A challenge answered: spending the morning with a handgun

Ask me to jump into a freezing creek and I will. Tell me to climb up a rock wall and I’ll ask… Ask me to jump into a freezing creek and I will. Tell me to climb up a rock wall and I’ll ask how to tie the appropriate knots. Challenge me to a drinking, spitting or swearing contest and I’ll get a bottle or a dictionary.

On Sunday, a man put a gun in my hands and told me to aim for the black circle.

After I wrote a column advocating gun control, I received an e-mail asking if I wanted to learn to shoot. The writer listed his gun-related credentials and extended the invitation to any Pitt News-affiliate. Never one to back down from a challenge, I agreed to go and recruited six others to come along.

Before we headed to the shooting range, we needed supplies. The foam earplugs, which look like the mutant children of couch stuffing and orange gumdrops, proved easy to obtain. The necessary .22LR rounds – the term for the bullet projectile, gunpowder, primer and casing, as we learned – were not.

After bribing a friend with a pack of cigarettes, he and I schlepped to Wal-Mart and dashed to the hunting service counter. The blue-vest working there informed us we had to be 21 to purchase .22 caliber rounds. No one in the party being 21, I lured an of-age friend to Wal-Mart to acquire the necessary number of rounds.

Our group gathered at 9 a.m. Sunday morning. We drove to the range, tucked in the boondocks of the Pittsburgh suburbs. After being quizzed on gun safety and instructed in the ways of the gun, we headed to the shooting range.

The range consisted of paper and cardboard targets set up in a field. The place we shot from resembled a covered picnic area with wooden tables cemented into the ground. Rain dripped from between slats in the roof. Everyone squished the orange plugs into their ears and had to communicate via a system of yelling and hand gestures. It was cold; I jumped up and down to keep the feeling in my toes.

John and Josh, our instructors, showed us how to load a magazine with 10 rounds and slide it into the pistol’s grip. The guns – .22 caliber pistols – felt substantial without being too heavy, about the weight of a smallish laptop computer. Holding one in proper position – legs apart, arms straight out, forming an isosceles triangle with the gun at the apex – my muscles ached enough to let me know it was there.

After readying the gun, I aligned the guides and steadied my aim. I expected to be nervous, tired, scared and anxious. Instead I felt strangely calm, akin to when I went repelling, where I was harnessed and leaning with my feet halfway off the edge, waiting and unafraid. I squeezed the trigger. The gun fired. The barrel wobbled a little in my grip. I emptied the magazine into the paper target, hitting with most of the shots.

I can see why people love guns, hate guns and fear guns. They have a definite presence, a way of drawing all eyes in the room to them the way a snake does. When instructing us in the basic rules of gun safety, John angled the gun so that the barrel never pointed toward us. We trained our eyes on it, watching intently.

Guns exude a certain magnetism, with people ascribing all their mixed opinions to inanimate objects. Depending on the person, guns can be beautiful or dangerous, terrible or sexy.

I find them none of these, just heavy and slightly cold, still instruments for humans to use for violence.

I do not fear guns any more than I fear other devices with the capacity to kill. My father taught me to handle a knife properly, to have respect for it and acknowledge that humans, not tools, make mistakes.

Shooting showed me that guns could be like darts, to hone acuity of aim. The more I shot, the more I dissociated guns from their consequences. But after each person had had several turns, Josh retrieved the targets, which were printed on office paper. He congratulated us one completing a basic self-defense test and held one of the targets up to his chest. The center black circle matched the center of his chest, over the heart.

For an instant, the gravity of the situation hit. The long-distance hole punching we did acted as primers for serious situations. Standing in the damp, hands shaking and reddened by the cold, I understood my simultaneous respect and distaste for guns.

But there were more rounds to shoot and targets to hit. Josh placed the target on the table and the moment passed.

I wish I could say that firing a gun changed my opinion of them. Instead, it allowed my opinions to gel.

We returned to Pittsburgh with targets and casings as souvenirs. Staring through the holes in a fellow shooter’s target I realized the lesson to be had about recreational firearms: Guns don’t kill paper; people kill paper.

Columnist Sydney Bergman forgives Wal-Mart for abiding by state law, so long as it doesn’t happen again. She can be reached at sbergman@pittnews.com.