electric mist

the thing about guns...

I wanted to shoot a Glock, since a couple of characters in my book shoot one, and shoot really well. I've shot a 22 before at the range and was a pretty good shot, but I knew handling a Glock would be different.

What I am aware of is how dangerous handguns are, and yet, even knowing this intellectually, I didn't expect to feel so squeamish handling a more powerful handgun than what I've held before. We met our oldest son at the indoor shooting range, and had to don the safety equipment, and by the time we got into the actual range, I was feeling nervous. My son taught me how to hold the Glock (watching out for the slide) and when I took it, my first shot was dead center in the bullseye. No kidding, dead center.

But.

The recoil surprised me. It was a 40 caliber Glock, and while the kick was nothing compared to some bigger handguns (I'm told), I just hadn't expected it to be as much since, when my son shot it, he didn't seem to have as much recoil. And then I started thinking a lot about aiming and that these were real bullets going out there and through the target and them zooming to the back wall, and the more I thought, the worse I got. I finally went and rented a compact Glock (much smaller), which was also a 9mm (slight smaller bullet than the 40 caliber), and it was a little easier to hold and aim, and I started doing better.

Still, I was nervous the entire time.

Later, we ate lunch and Luke told us a bunch of facts he'd learned in his gun classes (he's applying to be in the FBI, he's taking gun classes)... and one of the things he talked about was how a 40 caliber bullet could go through something like 17 layers of sheetrock. 17. So all of those times in a movie or TV show that we see someone dodge behind a wall or a corner in a house and bullets riddle the wall? That person would have been dead on the other side.

I'm going to go back for more lessons, just so I know more about what I'm writing about when I have Bobbie Faye shoot at something. But I don't think I'll ever actually get used to it; I think that fear will stay with me. At least, I hope so.

Posted by toni at April 28, 2006 05:05 AM