Staring down the barrel, feeling the heat

By JoAnne Young

I would call it a full-body experience. I would say it's not coming a step closer to the edge, but the expunging of it ... a changing of the very idea of power.

 

I thought this first experience with firing a gun would be merely an out-of-the-box experience. It turned out to be an encounter with raw force – the kind that can be wielded with a finger but can transform things physically, mentally, emotionally, politically, even ethically, morally. 

When talking to a fellow writer about the idea, he invited me to accompany him and a few friends to an indoor shooting range. I considered it long and hard. Guns have become larger than life in our culture, and so politically charged. I really couldn’t turn it down.

 

So I met them one morning in April at Big Shots, a range in Lincoln, watched a short video on gun safety, filled out a form and waited for the action. I wandered around the store area, out of the realm of anywhere I’d ever been ... big and small guns everywhere, ammo, equipment, Second Amendment wall art and NRA slogans. 

A couple of dogs – Frankie and Spankie, a corgi and a lab --brought a tiny bit of comfort, but not as much as it turned out I needed. 

 

Then it was go-time. I put on my ear and eye protection, chose a paper target and followed the five men I came with to an outer room, nervous and unsure what to expect. I thought about the theme of the mythic hero's journey, in which the main character leaves the ordinary world and ventures into the unknown to overcome obstacles and challenges. 

In no time I was standing in lane No. 5, my friend and instructor by my side, and the shooting by those around me began.

 

The first eight shots were fired in 38 seconds, and I jumped each and every time, feeling dumb but not able to stop. A .22 caliber pistol fires at 157 decibels. Noise levels above 85 decibels are considered hazardous to human hearing. The threshold of pain is 130 decibels. It was more than the sound, though. It was the jarring of my body, the abruptness of the intrusion. 

 

“It’s loud, isn’t it?” someone said. “The first time I did this I couldn’t believe it. Nothing in the movies or TV makes you appreciate how loud it is.”

   

I tried to focus on the task. But all I could think of, every time a shot rang out, was what it would be like to be in a classroom, or a mall or grocery store or movie theater and to hear that sound of the firing of a gun. Those people must have jumped, too, but with the terror that if that bullet didn’t come for them, the next one surely could. 

 

When it was my time to fire the pistol in my hand, it made me weak. I aimed it toward the target, a simple shape of a human, thinking I could hit where I was pointing. Instead, I couldn’t tell where I was even aiming for sure. I know with practice people get a better aim, a better knowledge of what they are doing. But I kept thinking about what happens to that resolve and decision making when a person is in a high emotional state.

 

By the end of the half hour, I had pulled the trigger on a Heritage 2-inch barrel revolver and 3-inch revolver, a Sig Sauer .380 caliber pistol, a Smith & Weston .357 caliber revolver with an 8-inch barrel, and a .38 caliber “Detective Special” revolver. 

I was relieved to head to the door. I would call the experience one of the most intense I’ve ever had. 

 

The most astonishing thing I learned? A .22 caliber bullet can travel more than a mile, 900 feet per second, which is three city blocks. Launch an AR-15 and the distance is four times that, 12 blocks in a second. 

 

I understand that many people grow up shooting from the time they are young, on the farm or hunting with a parent. It’s entirely within their comfort zones. It’s considered recreation. 

 

I also understand that if I didn’t fear guns before, I certainly do now. 

I have read the accounts of trauma surgeons of what a fired bullet can do once inside the human body. Firing at that paper target, aiming for the area of the heart, I could feel it from a different perspective. 

 

Not too long after this experience, I found out my 8-year-old granddaughter was on her playground at a Denver elementary school when a fugitive with a gun ran across the property while being chased by police. My daughter and other parents didn’t find out about it for about four weeks and the police report giving more information was not released. Now my daughter has become an activist, trying to help persuade the Colorado legislature to pass an assault rifle ban. She’s getting involved in movements to protect kids and others from gun violence. 

 

I am proud of her. 

 

I needed to have this experience. But it changed me, in its intensity, in what it exposed about power, and the grief it left inside me for so many people. 

 

I hope to continue to have these out-of-the-box experiences, to leave my comfort zone maybe monthly or more often. 

But I have to tell you, my trigger finger ... she's no longer feeling the itch. 

Follow 5 Women Mayhem on Facebook and read this month as we get out of our comfort zones for this month of MAYhem.