My First TIme Shooting a Gun

All right, I'm gonna come clean: I'm not the biggest gun fan. My view on guns can be summed up in this Bill Maher quote. **Yeah, yeah, I know he's said some questionable shit lately, but I still agree with him on this matter.

"'Do we have to adore them, do we have to love them so much? I look at guns like antibiotics...You know, maybe sometimes you need them, but I don't kiss my antibiotics, I don't polish them. I don't worship my amoxicillin. If I need it, it's there.'"

And that's it, my friends--what if I needed it? It's no secret I'm a pansy (in spite of my Gryffindor status and my cockroach-killing abilities). I don't seem like a hard-ass Lara Croft, but I aspire to throw unsuspecting criminals off, dammit!

So when my brother Kevin invited me to the gun range, it went something like this:
*long, reluctant sigh* "Okaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy, fineeeeeeee."

My enthusiasm remained tepid at best until we arrived at the gun range. I immediately felt like I was transported to the great Republican ideal: The Country of Texas. The parking lot was packed with small penises XXL trucks. When I entered the premises, it wasn't much better. I was directed to a side-room to watch a safety video. Everyone wore a 10-gallon hat in the video, no shock there. When I returned to the main room, Kevin said, "I paid for you," to which the cashier shouted, "AS HE SHOULD!"

Psh, I'll have you know I am a financially independent, self-sufficient women...and actually, no, it was all good, I really didn't wanna pay for this crap anyway. Woo!

Everyone in the gun safety video looked like a wannabe Chuck Norris.

Before we went out back where the targets were, my brother presented me with ear protection that made me feel like Warren from There's Something About Mary:

Courtesy of Galleryhip.com, not my photo, back off, folks

This made me nervous. See, whenever I learned percussion in high school, I kept having an embarrassing problem where I'd wince and jump whenever someone crashed cymbals together. That includes when I crashed the cymbals. I didn't exactly want to jump while shooting a deadly weapon. But if it were super loud, well, that would be a very likely possibility.

My suspicions proved correct. My brother showed me how to hold a gun and continuously emphasized squeezing the living shit out of it. I would then pick up the gun, squeeze it until my knuckles turned white, and--as an instinct--my finger rested on the trigger.

"NO DON'T STOP WTF TAKE THAT FINGER OFF," Kevin shouted. "You aren't even holding it right yet! Keep the finger off the trigger 'til it's time to shoot."

It took me about five tries, but I finally got all my fingers where they needed to be and held up the gun. I gripped it tight, wore my best grimace, aimed for the target, and...

POP! The force of the gun shot me backward. I felt a sting on my thumb. Turned out I wasn't gripping the gun hard enough (HOW?), it moved, and the force gave me a ripe red mark on the second joint of my thumb. Great.

"You didn't hold it tight enough," my brother Captain Obvious told me.

I couldn't reply. Damn, that was a lot of force. I stared down at the gun as the killing machine it was, thinking about removing the bullets and peacefully placing a dandelion in the hole. Maybe I wasn't hard enough for this. What I was good at, though, was jokes, and I asked my brother, "If I were to shout 'HILLARY 4 PRISON 2017' right now, how many high-fives do you think I'd get?"

Even though I felt defeated, I decided to learn more basics. I tried loading bullets, which surprisingly took a hell of a lot longer than I thought. Damn things don't exactly drop in there. Any gun I'd use in a life-or-death struggle would definitely have to be pre-loaded.

"Now lock 'em in," Kevin told me. "Push on that button right there." I tried popping 'em in all stylish-like, hoping my inner gangster (gangsta?) would come out. But it didn't. I pushed and pushed and couldn't get the bullets to lock in.

"Help meee," I cried, so my brother rolled his eyes and did it for me. Okay, cool. I was a spoon-fed gangsta, but a burgeoning gangsta nonetheless.

This was totally me.

Pow pow pow. I shot three times. The same chill went down my spine with the realization I was doing something dangerous, but at least that time I got the grip right and didn't hurt myself.

"I know how to hold it now! Take a SnapChat of me," I told Kevin. He scoffed and told me to stop being a faggot (gun range talk is similar to locker room banter, no worries). I figured I would mess up anyway--annoyingly enough, I hit the target dead-center on my next shot. Figures.

Unfortunately, that was the climax of my visit. I didn't get a whole lot better at anything except loading bullets into the gun and locking them in place. I kept aiming at the center of the target and would hit far too high and too far right. In other words, I still couldn't hold the gun tightly enough, so I kept jumping backwards and the bullets flew in the opposite direction that I intended.

One of Kevin's final directives to me? "You're jumping before you even pull the trigger, Ashley! Stop it."

But when all is said and done, I *theoretically* know how to shoot a gun. Still, knowing my dumb ass, I would be too anxious to remember anything in the head of the moment--holding the damn thing too loose with my sweaty hands, probably shooting my cat instead of an intruder.

Thank God for pepper spray!