My dude was SO dead.

To find something new and scary and life-enriching to do for my birthday, I kept coming back to firing a gun. Lucky for me, my friend T was all: "I own a boat-load of guns and grew up shooting them". And I was all: "HAHAHAHAHA" because T is best known for his time in professional musical theater and his penchant for breaking into song. Neil Diamond songs to be exact.

But I guess he wasn't kidding because yesterday, CG and I picked up T and his case full of guns (!) and we drove to an indoor shooting range in Burbank.

The range is in a nondescript industrial building right off the freeway. Walking in, I was obviously sticking out like a sock-n-sandal tourist and I pushed my little camera deeper into my purse so as not to appear the total newbie. It was cold in there but I was sweating beneath my layers of clothes and jumped every time I heard a shot.

In the lobby, we signed our lives away, T's guns were inspected, he bought some ammo and targets, we got goggles (to "protect our eyes from the flying shells." OMG. WTF. *deep breath*.) and ear muffs (that did NOTHING to protect my delicate ear drums from the loud pops of the guns.)

We passed through a double door system (the "man lock") like the double doors at dog parks and entered the range itself. The pops were so loud I jumped and my heart raced every time one of the dudes in there (there was LOTS OF TESTOTERONE flying around) fired a round. I kept thinking, one of these guys could be a wacko; he could totally turn around and kill us all. How dumb would my birthday "celebration" feel then?

T gently, kindly showed us how the guns worked, shot a few rounds, and passed the first gun off to CG who steadily fired a few rounds himself. (Go Cub Scout, GO!)

Then, it was my turn.



After a shaky start with a few really bad shots (there is, in fact, a hole in the ceiling that's allllll me) and an explanation from T that "putting the target in my sights" didn't mean just looking at it and aiming in that general direction, I actually got pretty good. As in I hit the target in the chest, repeatedly.


(Quite possibly the worst photo of me ever but I had to show proof that my dude would have been SO dead.)

T told us before we started that the first few rounds would feel weird and shaky but that soon we would want to get all Rambo and pop off a bunch in a row POW POW POW POW but that that was against the rules, you have to have a 1 second pause in between each shot. I didn't believe him but it's true. By the end of the hour, I wasn't sweating anymore (though I was still warm from the adrenaline) and I wasn't jumping at every shot either. And I had to remind myself to slow down my shots so that I wouldn't get in trouble with the Head Gun Dude.

I feel like if I ever had to use a gun to protect myself or my family, I could. I still keenly felt the destructive power of the gun but I also felt like it was okay, I could do this, I DID it.

And that is a great way to feel on (or around) your birthday. Even (especially?) if you are a former card carrying member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns.