Headline: Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

Adventures With Guns

What's it like to shoot a real gun?

Until recently, the only gun I'd used was one I'd bought when I was 14. When I pulled the trigger, the barrel split open and a red banner tumbled out that said BANG.

It was a quality model, and I wonder what happened to it. The ones you see nowadays are made of cheap pressed metal, but this one was pretty heavy, with a quality cotton banner and strong springs. It opened with a good thwack! The .44 Magnum of toy guns.

I was never comfortable pointing it, or any other fake gun, at a person. Some people do it, and think it's funny, but to me it's on par with grabbing someone from behind and holding a fake knife against their neck. Not funny.

Shooting at the television was okay, though. I was once forced to execute Geraldo for crimes against journalism. BANG. Not funny, maybe, but satisfying.

Other victims included a smoke alarm that went off whenever I made toast (BANG!), a backed-up toilet (BANG!), and an affable but worn-out Volkswagen Rabbit that had to be put out of its misery (Sniff... BANG!).

Likely manufactured for professional clowns, it had what looked like a safety switch on the side. But it was fake, just molded into the metal.

Not that the manufacturer was blind to gun safety. On the side of the box it came in was a warning: "Don't use this novelty gun in situations where it might be confused with a real firearm."

Recently my girlfriend Julie asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, and I decided it was time to indulge my long-standing curiosity about what it might be like to fire a real handgun. Guns, or the idea of guns, creep into our lives in all kinds of ways: in real life, in fiction, in public policy. I wanted to demystify them, to understand them on more than an intellectual level.

Just how loud is a gun? How heavy? Does it kick like a mule when you fire? Will it make me an all-powerful God? I knew some people who had grown up around handguns, but in Santa Cruz people seem embarrassed to talk about it, as though it revealed their inner hick.

Julie and I reserved four slots for handgun training at a gun range. But who else to take? Some of our friends would be appalled at the idea; others would be funny to have along but too dangerous, an episode of I Love Lucy with live ammunition.

Ultimately, our friends Stan and Marisa agreed to the adventure. We had a few weeks to think about what we were getting ourselves into.

Mental Preparation

There's a verse from an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, "Saturday Night Special," that goes:

Handguns are made for killin'

Ain't no good for nothin' else

Which is pretty true. For hunting, you're better off with the accuracy of a rifle or the spray effect of a shotgun. Handguns are generally marketed as "personal protection," like deodorant. They don't market them as "for shooting people up close," but that's pretty much their main function. Oh sure, occasionally you see fantasy shooting, like Clint Eastwood disrupting a lynching at 50 yards by severing the rope just above the noose. But you know that's not why he happened to have a gun along. He carries a gun to shoot at people.

So I was fully aware that I was going to interact with a tool for killing. Whether used to hold up a liquor store or blast a home intruder, firing handguns is all about ripping holes in bodies.

Still, it sounded kind of fun.

The four of us pulled up to the firing range early, so we had time to browse the gun shop. There were a number of paper targets you could buy, including human silhouettes in three lively color choices, a drawing of cans and bottles on a fence, and an action scene with a big ugly guy holding a female security guard hostage. Think you can waste him without hitting her? A chance to be a hero, for less than a dollar a sheet.

There were animal head trophies all around, dozens it seemed, up high where you couldn't pet them. It was easy to imagine each one representing a former bachelor. Donated to the gun shop, the noble beasts could at least be properly displayed and occasionally visited by their nostalgic assassins.

Ready...

"Okay everybody, let's get started."

We filed into the classroom, eyeing each other warily. My group knew why it was there: curiosity. We didn't plan to actually buy a gun. But the others... They bore watching.

There were about a dozen of us, spaced out in a room that could have held three times as many. It was chilly. The heavy steel tables and chairs were chilly too. An extremely durable room. At the chalkboard stood our two instructors. They too seemed especially durable.

