On Target

I recently had the chance to take a Pistol Basics for Women class in Rochester with a friend.  I'm not unfamiliar with guns but my experience is more of hunting rifles or trap shoot shotguns (and that was a one-time thing).  Hand guns are not in my wheelhouse.  

Well, okay, there was that stint as a sophomore with the Olmsted County Sheriff's Department Junior Deputy Program that include the chance to shoot 100 rounds with a .38 revolver, but that was nearly 40 years ago!  And I wasn't all that sharp back then, either.  

But I digress.

So the class started out with just some basic information on the anatomy of a hand gun, why a person might want to have a permit to own a hand gun, and the logistics of aiming and firing a hand gun. 

Well, theory is all well and good but the only way to learn is to do it, right?

So the instructor takes us to the retail area to pick out our target sheet.  I pick a cute one with cartoon blue birds, squirrels, a fence with a bullseye on it and beer cans across the bottom.  Isn't it cute?

The targets were set up 5 yards down the lane.  Now, before anybody snarks about that being close enough for a blind person to hit it, keep in mind that I have bilateral lazy eyes that have been surgically addressed.  I'm still blind as a bat for the most part unless whatever I'm looking at is at the end of my nose.  

I'm not kidding.  Ask Captain.  This is why I'm not allowed to navigate on a long drive.  By the time I see a road sign that is relevant to our travels...we've passed it and are now heading to a different state.

But I digress again.

So the target is 5 yards away and measures 2 x 3 feet.  I load the clip, take my stance, and aim for the bullseye.  

How did it go, you ask?  I will let Cubby answer this:  "Gramma, there aren't any holes in the bullseye!"

Yep, missed it every dang time.  I kept hitting the squirrel above and to the left.  Killed the crap out of that squirrel, but never hit the bullseye.  Fine.  Reload the clip and aim at the center squirrel.  Missed him but killed the crap out of the bluebird above and to the left. 

Do you see the theme here?

The instructor came over to see what the problem was, and we figured out that I am left-eye dominant, the solution for which is to close your right eye.  Now I'm a one-eyed blind bat.  Yep, put a gun in my hand; that's a good idea.  

Turns out I actually did do better that way; whoda thunk it?  By the time I fired the last 10 rounds, I actually put 6 of them in the squirrel I intended them to hit.  Go me!

Still, the only reason I took the target paper home was to give Bigger a chance to chide his mama.  Backstory note:  Both Bigger and Molly have taken the conceal and carry class and are licensed to own a handgun.  

He surprised me, as he often does.  He looked at it and after I explained how I hadn't "killed" the squirrel or bird I intended to, he reminded me that killing is the absolutely avoided most last resort thing ever when handling a gun.  Deterrence, he told me, was the key.  

"Mom, you put 49 shots out of 50 into an area the same size as the average male torso.  Had this been a 'real life' self defense situation, you'd have done some damage."  

Huhn, that was a novel way to look at it for me.  

This happens to me a lot.  I get tunnel vision on something and get frustrated or upset when the particular situation doesn't turn out the way I expected or wanted it to.  I have to learn over and over and over that if you just turn your thinking just a little bit to one side or the other--to make it a very basic analogy--you will see a whole different view of the situation that might not be quite so frustrating; it might even be uplifting or happy.  Who knows?

All I know is that I enjoyed the shooting experience and would enjoy more target practice.  I do not ever, under any circumstances, want to or plan to use a hand gun for self defense purposes.  I don't mind "killing" a paper target, but that's as detrimental as I want to be.