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This coming Saturday I’ll be doing something different for me: I’ll be taking a handgun class.
Mind you, I’m an unabashed liberal who feels Obama is primarily a centrist. I don’t own a gun. I have no problem with the idea of requiring background checks before allowing the purchase of firearms, of making illegal items like 100 round drum magazines, of not permitting full auto fire combat weapons to be purchased. I don’t want anyone carrying a weapon into my house whether they have a concealed carry permit or not (unless I know it beforehand and have -- for some mostly unfathomable reason -- given my permission).
On the other hand, I’m also not someone who believes no one should be allowed to own a gun. I don’t have any ethical problems with hunting or target shooting -- in my youth, I went hunting occasionally with my father and my uncles. My father gave me a .22 single shot rifle when I was a teenager, and I used to plunk cans with that. I can understand why someone might want to have a handgun for protection and/or target range shooting. I’ve enjoyed shooting a bow and learning the basics of how to handle one; I expect I’ll also enjoy shooting a handgun. And I can hardly fault someone who collects guns when I have a collection of swords in my office -- I’m just naturally more interested in older weaponry than new weaponry.
I can see the allure, though. Taking a few fencing lessons got me interested in edged weapons; studying aikido only deepened that interest, and I’ve enjoyed studying sword work and techniques. I like performing solo katas and paired sword (boken), knife (tango), and staff (jo) work, which is the equivalent of taking your gun out to the firing range and using it in a controlled environment. With guns, I see reasonable arguments on both sides -- which gives me hope that, if we could learn to actually discuss the issues rather than trying to outshout each other, we might come up with decent gun control laws that would satisfy the majority concerns of both sides.
Yeah, I know. Congress.
After this class, I’ll have the training certification required to apply for a concealed carry permit; that’s not why I’m taking it. I’m doing this because I’m curious. I’m doing this because characters in my stories and novels sometimes use firearms, and I consider this research. I’m doing this because I think it’s probably a good idea to have some basic familiarity with handguns and to know to handle one safely and responsibly.
I will say that after looking up some of the handgun sites on the internet and reading the commentary there, I do feel like I’m taking a step into a different and somewhat hostile culture, at least to people like me. There is an incredible amount of social paranoia visible on some of the sites I’ve seen. The gun crowd, at least to first glance, appears to be dominated by the socially conservative. Some of them are the “conspiracy theory” types who believe that any gun registration is simply a means for the government to know who owns a gun so they can be easily taken away. Some of them see the re-election of President Obama as the first sign of impending Armageddon; a few go as far as to see this a a potential call for armed revolution. That attitude frightens me. (Maybe it’s the writer in me, but if *I* were a government leader who wanted to know who owned guns, I’d set up an organization that publicly and loudly espoused the right and indeed the obligation of every citizen to own whatever weaponry they wished, do careful lobbying and advertising so the right wing would be comfortable in our supposed support, all the while funneling to my liberal/socialist/fascist/tyrannical government the membership list. Y’know, an organization just like the NRA…)
However, after being appalled by some of what I saw, I did manage to find a few “liberals for guns” sites that seemed far more reasonable and moderate. Good…
So I go into this class with equal parts trepidation and interest. I’m looking forward to learning more about firearms. I’m looking forward to going to the range for a few hours (required by the training) and firing one. Will I end up purchasing a handgun myself? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.
Ask me later.
Mind you, I’m an unabashed liberal who feels Obama is primarily a centrist. I don’t own a gun. I have no problem with the idea of requiring background checks before allowing the purchase of firearms, of making illegal items like 100 round drum magazines, of not permitting full auto fire combat weapons to be purchased. I don’t want anyone carrying a weapon into my house whether they have a concealed carry permit or not (unless I know it beforehand and have -- for some mostly unfathomable reason -- given my permission).
On the other hand, I’m also not someone who believes no one should be allowed to own a gun. I don’t have any ethical problems with hunting or target shooting -- in my youth, I went hunting occasionally with my father and my uncles. My father gave me a .22 single shot rifle when I was a teenager, and I used to plunk cans with that. I can understand why someone might want to have a handgun for protection and/or target range shooting. I’ve enjoyed shooting a bow and learning the basics of how to handle one; I expect I’ll also enjoy shooting a handgun. And I can hardly fault someone who collects guns when I have a collection of swords in my office -- I’m just naturally more interested in older weaponry than new weaponry.
