Another newbie joins the ranks
This time, on the pages of Elle Magazine.
Too many money quotes in this one:
My next thought is, I want to do that again! I have an immediate, exhilarated reaction. Partly it’s that what I’ve just done initially frightened me, so there’s a sense of a limit overcome. For many people I know, guns remain unreal—the accessories of fictional characters, or at least of the Other, not you and yours. Yet to fire a gun is to realize you can do it: You can operate one, understand how it works. Shooting gives me a rush that comes from a feeling of (admittedly incomplete) mastery.
The author also does a good job describing the “zen” of shooting.
Plus, the sensory experience of target shooting—readying your stance, controlling your breath, focusing on the target—is so absorbing that I can’t indulge my free-floating worries. I can’t have a self-conscious intellectual reaction when firing a gun. It’s almost meditative. At one point I glimpse a woman in her sixties dressed in a white polo, creased khakis, and pristine white sneakers—attire for a day of golf at the country club; she’s brandishing a Glock. I have to stop myself from laughing with delight.
When people ask my why I shoot, I say to relax. And it is exactly how she described. You have to be completely focused on the task at hand…no room for day to day worries.
H/T to Shall not be Questioned.
Two more newbies join the ranks
JayG took his son and a friend out to the range. The predictable result occurs. Smiles and fun all around. And the money quote:
And I had the best feedback EVER from my son the very next day: “Dad, when can we go to the range again?”
Well done, sir. And welcome, TheBoy and Miss Z to the ranks of gunnies.
How I became a gunnie
“The details of my life are quite inconsequential…”
–Dr. Evil
Jennifer has asked for the story, and all the cool kids are doing it, so why not?
I grew up in a household of non-shooters. As a boy, guns weren’t much of a part of my childhood. I lived in Chicago when they instituted the gun ban, and it seemed like a good idea to me. (In my defense, I was six at the time. Unlike some folks, my thinking has evolved since then.) I wasn’t anti-gun, but firearms were not something that I spent much time thinking about.
I shot my first .22 at camp when I was about 11 or so. I hated that camp, and shooting was a welcome distraction. I wasn’t very good. I had just started wearing glasses, and I hated wearing my glasses, and I hadn’t learned about eye dominance yet. (Now that I think about it, I’m not sure that we wore eye or ear pro.) We single fed .22 rounds into a bolt action rifle. I remember that if you had brought your own rifle to camp, then you were allowed to use it, and that some of the kids had semi-automatic rifles. Man that seemed like a lot of firepower…
It wasn’t until I got out of college and had my first place that I started thinking about getting a gun for self defense. I decided to get a shotgun. Not knowing anything at all about firearms, I started visiting the web pages of all of the gun manufacturers that I could think of. I ended up getting a Remington 870. I remember calling around to all of the shops I could find looking for a short barrel and finally calling Remington. Forget ghost-ring sights or any of the other modern defensive additions. You could send the gun off to a smith, but nothing came out of the box. I still have that shotgun.
It was about this time that I started looking into getting a pistol. I was living in New York at the time, and the process was…byzantine. You need a pistol permit in order to even touch a pistol in New York. The exact process varies by county, but in Westchester where I was living it involved no fewer than three trips to the county office building, getting multiple “letters of good character” from other county residents, fingerprinting, training classes, and finally submitting the whole thing to a judge who would sign your permit when he got around to it. By law, the judge *has* to respond within 6 months, but that doesn’t matter. They routinely ignore that part of the law.
NY doesn’t have carry permits. A pistol permit is a carry permit, but the judge who issues your permit can “restrict” it. How it is restricted is up to the whim of the judge. Some judges, in some counties, routinely issue “unrestricted” permits. In Westchester…no way. I got a “target” permit, which allowed me to posses my firearm, and then carry it to and from the range, but nowhere else.
One more quirk of NY law: your pistols have to be listed on your permit by serial number. So consider the purchasing of a pistol in NY: You have to find the gun you want. You have to buy it. You can’t have it yet (it’s not on your permit), so you have to leave it at the gun shop. You bring your receipt to the county office building, fill out your paperwork, pay your fee (there’s always a fee), wait for the judge to sign off (again, they have 6 months, but in my experience it took 4-6 weeks), then go back to the shop with your amended permit and pick up your gun.
I also decided I wanted to get an AR-style rifle. I didn’t need one, but it made me mad that someone told me I couldn’t have one. A little research on the ‘net revealed that people…made their own? You could start with parts and put it together yourself? The geek in me was hooked. I learned more about the intricacies of the law than I cared to. I learned about how Josh Horowitz wrote a report in which he conspired to lie to the American public to create the myth of “Assault Weapons.” And I got mad. Really mad. Who in the hell did these guys think they were? And the more I researched, the more I thought that the way the laws had been passed was…sneaky. Sleazy. Why would you have to lie in order to get your way? Why in NY were carry permits denied, unless you knew the right judge?
