Thursday, March 20, 2008

It feels like I’ve aged a hundred years, something I wouldn’t have expected at 26, over the course of one short weekend. Things I thought I knew, assurances I had pegged as good as slab, were rent apart by the realization that human nature wends to darker corners than I believed possible. And I will leave it at that, vague as it is, because this will never be a journal in the traditional sense. The medium simply doesn’t encourage it, where full disclosure can easily be skimmed by total strangers. We discuss everything and, let’s be honest, nothing here, in a way that’s processed for everybody and nobody.

I’ve never fired a gun before, making today a bona fide experience. The shooting range was, strangely enough, probably the safest place in town, with cameras everywhere and sharp, sardonic employees holstering heat in plain sight. It was all necessary as well, I imagine, because although few people would be stupid enough to rob a gun shop, some of the customers–whose names probably rhymed with Cletus–clearly weren’t shooting with a full clip, if I may employ some new vocabulary here. Gun control may not thwart the criminal element, but there certainly seems to be a need to filter out the local Cleti.

I went to the range suspecting gunplay on the silver screen and TV is very likely a crock of shit, and I was surprised by the extent to which this was true. There was the mundanity of loading bullets into the clip, each one tenser than the last, which had a kind of symmetry with other activities. Like to cook? You’ve still got to do the dishes. Like to garden? You need to deal with pest control. Similarly, fully loaded clips don’t simply fall from the sky or appear in your pocket.

Once the chores are done, though, there’s a fascinating rhythm to the process. Push up the catch. Retract the slide. Put in a clip. Push down the catch. Click. Two hands. Three dots. The sight. Finger lightly on the trigger. Quiet. Commit. Squeeze. What the movies never seem to emphasize, with action heroes popping off a dozen rounds in a second, is the weight, the gravity of each squeeze of the trigger. There is a powerful, terrible finality in each shot. Will I sign up for a membership, become a card-carrying member of the NRA? Unlikely. Would I return to the range? Definitely. Now it’s on to the next skill.