i'm not a big fan of guns and actually kind of hate them. i hate them because i'm scared of them and i haven't any real exposure to them. all i know about guns is that they are dangerous and most people i know who own them are a little cuckoo. i can only reference guns by the movies i see them in. like, oh that's the kind of rifle they use in clint eastwood movies or that's the kind of gun i saw in boyz 'n the hood. i wouldn't know the difference between a .22 or a semi automatic vs. automatic, only knowing that they can all kill things. my sister, kiki, an avid skeet shooter, recently asked if i wanted to go shooting. i said only if her husband, emil was taking us. he is the head coach of the service rifle team (US army marksmanship unit) and competes for the army in national and international matches. last summer, at the palma championship, he won silver in the world individual long range match. for all you no gun knowledge friends, this is the olympics of long range shooting (it happens every four years). emil knows guns like silvio knows video games.
so this past weekend in upstate new york, emil took me out for my first shooting experience. on military time, silvio and i dragged our asses out of bed to take a train to upstate new york to meet my sister and her in-laws. after exchanging a few sleepy hellos, emil drove us out to the shooting range his family's been a member of, for over 30 years. emil grew up with guns and has mad respect for it. although he comes from a gun loving family (the family vehicle has a bumper sticker that says, charlton heston is my president) he does not preach the way of the gun to anyone. emil was raised shooting targets for sport. i asked him awhile back if he'd gone hunting and although he has a few times, he looked at me and said, "honestly, it wouldn't be very fun for me. if i have a gun and a target, i will kill whatever it is i'm shooting at. so no, i don't hunt animals." which made me chuckle, because when kiki first told us about her then new boyfriend, i said, "seriously, one shot one kill. this guy can nail you several football fields away!"
after giving us very slow and articulate instructions on handling a gun, feeling a gun and the importance of gun safety, emil let us shoot one at a time. we started off with a rifle called a m1 .30 caliber carbine (a ww 2 battle rifle). it was small and loud. the rifle's bang made me jump every time it was shot. it's the kind of gun noise i do not like. the puh-pow echos in the woods and it makes your skin crawl. the second gun we shot was a winchester .22 caliber target rifle. it was long and sleek and it had tiny bullets. the .22 was easy to handle and made little swoosh noises as the bullet left the chamber. every time i opened the chamber to reload, a little smoke would come out; talk about feeling like a cowboy! the last piece of heavy metal to cradle my arms was the ar-15 .223/5.56mm rifle. an ar-15 is the civilian version of the m-16; it's not fully automatic. this gun is solid, sleek and sick. surprisingly it barely has a kick. emil placed the butt of the rifle to his chest and fired a bullet and then placed the butt of the rifle to his balls and fired a bullet to show us what little kick it had. this is how they demonstrate the rifle in the army so that people aren't so scared of it. i mean, seriously, when you're handling this gun, you think it's going to kick you back to hell when you fire it. following emil's lead, i was able to hit my 100 yard target with relative ease. the ar-15 is pretty damn accurate and makes a first time handler like me look good. it is a muscle gun and it is pretty sexy.
silvio shot the best of the three of us. david was a close second. i think it's all the time they've logged on the game consoles. i don't play first person shooters and i believe if you log in enough hours on these games, you can parlay some of your game skills to real life shooting. we are all very good at hand-eye coordination and emil said it showed. he said we were some of the best civilians he'd taught. he's a good brother-in-law. i think he thought we were going to come out and fool around and after seeing how respectful we were with the rifles he was pleased. there is an outstanding challenge for silvio and emil to meet up online to play a little ghost recon. it is obviously, the only opportunity silvio will ever have of "killing" emil. apparently, emil loves this game. this match, i'd like to see.
at the end of our day at the range, emil let me take the m1 .30 caliber carbine rifle and shoot rapid fire. with the .30 by my side, i didn't know what else to do but spray the bullets in a side sweeping motion, while i screamed, "get to the chopper!" i don't know why i chose the predator line, but i suppose it's one of my favorite movie tags. shooting a gun this way is thrilling. it makes you feel powerful. after my little fun, i talked to emil about how unrealistic movies are showing people spraying bullets side to side without nary a movement in range. i found that every time a bullet left the barrel i was forced to aim my gun a little higher due to the kick back. so although i started at the hip, when i was done pulling the trigger, my gun was definitely pointing a good 6" - 8" higher than where i'd started. man, movies are so fake.
i didn't shoot as much as i thought i would, firing about five to ten bullets per rifle. i think the next time emil's in town, i'll ask him to take me out shooting again. and hopefully next time, i won't be so scared. after our fun gun session, i do have some interest in learning more about the skill of shooting. in the meantime, i'll just keep shooting my mouth off.
