Gun Control (or lack thereof)

I'll be honest with you--it has been a hard week. Luckily, my roomates and I had previously scheduled an outing on Wednesday night that served as a welcome, somewhat dangerous, and surprisingly expensive distraction... shooting!

CJ and Mark took us shooting with three guns chosen from their large collection... an AK-47, a Glock 23, and some other small handgun with a name that eludes me right now. Chantal and Wendy had both been shooting a number of times before yesterday, but I had only been once.

As would be expected, we had remarkably different responses to the experience:

I'll admit that I am a self-proclaimed wuss, but I still think everyone should should cut me some slack--growing up in New Jersey, the only people with guns were criminals or cops. I didn't make it a practice of hanging out with those groups of people during high school. As a result, gunshots firing make me jump, which doesn't make for a very steady hand. Despite my tough-looking face in this picture and the number of bullet holes that I put in the guy (check out the spot between his eyes in particular), I was quite uncomfortable during our stay at the shooting range.

Wendy enjoyed her formal lessons given by both CJ and Mark. Mark, who has been through the Police Academy, stood by Wendy and gave her exercises [ie: two to the body, one to the head, two to the body, one to the groin], to Wendy's delight. Additionally, Wendy was pretty excited about shooting one-handed and felt like a thug as she rotated her right arm and hand by 45 degrees and unloaded bullets into the defenseless sheet of paper. For such a small girl, she had surprising power and accuracy. Don't mess with Wendy.

Chantal, shown here shooting the AK-47, got progressively more excited (and less cautious) over the course of the evening. She initially chose the "shapes" target, to avoid the appearance that she was shooting at an actual person. As she gained confidence, she moved the sheet further away from her, and counted the number of bullet holes that penetrated the paper after each round (often coming to us exuberantly and yelling so we could hear despite our protective earmuffs... "I only missed ONCE that WHOLE ROUND!"). The night was capped off well when Chantal decided to try out Wendy's thug-style, one-handed shooting with the small handgun--she commented that it was hard to aim just as CJ and Mark alarmingly mentioned that 4 of her bullets had skimmed along and damaged the shooting range's wall. Oopsie.

As a result, we might not be invited back to the shooting range... I think I'm okay with that.