Skipping Towards Gomorrah (35 page)

It seems to me that Firsts and Seconds could compromise. This may get a little confusing but try to follow along: Seconds want the most liberal reading of the Second Amendment, while Firsts want the most liberal reading of the First; most Seconds favor a conservative reading of the First Amendment, and most Firsts favor a conservative reading of the Second. There's room for a deal here. If Firsts agree to sign off on a liberal reading of the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed), and Seconds sign off on the most liberal interpretation of the First Amendment (complete separation of church and state, total freedom of speech), perhaps we could end most of the culture war. Gun nuts don't have to worry about People for the American Way coming for their guns anymore, and First Amendment fans can write, print, publish, film, videotape, and chat on-line about anything we care to.

Is it a deal?

 

I
t was a Saturday afternoon when I first walked into the Bullet Trap, the place was pretty crowded, and the man behind the counter laughed when I asked if I could get a shooting lesson. The Bullet Trap doesn't give lessons on the weekends, he said, because they're way too busy. He told me to come back on Monday. I wasn't going to be in Plano on Monday, I pleaded, and then I made the mistake of telling the truth: I made a special trip to Plano to learn how to shoot; I was writing something about guns; I had to fly home the next day. Couldn't they squeeze me in?

The man behind the counter gave me a long, hard look. Then he asked me where I was from. It didn't occur to me that “where are you from” could be a trick question. When I told him I was from Seattle, he snorted and rolled his eyes.

“That's a pretty liberal place, Seattle. Did someone send you down to Texas to write something negative about guns?” he said, leaning over the counter.

No, no, no. I assured the armed, menacing man behind the counter that I wasn't writing something negative about guns—to the contrary! I was in beautiful Plano, Texas, because I wanted to write something positive about guns. There might have been a gun range I could have gone to in Seattle, I explained, but I didn't want to learn to shoot from someone who had gone soft living in Seattle, a guy who felt he had to apologize for shooting a gun. I wanted to learn to shoot from a guy who had never once doubted his right to keep and bear arms—and I wanted to learn to shoot in Texas because Texas and guns go together like rigor and mortis. Among the gun nut states, Texas is the gun nuttiest.

Yes, sir, I was in Plano because I wanted to write something positive about guns, something upbeat. Glowing, even.

The man behind the counter—his name was Dave—called his boss over, an even larger, more menacing man. (Now, none of these guys were menacing in reality, but they were all armed.)

“This fella is from Seattle,” he explained to his boss, “he's in Plano special to learn to shoot,
and
he's going to write something about it.”

The Bullet Trap's boss asked me if I was planning on writing something positive or negative, and I explained again that it was my intention to write something complimentary, something that would show gun owners in the best possible light. Christ, I thought to myself, for a bunch of rough, tough, armed-to-the-teeth types, the men who worked at the Bullet Trap seemed awfully nervous about the power of the printed word. What were they so afraid of? If Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, the school shootings in Pearl, West Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield, Littleton, and Santee, and the ten children shot and killed in the United States
every day
aren't enough to convince the federal government to do something about the 200 million guns in this country, shit, then nothing I could write was going to get the Second Amendment repealed.

Fearing that my trip to Plano was going to be for nothing, I played my trump card. Write something negative about guns? Me? Goodness, no!

“My dad was a cop,” I said, “I grew up in a house with a gun. I'm not afraid of guns. Really, I'm not here to write some big guns-go-bang exposé.”

I didn't tell the men at the Bullet Trap that my dad was pro-gun control, of course, or that I thought the 65 million handguns in the United States was a social and economic disaster, or that I admired countries that banned the possession of firearms by average citizens. I guess I misled them. Despite misleading the men at the Bullet Trap about my own personal feelings about guns, I wasn't entirely misleading them about my intentions. I think guns are a sin—and I think it's clear that Jesus would be on my side on this issue—but I was working the pro-sin/pro-sinner angle, and I would find something nice about guns if it killed me.

