In our attempt to experience all things American, my husband and I and a couple of friends found a local shooting range and booked a 'guns for beginners' class last weekend. The range, with its impressive arsenal of guns, knives, pepper sprays and bullets, all varying in size and lethality, is a little too close to gang land and LAX airport for my liking but I was slightly reassured by the forced temporary surrender of visitors' weapons on entry to the establishment. It at least gives the staff a chance to examine your armaments and calculate how quickly and nastily everyone would die if someone decided to turn nasty. But I suppose there can't be many people stupid enough to hold up a shooting range. Well, actually...
Anyway, after signing away almost all our rights, we sat, clammy-handed, in a classroom while our gun-wielding instructor spent an hour rattling through some basics. You know, how not to shoot your friends, why "you don't necessarily NEED to shoot" your neighbour, that sort of thing. Once he was happy we weren't going to shoot him in an amateur panic, he escorted us through to the lanes - ear protection and eyewear in place - for an hour of shooting.
My husband had made the casual mistake of expressing confidence in his own marksmanship. I think some guy at a fairground had once told him that he shot well, long before we met, and he was secretly excited about demonstrating this little-known skill of his, proud to show his new wife how well he could protect her from the evils of the world. And he really wasn't that bad at all - in fact, he's pretty good. But unfortunately he wasn't quite as good as me! It turns out that I am actually a really good shot! I peppered the chest of the target silhouette with my .22, my husband standing by, mouth agape. Battling to save face, he encouraged me to move up to the big boys' guns, poised to kiss it all better when I scared myself and backed away. But no, I was just as hot with a Beretta 9mm! My groupings were so good that our instructor even allowed me to fire a shot from his very own big bad gun (no idea what it was, but it had more recoil than the 9mms). It's not often I'm better at something than my husband, so I quite enjoyed the whole experience!
Needless to say, my husband was not having any of this and he was back down there two days later to scrabble back a little pride. And he did well, proving that a little practice (and the absence of a bragging wife) works wonders. I'm fairly competitive, but I'm really not too fussed about increasing my distance and shrinking my groupings. It feels good knowing that if someone handed me a revolver in the heat of a Jason Bourne style shoot-out I might know which bit to squeeze. But I'm just as happy in the knowledge that next time I fish for my grocery store loyalty card, the guy next to me in the queue might catch a glimpse of my firing range member ID and know I'm not just your common or garden housewife...
Anyway, after signing away almost all our rights, we sat, clammy-handed, in a classroom while our gun-wielding instructor spent an hour rattling through some basics. You know, how not to shoot your friends, why "you don't necessarily NEED to shoot" your neighbour, that sort of thing. Once he was happy we weren't going to shoot him in an amateur panic, he escorted us through to the lanes - ear protection and eyewear in place - for an hour of shooting.
My husband had made the casual mistake of expressing confidence in his own marksmanship. I think some guy at a fairground had once told him that he shot well, long before we met, and he was secretly excited about demonstrating this little-known skill of his, proud to show his new wife how well he could protect her from the evils of the world. And he really wasn't that bad at all - in fact, he's pretty good. But unfortunately he wasn't quite as good as me! It turns out that I am actually a really good shot! I peppered the chest of the target silhouette with my .22, my husband standing by, mouth agape. Battling to save face, he encouraged me to move up to the big boys' guns, poised to kiss it all better when I scared myself and backed away. But no, I was just as hot with a Beretta 9mm! My groupings were so good that our instructor even allowed me to fire a shot from his very own big bad gun (no idea what it was, but it had more recoil than the 9mms). It's not often I'm better at something than my husband, so I quite enjoyed the whole experience!
Needless to say, my husband was not having any of this and he was back down there two days later to scrabble back a little pride. And he did well, proving that a little practice (and the absence of a bragging wife) works wonders. I'm fairly competitive, but I'm really not too fussed about increasing my distance and shrinking my groupings. It feels good knowing that if someone handed me a revolver in the heat of a Jason Bourne style shoot-out I might know which bit to squeeze. But I'm just as happy in the knowledge that next time I fish for my grocery store loyalty card, the guy next to me in the queue might catch a glimpse of my firing range member ID and know I'm not just your common or garden housewife...
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