Guns

Uncle Don and Aunt Jen live way out in the country, so spending the weekend there was a bit of a culture shock for all of us visiting family members who have lived in crowded subdivisions our entire lives. The town's called Avon, IL, population 915, and Walmart is unheard of there. This is the town where bonfires are a big deal and where everyone seems to own 263984051 acres of land while living inside rickety old houses. This is the town where everybody worries about running into coyotes and where drive-thru liquor stores exist.

This town is what I call paradise.

Think you know what quiet is? I did, too, until I woke up Saturday morning and walked around the countryside. I could hear nothing. No lawnmowers humming in the distance. No cars whizzing by on the street. No neighbors talking. Not even crickets or cicadas. It was quiet, maybe too quiet. It was paradise, but it was also almost boring.

And then, BLAM!!! And then a bird fell from the sky.

Uncle Don walked towards me with a shotgun draped around his right shoulder. "Ready to do some shootin'?" he asked.

I'd never shot a gun before so I was pretty intimidated, although very excited. And this was a real gun, not a squirt gun or a gun from the arcades. This was a gun in the Charlton Heston sense of the word.

Uncle Don tossed me a shotgun and gave me a quick crash course in shooting, telling me how to turn the safety on and off, how to hold the gun, how to aim it, how to position my feet. It was a lot of information to digest, but I've played enough Halo to have a good idea of how it's done.

What we practiced was trap shooting. Trap shooting consists of shooting at round flat clay objects, called clay pigeons, that are thrown into the air. This develops a hunter's ability to aim at moving targets.

Halo must not be a good indicator of a gunman's natural ability, because I missed my first 30 attempts. I couldn't hit shit, and Uncle Don was looking frustrated and running out of advice to give me. He was also running out of ammunition. I'm not going to say that I sucked, however, because when I handed the shotgun to Uncle Buu, Dallas' finest, he couldn't hit diddly squat. Finally, Uncle Carlos decided to join us and to my extreme surprise, he hit his first three clay pigeons in a row.

Uncle Carlos handed the gun back to me and said, "Relax, Peter. Just use the Force."

What?

"Just stop thinking so much."

Uncle Don pulled the trap again and the clay pigeon went flying into the air. I made sure I didn't pray or hold my breath or think at all this time. This time I just pulled the trigger. And what do you know, I hit the target.

It was one of the most exhilarating experiences in my life.

After that moment, I became hooked. I went on to shoot for another hour, getting better and better. Three days after, I still have bruises on my shoulder from the recoil and all that shooting. And even in my dreams, I'm dreaming of: "Click-clack, BOOM!"

You know something? I used to be against citizens having guns. I used to think that ordinary people owning guns was a foolish freedom, that the second amendment was severely outdated and useless. I used to think that if guns only existed in the hands of law enforcement, the world would be a much better place. But you know what, I think guns are pretty damn cool right now.