwashed by the experience. And I feel no compulsion to go running out to buy a handgun. But I do think I'll probably go back to the range, just to see if today's performance was a fluke. Just to see if I can improve. Just to see if I really do like it. Just to see if I can come any closer to figuring out how I can integrate this experience into the rest of my life. Because right now it all feels very, very strange.
I don't know. It's going to be hard for me to figure out exactly how I feel until the adrenaline buzz has sorted itself out.
We went pistol shooting today. I'd never even seen a handgun close up before, never touched a gun of any kind except for the shotgun that's been leaning in the corner of the closet ever since Misha moved in with me. And I'd never touched that except in reaching past it for a pair of shoes. But today I fired a pistol - put about 60 rounds into a paper bullseye. Huh. What a strange thing for me to do.
Bill was in charge of the expedition, of course. He started us out still seated around our dining room table, running through the lesson he's probably given to a hundred Marines. Range safety. Sight alignment. Sight picture. Breath control. Trigger control. We ran through the rules of the local indoor range. We practiced stances.
I was... well, part of the reason I wanted to do this is because guns scare me. I was scared. I was embarrassed about how much I didn't know and the stupidity of the questions I was asking. I was expecting to be humiliatingly bad at shooting. If either Misha or Bill had shown the slightest interest in cancelling the trip, I probably would've eagerly backed out.
The range was in the back of a gun shop. Bill said to the guy behind the counter, "We're going to teach her how to shoot." And after a quick flurry of questions and paperwork, and leaving all three of our driver's licenses at the counter, we had a gun, two paper bullseyes, two pairs of earmuffs and goggles, and a box of 50 rounds of ammunition. The gun was a .22 Ruger heavy-barrel semi-automatic pistol with a ten-round magazine, in case that means more to you than it does to me. It was supposedly much like what Bill was used to from the Marine Corps in size and shape, but (obviously) smaller caliber.
I'm embarrassed to say how little I had anticipated what it would be like. Even with ear protection, going into the range I was startled by the noise. The guy at the next position fired and I jumped about a foot. I could barely hear Bill. Over time, I became accustomed to the noise, and it sort of faded into the background - but at first it was overwhelming. Other things I hadn't anticipated: how small the cartridges were. How little difference my arm length discrepancy would make. How there would be a flash of light when I fired. How the fact that spent cartridges are ejected from the back of the slide meant that they would bounce towards me and possibly hit me. How the spent cartridges would be hot. (I have a small, painful cartridge-shaped burn at the base of my spine. I leave that story to your imagination.) How much of an adrenaline rush I would get from the whole experience.
How good I would be.
I had some trouble loading the magazine, at first. Later I figured that I need to pull the lever down with my left hand and put the cartridges in with my right, even though that means a slight loss of dexterity. That was the only way in which my small right arm made any real difference. I didn't have any trouble taking the stance Bill recommended, with my right hand under my left hand, bracing it, and my feet spread wide. Actually, the fact that my right arm doesn't bend at the elbow probably made it easier to keep my hands steady.
I had trouble remembering all of the things I was supposed to remember at once. Range safety, I did all right - except for once when I put the gun down without putting the safety on. I remembered pretty consistently to focus on the front sight and let everything else go out of focus. I had pretty good trigger control. I had more trouble remembering to exhale before I fired, and lining up the sights properly. I think I probably spent too much time at first setting up my shots, reluctant to fire. But after the first couple of shots, I wasn't really scared.
Bill started me off with the target very close - maybe 10 feet away (combat range, according to him). Later we moved it out to 25 feet, and that was as ambitious as I got. Oddly - and this is odd - I actually did very well. Of 59 shots, only 6 of them were outside the black circle (which is 5.5 inches across), and 36 of them were within the 10-point ring or better (3.5 inches across). Only one was outside the 7-point circle - and just barely. I can cover 90% of my shots with one hand, fingers together. Bill said, "that's about as good a first time on the pistol range as you see." He said something about "natural talent." He said that with a little practice I could qualify as expert. I have to admit that this part is genuinely hard for me to comprehend - it took a fair amount of repetition on his part to get it across to me that I'd actually done well. (I hope he and Misha don't think that I was fishing for compliments. I was mostly just stunned.)
I feel weird about being good at this. I'm ambivalent about whether this is even something it's good to be good at - for reasons which are hard for me to articulate. I... never would have thought of myself as someone who would want to have anything to do with guns. Certainly I never thought of myself as someone who could be proficient or talented at handling guns. I've never been good at anything physical, much less a physical skill which I find to be morally questionable. So I'm struggling a bit with the dissonance from my self-image. I'm also a little uncomfortable with the adrenaline buzz I got from it. I guess some moral pacificistic corner of my soul is teling me that this is hardly something a person ought to enjoy. But I did.
Well, the NRA is still just as unappealing to me as they always were, so I appear not to have been totally brainwashed by the experience. And I feel no compulsion to go running out to buy a handgun. But I do think I'll probably go back to the range, just to see if today's performance was a fluke. Just to see if I can improve. Just to see if I really do like it. Just to see if I can come any closer to figuring out how I can integrate this experience into the rest of my life. Because right now it all feels very, very strange.