2 posts tagged “guns”

yesterday, while i was at work, a conflict broke out on the street below and shots were fired. we may be on campus property, but this school is in the city, and in a highly active area. a place where cops hang out because of the abundance of traffic violations and parking dilemmas, good food, and courtyards with loiterers. i dont think there has ever been a day where i have not seen a police officer walking around down here. so then what would possess someone in an arguement to leave, retrieve a gun, come back and take a few shots? i suppose i will never understand people.

this book club things seems to be working out pretty well. not only has there been decent discussion, but we've picked two good reads so far.

so wes was in town for a short while and one of the things we talked about doing was shooting guns, so he did a little research with his military connections and called up "superior pawn and guns" on virginia beach blvd. as he is active military and i am over 21, we strolled over and rented pistols and got some range time. i was extremely nervous going in there, im always pretty reluctant to interact with gun toting folk in the south. never can tell what theyll think about asians. but the guy running the range upstairs was pretty cool, had a good beard and was smoking an awesome pipe, so you know, i guess hes trustworthy. anyways, i rented a 9mm beretta much like the image, but with a different grip. i bought a box of ammo and two targets; wes did the same but was renting a sig saur because he says thats what the coast guard is switching to. they have been using the beretta in the field

and hes already fired one. so we go into the range to our separate booths and set up. ive never handled an actual gun before, and its not quite as simple as an airsoft pistol. but its very easy to handle none the less. i figured it out just from video games and hollywood, which explains why guns are the choice of stupid violence everywhere. i filled the magazine (which is like the hardest part of shooting because your thumbs get sore from loading bullets) and loaded the gun (which is the coolest part because you get to pull back the slide and feel like youre in a movie) pointed at the target and pulled the trigger. of course, the first time i pulled, nothing happened so i assumed i hadnt pulled back far enough on the slide, tried again and popped a bullet out of the chamber. i disregarded it and fired at the target again, this time actually accomplishing something.  the kick of the pistol was much more than i expected, but as i continued to shoot i managed to ignore it for the most part.

as you can see, im not a bad shot. all but six shots are from 7 meters, the target on the bottom was my first 2 (15 bullet) magazine clips, the top was everything else including 6 shots from 15 meters. im pretty happy with it all. and i suppose the whole experience was neat, i mean after all the games ive played involving guns i feel like i now have a realistic view of aim and fire (which makes me appreciate the wii even more -and despise dual analog thumb FPSers). afterwards though, it made me think a lot about tech and how easy it is to kill someone (in general) with a gun; and that pretty much put a big damper on the rest of the day. guns are pretty neat devices, but they just make violence too easy. i cant really see the reasoning behind protecting firearm rights, there are just too many poor consequences for the small decision of pulling a trigger.