Op-Ed: How I learned to love firearms

November 18, 2004
Slate.com

Guinea Get Your Gun

By Emily Yoffe

I pressed the Beretta AL391 Urika deep into my shoulder and against my cheek, as if gripping a shotgun stock were as natural as holding the strap of my purse. I said, "Pull," in a firm yet casual way, to convey that, sure I drove here in a Volvo, and the radio in the Volvo is tuned to NPR, but I'm actually the kind of woman who loves the smell of cordite in my hair. Two weeks ago I was so ignorant about firearms that I thought shotguns discharged bullets and I didn't know the difference between a revolver and a semiautomatic. But here I was shooting trap, in which clay disks, the moving target simulating a bird in flight, are released at unpredictable angles from a small trap house. As the "pigeon" flew on my command, I swung the shotgun to follow its arc and pulled the trigger. My instructor called out, "Oh, yeah!"

"What happened?" I asked.

"You hit it," he said.

"I did?" I replied.

I called "pull" again and fired. Even I could see this orange disk disintegrate. "Pull," pow! "Pull," pow! My excellent instructor, Ricardo Royal, is a large man, but was surprisingly light on his feet as he did a little dance next to me and sang out, "Annie Oakley, Annie Oakley." I took turns with my fellow student, a middle-aged man who consistently missed and who now looked as if he'd be happy to forget about the target and blast me instead. (It was a look I have provoked in many other people, who fortunately were unarmed.)

In Human Guinea Pig I engage in unusual activities and hobbies. This time I wanted to see if a novice—a nervous novice—could in a few lessons learn how to be a decent shot. I do understand that there is nothing unusual about owning firearms. Surveys show almost half of American households have them. But I live in the District of Columbia, which has one of the nation's toughest gun laws. Residents are not allowed to own handguns, and if one of us feels a need to discharge a weapon, we are supposed to file a request with the chief of police asking for permission. (He must spend all his time answering yes, as D.C. has one of the country's highest murder rates.)

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