Before we arrived, I had guessed that they would be middle-aged white males, and Carl and Peter (names changed to protect me) did not disappoint. Over the next three hours they would acquaint us with laws, guns, and ammunition before putting us on the range with working pistols.

It came as no surprise that they were essentially pro-gun. The first hour was Carl's, and he told us about gun laws and how to get around them. Violating gun laws sounded scary until Carl explained:

"Most police officers have no clue about firearm laws."

That's interesting. I'll have to test that.

"Officer, this sunroof-mounted gun turret on my car is okay because it doubles as a flagpole: California statute 16-786 section, uh, C."

The officer replies, "Take your word for it. Now as for you pumping 140 rounds into the River Street sign, that's..."

"Legal on Thursdays."

"All rightee then. Sorry to have bothered you."

Carl told us that in California you can't buy ammo clips that hold more than ten bullets, even though many guns will hold up to fifteen. Then he said if you go to a gun show in Reno, you'll see Californians buying the fifteen round clips. Wink wink.

Fifteen rounds is better, he said, for shooting at intruders in the dark.

And while he was on the subject of shooting people, Carl suddenly got all serious and said that nobody should have a gun in the house unless they were willing to use it. If you aren't willing to shoot at someone, that someone will probably take the gun away from you. And no bluffing either. "Criminals know from the sound of your voice whether you're really able to pull the trigger," he said.

On this particular point I think Carl's giving the criminals a lot of credit they don't deserve. Dehumanizing criminals may make it easier to shoot them, but assigning them canine powers like the ability to smell fear is a stretch. Perhaps he's seen too many movies, where Bogart slowly approaches the hysterical woman and takes away her gun.

We learned all about the circumstances under which you can fire your gun at someone, and the rule of thumb is that if you feel endangered, let 'em have it. If they run away after you fire a few panicked rounds in the dark (mortally wounding your dresser, the wall, and the water heater behind the wall), you can't chase them down the street with a hail of bullets. And you can't shoot to protect your stuff, so someone tiptoeing out of your garage with your lawnmower is not fair game, unless they try to kill you with it.

Eventually Carl got onto the subject of concealed weapons, apparently a personal favorite.

Here's what we needed to know: Very few concealed weapons permits are issued in Santa Cruz County, so you may as well save the application fee and forget about it.

Here's the additional information provided at no extra charge: a permit issued locally anywhere in California is good throughout the state, and certain counties are much more lenient about issuing them. For instance, you can get really cheap land in Tehama County, claim to be a resident, get the permit, and pack heat into the Capitola mall, all legal-like.

Or do what some locals do and carry concealed weapons without a permit. Carl estimates that illegal carriers outnumber legal ones ten to one. Getting caught is just a misdemeanor, after all. It's not like they're carrying a double-edged knife, nunchucks, or a billy club, which are all felony offenses.

And you thought your NRA donation wasn't buying you anything!

If you still have concealed weapon fantasies but don't want to break the law, you can always tuck it under your shirt and legally wander around your own home or business. You can even allow your employees to carry them on company property. Think about that next time you sass that waitress.

Carl was the mother-load of related factoids: You can carry a gun in a motorhome, but just in the back section, where it's a house. Gun laws are especially strict in Massachusetts because the Kennedys live there. Diane Feinstein is anti-gun legislatively speaking, yet has a concealed weapon permit.

Carl's most overtly political moment was when he said that many professional studies prove that in states where citizens are able to carry concealed weapons, crime rates fall. You won't hear about these studies, he said, because the government and the press conceal them.

I asked Carl where I might find and read one of these unbiased studies, and he suggested a good place to start would be the N.R.A. website.

Aim...

We took a break, and when we came back it was time for Peter to introduce us to actual guns. He went over the operation and cleaning of the two major types of handguns, the revolver and the semi-automatic.

"The best overall self defense gun is the revolver. It's simpler, more reliable--basically your no-brainer kind of gun."

Yikes.

