Brief backstory: there is a situation that I'm on the periphery of that nonetheless makes me feel physically unsafe when I'm reminded that it exists. The time sometime within the past ~year when I had a two hour panic attack based on it, I managed to talk myself down by bargaining that okay, we'd go check out a local Pink Pistols meetup and learn to shoot.

Early this afternoon, I was reminded of the situation again. And just at that very moment while I was in the middle of a conversation about it, a reminder email showed up about a meetup that very afternoon. So I got dressed and hopped in the car.

At this juncture I should note that I was born and raised in Alaska, where there are actual moose and bears that occasionally stroll through people's yards. My parents were menaced by a bear while they were hiking just before I was born, and because my father menaced that bear right back, I exist today. My father owned guns and taught us basic gun safety. I always assumed that one day I would learn to shoot, but we never wound up getting around to it.

Intellectually, I know that I am physically just plain larger than the dude I'm looking to avoid, and in a physical fight there are ways to use a greater mass to your advantage, and also I know in a real crisis I get fearless and mean. Introducing a gun to that situation would not improve anything. When you want to use your karate, you become the Fist of Goodness. Don't fist a dinner party. However, guns are a powerful enough symbol that I could use the promise of learning how to use one in order to trick my brain into stopping the panic attack, which was all I was actually concerned about doing. Placebo can be the best drug on the market, even when the patient knows what you're doing. This worked perfectly well in February, or whenever the fuck that scenario actually started. But now?

So there I was, and I was awake; the alternative would have been going back to bed, and I was done sleeping. Thus I showed up at what turned out to be a range open house. I was issued a sticky name tag (color-coded, declaring that I had not brought my own gun) and eye protection. They also had earplugs, but I produced from the coin purse in my shorts pocket a tiny pill baggie with two squished orange blobs in separate corners, and rolled them back up into functional earplugs. I knew I'd need those at some point.

I had the conversation I'd been sort of dreading: the "No, I am not looking to become a gun owner; I have depression and it wouldn't be wise to risk my having access to a firearm in a moment of weakness" one, but that part at least was understood. If only she hadn't then started offering some of the dreaded Tips From The Cheerful for decreasing depression...

One of the range dudes gave me the safety briefing. (There was no Safety Dance.) At this range, the safe directions are downrange and up: the floor is concrete, and neither ricochets nor chips of concrete are safe. Then we went inside and I met the parts of the gun, and learned how to hold it, neither too low and insecurely, nor too high where moving parts slam very unhappily into your soft little thumb.

The paper target was wheeled downrange. I was fascinated by the absolutely spiffing little pulleys. I stood. I held the gun. (There were more details of instruction.) I lined up the sights. The little post weaved disconcertingly around within the little nook. I tried to stand more still, hold my arms more still, remembered everything I'd heard about snipers and their breathing patterns and that one who shot in the space between heartbeats. The dude brought me a rest for the gun, and blocks to raise it; it's apparently easier to raise the rest than it is to lower your eyes. Eventually, after long enough my legs had moved on from complaining and were starting a campaign of active sabotage, I put my index finger on the trigger and pressed it back.

I was getting used to hearing things around the earplugs, and the noise was almost startlingly loud. The gun didn't have very much of a kick, but it was definitely something going bang in my hand. I kept a firm hold on it, and shortly I was firing a few more shots, in between a little advice on ways to improve my technique.

The moment after that first shot was a moment of powerful relief. I had feared guns as a child. I did not understand them, and knew they were dangerous, and was especially terrified with them in the hands of my father, whose temper I did not trust, had never trusted. I had been half expecting I would freeze up and be unable to fire, or that I would have a phobic reaction on the range with a gun in my hand. I might drop it or worse. But I didn't. I was holding an intricately machined piece of slightly-above-room-temperature metal that didn't feel like its heat would be shifting around any time soon, no matter how insistently I clutched it. "Kick", "jump", and all the usual words used to describe the feeling of holding a gun as it fired seemed suddenly inaccurate and inadequate, at least for this particular machine. I had asked it to set off a small and controlled explosion; it had obliged. It was a very businesslike and matter-of-fact explosion, with a little halo of firey gases flashing, and then a neat hole in the paper target in front of me, taped as far down on the cardboard it would go.

After several shots, I put down the gun and pulled back the slide, exposing the chamber and ejecting the bullet inside, clumsily, and then the next. I was in fact done with this round. My legs had decided they'd had enough of this nonsense, and I was going to grab my cane and then go sit down, even though I hadn't gone through all my bullets.

The dude rolled in my target, and wrote details on it.

http://instagr.am/p/QvQKHzM4aB/

(Yes. I have an instagram of my first target with my first shot ever fired on it.)

I went and sat down for a while. After I'd recovered, I had another go, this time without the gun rest. It was interesting.

What with the OH GOD YOU DO NOT GET DEPRESSION LADY JUST NO, I wound up clicking with the random range dude much better than my ostensible hostess. It turned out that he was roughly my age and had worked as a web developer in the past. We chatted a bit at the subsequent bbq.

And then I came home!