Bland
Theresa recovered from surgery. (Better here than in Washington, where a foot of snow had fallen in Spanaway.)
They took it easy, unlike on previous visits when I would make a to-do list of household repairs that we tackled together. (They have the know-how; I’m good for manual labor.)
They read, saw a movie and sat in the sun on the front porch. In the evenings, we had family over and went out for Mexican food. That’s when Virgil asked, “Do you want to go shooting?”
This wasn’t a random offer. Virgil is a Marine who teaches classes in home defense, gun safety and how to shoot. He had a class scheduled called “Trigger Therapy,” a recreational shoot where participants shoot all sorts of weapons.
“Sure,” Theresa said. “We’re in Arizona!”
Oh, Arizona, home of the world’s most famous shoot-out, the one at the OK Corral, the still Wild West, where there is a passionate gun culture. I laughed. “Can you go, Kari?” Virgil asked me. The class was on a Thursday.
I imagined us three middle-aged women — a journalist, a teacher, a maintenance worker — racking the slides of handguns, squinting down the sights of semi-automatic rifles, taking down the cardboard cut-out bad guys, suddenly transformed into “Charlie’s Angels.” (I’d be Sabrina, of course. The smart one.)
I can go on a work day, I said, but I’ll have to write about it. All three cousins shrugged. It was fine with them.
“Bring your dad’s gun,” Virgil told me as he left.
A love-hate relationship
My dad’s gun. I’ve written before about how I grew up on military bases, where a gun in the house was as regular as a lawn mower or a washing machine. Even after my dad retired and we moved to Arizona, he carried a Glock tucked into his cowboy boot.
I wasn’t particularly interested in learning to shoot, but when I was 25 and living alone, someone broke into my Jeep while it was parked in my driveway — twice. So my dad signed me up for a self-defense class for women at Shooter’s World in Phoenix.
I shot only a few times after that. My dad wanted me to take his revolver, a .38 Special. I didn’t, but I hung the paper target in the front window of my house. No one messed with my Jeep again.
When my dad died in 1999, I came across the revolver among his belongings. I kept it because it was his.
I have a love-hate relationship with that gun.
It has been locked up since before my son was born, almost 18 years ago. I had read too many stories about what happens when kids get hold of guns.
I like having it, though I haven’t shot it since I locked it up. I have a security system, a dog and a titanium baseball bat in the hallway closet. But it was there if I ever needed it (say, in the event of a zombie apocalypse). It also was a link to my dad, though I have plenty of others — his service medals, his Stetsons.
Sure, I told Virgil, I’ll bring it.
Shootout at Cowtown
We met at Virgil’s house, where my cousin ran us through some of the basics: the difference between revolvers and pistols, the types of ammunition, safety rules. And then we load targets, gun cases and ammo boxes into the back of his truck.
I squeezed into the little back seat for the ride out to Cowtown, a replica of a western town, lined with small storefronts and houses, out in the desert at the end of the original Carefree Highway. It was built in the 1960s and 1970s by Hollywood stuntman Ron Nix. More than 200 movies were filmed here over the years.
Now it’s a shooting range and training facility. It was the perfect location for what we were about to do. It was just so Arizona.
I rode on the tailgate to the back of the bay to set up the first set of targets and then a second set closer in. I threw my arms up in the air like I was riding a roller coaster.
I could hear my cousins in the truck laugh through the open windows. It was a beautiful day.
Virgil set out a half dozen rifles and a half dozen pistols on the picnic tables. I lay my revolver beside them.
He picked up a lethal looking weapon, like something out of a war movie. I involuntarily took a step back. In reality, they’re all lethal, even the smallest pistol.
He showed us the different kinds of bullets and the damage they do, the ones that go in the body and out the other side and the ones that don’t, blooming like a metal flower on impact, the shrapnel shredding through the body. I shuddered. Before we shot each weapon, Virgil explained its history, how it is used, the pros and cons and how to load it.
We stuffed neon orange foam plugs into our ears. Theresa and Janet stepped back, grinning, so I went first.
Not like the TV shows
Virgil showed me how to hold the AR-15, my right hand around the grip, the left on the handguard for support, the butt nestled into the soft part of my upper chest. (AR does not stand for assault rifle, by the way; it is a name for an ArmaLite rifle.)
“Keep your finger off the trigger until I say so,” he said calmly. Oh, sorry. Virgil pressed a hand against my back to keep me from falling backward on my behind.
There was nothing Charlie’s Angels about it. No provocative pose. No toss of the hair. But there was a satisfying kick, a solid bang, a clean hole in the target and a poof of dust where the bullet hit the berm.
I fired it three or four more times.
“Schwang!” I said, as Virgil takes the gun from me.
We shot an AK-47, a 12guage Keltec KSG and a Ruger. Then we shot the pistols.
It’s fun, exhilarating even. I liked the recoil of the rifles, once I was ready for it. I liked the feel of the Springfield XdM 9 mm in my hand. I even liked the smell: burning powder, carbon and solvent.
But in the back of my mind, there was something else.
The reality of it
As a newspaper columnist, I’m in the public eye. For the most part, it is a wonderful thing, with readers leaving me voice mails and sending me emails to tell me how much they enjoy my work.
But every so often, someone comes along who doesn’t like what I’ve written and tells me so in an unsettling way. In the past, I’ve heard from people who are so troubled, I would worry about what they might do. I checked on one once, and found he had lost his right to legally possess a gun. That gave me some comfort.
Now I wonder if people like that will be able to get guns again. Because lawmakers in Congress are loosening restrictions on who can legally own a gun, removing a regulation that would alert authorities when someone who received federal benefits for a mental illness — and required the assistance of an executor to manage those benefits — tried to purchase a gun.
The thought makes shooting guns in the desert with my cousins a little less fun, a bit more real.
Later Virgil will talk to me about this, about what the law says, and ways to keep myself safe. He will suggest that I keep my dad’s gun loaded and in a different kind of safe, where I could get to it quickly. He will tell me to practice so I will be comfortable and confident.
In that moment
The quiet of the desert is punctuated with the sounds of gun fire.
There is a gun in my hand. My gun. The gun my dad left me. I pull the trigger. And in that moment I wonder: Could I shoot someone? Could I point a gun at another person if I were trying to protect myself or my family? Could I pull the trigger when there were consequences instead of cardboard? I don’t know.
The bullet tears through the cardboard target and then hits the berm. The cloud of dust flares.
I hope I never have to decide.