One alleged benefit of the no-brainer is that it's easier to use before you're fully awake. You can just grab it from the bedside drawer and start shooting.

Now, call me fussy, but I think it's not such a bad idea to have a gun that forces you to be fully awake before firing, particularly if you have house guests once in a while. I'm sure the sound of the gun firing a few times would wake you up fully, but by then you may have executed Bob and Linda for trying to ask where you keep the extra blankets.

Your basic revolver is the wild-west kind of gun, with a rotating cylinder full of bullets, perfect for no-brainer games like Russian Roulette. The semi-automatic is the more boxy, modern-looking thing, with clips full of bullets that snap into the handle. You can quickly pop out an empty clip and put in a fresh one, which television characters are always doing while hiding behind oil drums.

Carl and Peter had lots of guns for us to check out. They also passed around fake ammo so we could practice loading them. It takes a little while to get the hang of it. We looked like laboratory footage of monkeys with Legos.

Guns are pretty heavy, and the metal is thick and cold. How guys in the movies tuck guns into their pants without reacting to the cold steel is beyond me. Goodbye, concealed weapon fantasy.

As for ammunition, the more you learn about what types and sizes are available the more confused you get. There is an old saying that "The nice thing about standards is there are so many to choose from."

The really grisly part is deciding what sort of bullet you want. They come in varying shapes and hardnesses. Typically, for "home security" you wouldn't want some indestructible, slapstick bullet that goes through the wall, bounces off the cement lawn elf, and smashes the big pane of glass being carried across the street before finally knocking the bucket of paint off a ladder and onto your meddling neighbor's head. You want something that will fall apart when it hits the wall, so it doesn't hurt some innocent bystander on the other side.

Of course, these choices also affect what will happen when various bullets strike a human, which our trainers were able to describe with no apparent squeamishness whatsoever.

Peter showed us how to aim by aligning the sights at the front and back of the gun. There was a target on the blackboard for us to aim at, and to do so I had to scoot my chair to the right to get a clear line of sight between the heads of my fellow classmates. Fake ammo or not, I was glad to be sitting in the back.

To reinforce our understanding they showed part of a 70's era pistols-as-sport videotape featuring what looked like my junior high class. Bell-bottoms, Farrah hairstyles, Christie McNichol lookalikes and respect for elders all stirred memories of beanbag chairs, disco, and, when you add the guns, the Olympic Village hostage crisis in Munich.

My enthusiasm for actually shooting a gun ebbed a little when Carl and Peter teamed up to tell us about all the ways we might hurt ourselves. Up to this moment I figured I was safely on the right end of the barrel, but bad things can happen to good shooters.

For instance, it's possible to have a bullet lodge partway down the barrel without your noticing it, and the next time you shoot, the gun explodes in your hand. Or, you could pull the trigger, hear a snap but no bang, and assume the bullet was a dud. But wait! Don't look down the barrel yet, because it might still discharge up to 30 seconds later. Very Wile E. Coyote. And careful how you hold the semi-automatic, because when you shoot, the top of the gun slides back and forward again very rapidly, and it would hurt if you got in the way. A lot.

Despite all the attention to safety, I was worried. In three hours of class time, the instructors had never required us to take any sort of quiz to ensure we were listening. In fact, since we never had to respond in any way, it would have been entirely possible to sit through the training without knowing a word of English, or while roaring drunk, or with a psychotic history. And they were about to hand us all real guns.

In theory then, I could be about to enter a room with an armed, drunk, recently emigrated maniac from Holland, attracted to America because of our lax gun laws and tendency to turn the mentally ill out on the streets. Well, at least I would be in a position to defend myself.

Home on the Range

Time to shoot.

With pistols in hand, we all wandered out of the classroom and into the gun shop, where we waited our turn to get ammunition. I took out my wallet, but Peter said we'd settle up later, which is a disturbing turn of phrase under the circumstances. We didn't have to pay the $40 class fee in advance, either. I don't suppose they get a lot of people skipping out on the tab, especially when it's such a long run to the front doors.

It was a surreal scene, standing around with my three friends, casually chatting and gesturing with our guns. Stan, bearded and burly, looked perfectly comfortable and natural with his .38 revolver, as if he'd just wandered out of the mountains for more whiskey.

Marisa, conceivably voted "least likely to pack heat" in her high school yearbook, looked surprisingly relaxed with a long-barreled .22 revolver dangling at her side. A gourmet chef, she has a good aptitude for hand tools. She could probably keep Bogart at bay with a waffle iron, never mind a gun.

By far the most alarming sight for me was my dear sweet Julie with a gun in one hand and a box of shells in the other. I'm pretty sure she'd ever plug me without a good reason, but seeing her with a cold black gun gave me the willies. Probably a past life thing.

I had a 9mm semi-automatic, with a 10 round clip. The cartridges were about the size of a cigarette filter, kind of pretty with a brass casing and copper-coated bullet.

We were herded to the indoor shooting range. It was like a bowling alley coated in concrete. We each had something like a lane, with panels that separated the shooters.

Paper targets were clipped to cables and whisked down the range. They started us at seven yards, the average distance at which you'd shoot a threatening home intruder.

I expected a lot of hand holding for our first few shots, but they just turned us loose and said we could start any time.

We all wore goggles and ear protection, and good thing. Guns are very loud, especially in concrete rooms. Carl had said that a burglar is generally scared off by the sound of your first shot. Suddenly this was perfectly understandable. I had promised myself that I would fire at least once without ear protection, just to get a sense of how loud they really are. I couldn't do it. Pulling the earmuffs away from my ears just an inch while others were shooting was enough.

If police shows were more realistic we would see scenes like this:

Mulder: He's got to be somewhere here in this big concrete room.

Scully: There! Watch out!

[Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!]

Scully: Where'd he go?

Mulder: What?

Scully: You go around the left, I'll check the exit.

Mulder: What?

Scully: What?

Mulder: There he is! Federal agents! Stop right there!

Criminal: What?

Of course, cops on television never hit the bad guy until the end of the show. Judging by Julie's shooting, any show she was in would be over in the first five minutes. The first six bullets Julie fired all came within inches of the center of the target. Carl was very complimentary, calling her a "natural shooter." She taped that target to her office door for a while, and hasn't heard a blonde joke since.

Once I realized that no rogue Dutchmen were going to try to gun me down, my shooting improved. It was interesting to swap guns to see how they differed. None of them had the powerful kick I anticipated; though there was a substantial difference between a .22 and a .38.

I learned a lot. For instance, there was no smoke to blow out of the barrel; shooting accurately from the hip would take a lot of practice; twirling a loaded gun on the finger could easily result in a new body cavity (I didn't try, even though we never got a "no horseplay" lecture).

I shot about five gunfulls of bullets, and that was enough. I never felt like Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Apparently it takes more than the gun. The right hat, maybe. People ask whether I felt a certain rush of power with a rod in my hand, and to tell the truth I didn't. In fact, except for the whole killing thing, firing a real handgun wasn't all that different than the BANG gun, other than there's a real noise rather than closed captioning. Maybe I'd feel different if we had more dramatic targets than sheets of paper. Beer bottles, say, or wind chimes. Maybe a television. Elvis "Love me Tender" Presley famously did that, with a .45, which thanks to my training I can tell you is a comparatively big gun.

As a finale, Carl showed us the devastating destruction that could be wrought on a sheet of paper by a shotgun, as though to say the handguns were sissy stuff. He called it the ultimate in home protection. I know he meant it to be a thrilling demonstration, but poking eight holes instead of one just didn't do it for us. We were already jaded.

We turned in our guns, paid up, and walked out into the still night air. We drove to a late night restaurant, where our animated gun-related conversation clearly alarmed those seated within earshot.

The waitress, however, winked.