9/11 convinced me that New York wasn’t safe anymore, and we moved to Connecticut. For the first time, I could apply for a real carry permit. For the first time, I could walk into a gun store, pick out a pistol, and take it home that very same day. Unbelievable freedom! And I could carry my gun with me….just about anywhere? I spent the first couple of weeks with my shiny new carry permit carrying a gun with nothing in the chamber. After a while, I became comfortable with carrying, and then finally uncomfortable when I *wasn’t* carrying.
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I was shocked and outraged by the way that citizens were forcibly dragged from their homes and disarmed. And I was outraged that it wasn’t being reported truthfully. And I was shocked at the absolutely bald faced lies being told by the officials from New Orleans weeks later when they said: “Guns? We didn’t take any guns. Wink, wink.” It was this event that really cemented in me my passion for individual self-defense.
I discovered the gun blogosphere, and decided to become a gun blogger. Granted, I blog barely enough to be considered a “blogger” but that’s another story. I decided I wanted to help other folks get into shooting and became an NRA instructor. I resolved that I needed to work on my training, and try to attend at least one training school per year.
And finally, most recently, I had the best thing that has ever happened since I became a gunnie. I got to take my daughter to the range, and got to see her pick up a gun for the first time. I got to help her take her first shots, see that new shooter grin, and her her berate me for not bringing enough ammo. 
V’s next gun
Our successful shooting outing this week (“Dad, that was the most fun I’ve ever had!”) has inspired me to upgrade the Shortest Newbie’s arsenal. The Crickett is a fine little gun, but the striker hits her thumb if she isn’t careful. Also, it gets tedious loading single rounds.
My thought is a Ruger 10/22 with a red dot sight. Simple, rugged, cheap. She can grow with the gun, and the 10/22 is, after the 1911, probably the most customizable of guns out there.
From Davidson’s Gallery of Guns, I found this. Purple stock, 16 and change inch barrel. Length of pull is probably a little long. Brownells has this, which is about the same LOP as the Crickett.
I still need to find a cheap red dot sight. She needs to learn sight alignment, but for now, I want her to just enjoy shooting.
Any feedback on my choices, gentle readers?
Why we win
“It’s going to be loud.”
“OK”
I’d been planning on taking V to the range for a few weeks now. She had gotten big enough for her Crickett. Since I’m going to be traveling for the next few weeks, I felt that a daddy-daughter-fun-day was in order. My plan was to get to the range early, be the first ones on the line, and avoid anyone shooting anything too loud.
As we drove to the range, we reviewed the four rules. We walked in to the range. “Hey, George. You here to shoot?”
“We sure are!”
“OK, you get the last lane.”
Oh boy. I had hoped that we would be alone. Instead, the range was full, and it seemed like everyone was shooting a hand cannon.
“It’s loud. We can skip it if you want.”
“No, Dad, I want to shoot.”
I helped her get her eyes and ears on. We opened the door to the range. *CRACK* I looked down…”Are you OK?”
“Yep”
We got into our lane, and I showed her how to load her rifle.
“Finger off the trigger…”
“I know, Dad!”
She brought the rifle up to her shoulder.
“Are you on target?”
“Yes”
“OK. Preeeeeessssss the trigger…”
*BANG*
“I want to do that again!”
I couldn’t be more proud of my daughter. I thought for sure we might get five rounds down range. When I saw how crowded the range was, I thought maybe one. She finished off the box, and demanded to know why I had failed to bring more ammo. She even shot my Smith & Wesson P22. That zombie is dead, my friends.
And this, is why we win. Check out the grin on my girl:
On the way home, she asked: “Dad, can we do that again?”
Um….yeah, I think so, kiddo!
Another newbie joins the ranks
Allow me to present the latest addition to the ranks:
A little blurry…I snapped it as she was getting ready to sight. Full range report later, but two items. First,the quote of the day was: “Daddy, why didn’t you bring more ammo?” Second, taking my daughter to the range for the first time was something I will never forget.
Another newbie prepares to join the ranks
Weer’d is taking another newbie shooting. A mom and her 10 year old son.
Much to my surprise she had assumed that I wouldn’t mind taking him to the range to WATCH me shoot. When I told her I’d take him and her to them to the range and watch THEM shoot, she seemed ecstatic.
Good job Weer’d!
Another Newbie joins the ranks
MomFallacy joins the ranks of the legally armed. Well done MomFallacy, and well done Breda!
Another newbie joins the ranks
Robb comments on the Seattle attack.
At least one good thing came out of it. I have a buddy who I have been helping getting started in shooting. He just got his CCW, and we are going to Gunsite in March. This morning he sent me an email:
btw: As Linda was watching the news this morning of a people getting attacked on the Metro transit station and security doing nothing and police coming late, she surprised me saying she is now seeing the value of having responsible, trained people armed increasing the safety of everyone around them. wow. next steps, getting Linda to get her CCW.
Looks like the right lesson is being learned!
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Do your part!
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