I can see the allure, though. Taking a few fencing lessons got me interested in edged weapons; studying aikido only deepened that interest, and I’ve enjoyed studying sword work and techniques. I like performing solo katas and paired sword (boken), knife (tango), and staff (jo) work, which is the equivalent of taking your gun out to the firing range and using it in a controlled environment. With guns, I see reasonable arguments on both sides -- which gives me hope that, if we could learn to actually discuss the issues rather than trying to outshout each other, we might come up with decent gun control laws that would satisfy the majority concerns of both sides.
Yeah, I know. Congress.
After this class, I’ll have the training certification required to apply for a concealed carry permit; that’s not why I’m taking it. I’m doing this because I’m curious. I’m doing this because characters in my stories and novels sometimes use firearms, and I consider this research. I’m doing this because I think it’s probably a good idea to have some basic familiarity with handguns and to know to handle one safely and responsibly.
I will say that after looking up some of the handgun sites on the internet and reading the commentary there, I do feel like I’m taking a step into a different and somewhat hostile culture, at least to people like me. There is an incredible amount of social paranoia visible on some of the sites I’ve seen. The gun crowd, at least to first glance, appears to be dominated by the socially conservative. Some of them are the “conspiracy theory” types who believe that any gun registration is simply a means for the government to know who owns a gun so they can be easily taken away. Some of them see the re-election of President Obama as the first sign of impending Armageddon; a few go as far as to see this a a potential call for armed revolution. That attitude frightens me. (Maybe it’s the writer in me, but if *I* were a government leader who wanted to know who owned guns, I’d set up an organization that publicly and loudly espoused the right and indeed the obligation of every citizen to own whatever weaponry they wished, do careful lobbying and advertising so the right wing would be comfortable in our supposed support, all the while funneling to my liberal/socialist/fascist/tyrannical government the membership list. Y’know, an organization just like the NRA…)
However, after being appalled by some of what I saw, I did manage to find a few “liberals for guns” sites that seemed far more reasonable and moderate. Good…
So I go into this class with equal parts trepidation and interest. I’m looking forward to learning more about firearms. I’m looking forward to going to the range for a few hours (required by the training) and firing one. Will I end up purchasing a handgun myself? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.
Ask me later.
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I'm going to take a wild prediction that you see some similarities between range culture and dojo culture. I have no great confidence in this prediction, but it fits my experience.
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I grew up on NYC, land of the Sullivan laws, where the only people who own guns are criminals, law enforcement, and a few hunters who have rifles. I never even touched a gun until I was in college.
Then a friend who is a sergeant in the NYPD took a few of us out to a range and let us try his various weapons, several types of handguns and rifles. The rifles were weird because I'm naturally left-eyed but they were set up for firing with the right hand, which puts the right eye at the sight. Similarly, holding a handgun with the right hand while trying to sight with the left eye is kind of strange.
(Nonetheless, I turned out to be a pretty good shot. Not the slightest bit surprising. Thank you, Dad, for encouraging all those hand/eye coordination sports when I was a kid.)
But anyway, it was waaaay more fun than I expected it to be. Another friend recently bought a package on Groupon for a shooting lesson, and I am so looking forward to going with her.
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My observation of the other people at the range was that they were extremely safety-conscious. No one behaved like a gun-happy loon; they were all quite serious and practical, and followed all the rules.
I was a little perturbed by the man who had his kids with him, but he made the kids stay back in the entry building with their mother. (My perturbation was more "Why are you coming to the rifle range with your wife and kids instead of dropping them off at the movies or something?" But his insistence on not letting them anywhere even vaguely near the shooting was at least something.)
The thing that surprised me most? The smoke. The sound is deafening, but as soon as you hear it you go, "Oh, yeah, of course." Startling, but not surprising. But the smoke... That never happens on tv or in movies. It was surprising how quickly the range would get hazy.
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I think you're going in for the best part honestly. Shooting ranges are fun if well run and safety oriented.
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