Hearing that my dad was a cop, and that I grew up in a house with a gun, opened doors for me at the Bullet Trap. Cop for a dad, house with a gun: I may not have looked like a gun owner—jeans too baggy, hair too short, gut undetectable—but I was one of them. The boss okayed a special Sunday afternoon class. I was told to come back at 2 P.M. tomorrow.

 

J
ust as an aside to gun nuts who might be reading this.

Gun nuts talk and talk about needing guns to protect the rights and freedoms that all Americans enjoy, but when the rights and freedoms of Americans are under siege, gun nuts are nowhere to be found. I don't recall seeing any NRA members, for example, ever protesting an assault on the free speech rights of Americans by the feds—or the federal government's successful efforts to undermine our constitutional protections against government surveillance and unreasonable searches, their attempts to regulate speech on the Internet, limit abortion rights, and ban any public expression that's in any way sexually explicit. Where were all the freedom-loving gun nuts when the director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was arrested and (unsuccessfully) prosecuted for displaying Robert Mapplethorpe's photos?

So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns. For a freedom fan such as myself, this seems a little limited. All that firepower—200 million guns—dedicated to defending just one freedom? Charlton Heston, the actor and president of the NRA, says he “cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack,” and yet I don't recall seeing Charlton Heston on television complaining about John Ashcroft's recent assaults on, say, attorney-client privilege. If gun nuts want to convince non-gun nuts of the value of an armed citizenry, perhaps they should use their guns to defend
all
of our freedoms, not just your freedom to own guns.

According to Doug Honig of the American Civil Liberties Union, some gun groups have started to come around; upset by Ruby Ridge and Waco, some gun groups have engaged in polite protests against proposals to increase federal police powers. To me it seems like a case of too little too late—and why so polite? I mean, I thought the point of gun ownership was getting to use guns to defend our freedoms. If gun owners found all the rights Americans are guaranteed by our Constitution worthy of defending to the death, perhaps non-gun owners would be more sympathetic to the rights of gun owners.

It's just a thought.

 

W
hen I showed up on Sunday, I was introduced to Paul, the man who would teach me to shoot.

Paul was my age, with a helmet of thick, blond hair. Like everyone else at the Bullet Trap, he was wearing a button-down, collared denim shirt tucked into a pair of black jeans. He had a slight drawl, and before he would let me pick out or handle a gun, Paul took me through his Four Big Rules for Safety.

“First, all guns are loaded,” Paul said, “that's the first of four big rules. Some people say, ‘Treat all guns as if they're loaded,' but that introduces some doubt in your mind. By telling yourself to think a gun
might
be loaded, you're also telling yourself that the gun might
not
be loaded. You're introducing subconscious doubt. You don't want to have that doubt. Say no to doubt. Tell yourself, ‘All guns are always loaded,' and you'll always treat a gun as if it's loaded.

“The second Big Rule: Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on a target and you're ready to shoot.

“Third, never allow the muzzle to point at anything you're not willing to destroy. Some people think that if they point the gun down and toward themselves,” Paul said, pointing the gun down and towards his crotch, “they're being safe. But if that gun goes off, you've gone and destroyed something you might not want destroyed.

“Finally, four: Know your target and know what's beyond it. If you miss your target, its a tactical disaster and it's socially irresponsible. If you're going to shoot at it, hit it. If you can't hit it, don't shoot at all.”

Paul handed me some additional safety rules to read.

“These are the rules of the range,” Paul said. “Read them, and I'll be right back.”

The list was long, and the type was small. When I got to number 17, I read this: “At this time, please inform the Range Officer that is helping you that ‘Barney is a great kids' show.' This will let him know that you are reading these rules.” I was done reading the list when Paul came back, and he asked me if I had anything to say to him.

“Barney is a great kids' show,” I said.

“Good boy,” said Paul.

I told Paul I wanted to shoot a variety of handguns, and he recommended that I start with a .22-caliber pistol.

“It's easier to get used to shooting a .22, since there's less recoil. They're accurate up close, less accurate at longer ranges.”

Some of the .22s in the case Paul walks me over to are so tiny they look more like PEZ dispensers than like guns. Most of the guns made for women are .22s, and some of the guns in the case have pink and light blue handles. “You can get 'em in lots of different colors,” Paul said. “That way she can have a different color gun for every day of the week, if she likes.”

I pick out one of the larger .22s, a black gun with a long shaft.

“That's an excellent gun, a fine gun,” Paul said, removing it from the case and setting it down on the counter between us. “It's a real nice piece.” He took the clip out, made sure it was unloaded, snapped it back in place, and handed me the gun. That's when my heart began to race. I'd never held a real gun before, but I immediately and instinctively placed my finger on the trigger.

“Take your finger off the trigger,” Paul said. “You only put your finger on the trigger when it's time to shoot.”

Paul showed me how to hold the gun: right hand on the handle, left hand wrapped around the right hand, trigger finger flat against the barrel until it was time to shoot.

“With your right hand, you push the gun forward, with your left hand, you pull it back,” Paul said. “That steadies the gun, holds it level. And you never point a gun at anyone, ever.”

Paul was on one side of the counter, and I was on the other, facing him, which meant that I was pointing the gun in his general direction, if not right at him. I couldn't turn and point it into the shop, which was filled with people, so I kept pointing the gun to one side of Paul. The only problem was that Paul wasn't the only person behind the counter helping customers, and every once in a while one of Paul's coworkers passed behind him, which resulted in me pointing a gun at his coworkers over and over again.

Paul set a small box of ammunition for the .22 on the counter and showed me how to load the clip. The bullets for a .22 gun are so small and so thin that they looked tiny and harmless. It was hard to believe that these little piece of metal would shoot out of the gun I was holding with such force they could blow lethal holes in another human being.

I was lost in homicidal thought when a big guy standing to my right, a man who had been observing my first gun lesson, began to chuckle.

“That's a nice piece,” the man said, gesturing towards my gun. “But it's not a man's gun. Check out my unit.” The man pulled a large, long .45 out of his carrying case, and held it up for me and Paul to admire.

“That's a fine unit,” Paul said, admiring the stranger's gun, “a fine piece.”

Piece, unit, piece, unit—there may be times when a cigar is just a cigar, but looking at the gun in my hand, with its thick shaft, comparing units with the man to my right like a couple of drunks at a urinal, I doubted that there was ever a time when a gun was
just
a gun. It's not an original observation, I'll admit, but after being in a room filled with men admiring guns, it's one I feel somehow obligated to make. There were women at the shooting range; some were shooting, but most were standing by and watching their husbands, boyfriends, and sons shoot. A large, plate-glass window separated the sales counter from the shooting range, and I watched a woman shoot while Paul talked with the man next to me about his piece. It was like watching a woman box or play football; there's no reason a woman shouldn't box or play football or shoot if that's what she wants to do, but it's almost impossible to shake the feeling that she's doin' something that is essentially masculine. A man is four times more likely to own a gun than a woman is, according to the Violence Policy Center, which may explain why men are six times more likely to get shot. Guns are big, loud, scary, and phallic, and men are free to pull out their pieces, admire them, swap stories about them, and blow them off in public—all the sorts of things men aren't allowed to do with their actual pieces.

 

P
aul hands me a big pair of airport-style earmuffs, a pair of safety goggles, and a box of ammo. It's time to do some shooting. Paul puts the gun in a little gun cozy, a kind of large, semicircular fabric carrying case that zips up one side. The gun just fits inside, snuggly, and it looks like a quesadilla or a calzone with a gun filling. Paul points me towards the door that leads to the shooting range, tells me he'll meet me at lane number one. A sign on the door to the range says, NO ONE PAST THIS POINT WITHOUT SAFETY GEAR
ON
.