BLOGGIN' BIN REVUE

Adventures in Leaving the House: Bang Bang Edition

I had my birthday about a week ago, which made for a great excuse to get together with some old friends and go skiing.  We all planned on meeting up in centrally located Springfield, MA, though birthday-related plans kept me from joining the others until Sunday morning.

SPRINGFIELD, MA: The City in MA That's Not Boston

Turns out I was the lucky one.  Know how it’s absolutely no fun to be the only sober person in a roomful of drunks?  The opposite is true when you’re the only sober one in a roomful of people suffering from horrific hangovers.  Maybe there was something in the $7 beers at the hockey game, or maybe all the naked lades at the gentlemen’s club caused them to lose count of how much they’d consumed, but the lads were a mess when I found them Sunday morning.  In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’d seen any of them in such rough shape.

Which made our change of plans even more awesome: Because the weather had warmed up considerably that week, we scrapped the skiing for a shooting range.

Friends, I’m not a big gun person.  I grew up in a part of Connecticut where guns were for squirting water or distributing t-shirts.  And I’m now old enough where having a loaded gun in my hand leaves me not as much “exhilarated” as “scared shitless.”

I knew that once we got in there and fired off a round or two, the butterflies would go away.  But until then, I could only hope that I’d be forced to do something that would calm my nerves and amuse me for all the wrong reasons…

WORLD EXCLUSIVE REVIEW:

SMITH & WESSON SHOOTING SPORTS CENTER TRAINING VIDEO

I don’t know who this guy is, but he speaks in the kind of deep, smooth tone that suggests a long career in news radio or narrating commercials for hardware stores.  “Jim” would actually make for a great blaxploitation villain if he didn’t look like every high school shop teacher that ever was.

Jim begins by taking us through the basics — Don’t Point Guns at People — while meandering through a retail space with lots and lots and lots of Smith & Wesson items.  After covering the basics, Jim surprises me by actually recommending guns to start off with (”Try a .22″).  Also, Jim strongly suggests that while you’re gun is not in use, to keep it splayed out like a split chicken about to hit the grill.

Okay, time to get our glasses and muffs and hit the range!

Firearms and ammo is placed in a basket and passed through the kind of bulletproof hatch you might find at the bank or a Popeye’s in a particularly bad neighborhood.  Baskets might contain a yellow note if you’re a newbie, letting the ranger know that he needs to “check you out.”  Hey now!

Jim steps up, shows us how to load a magazine, and is about to fire off a round when fires off this nugget instead: If you happen to be shotting next to world-renowned marksman Jerry Mitchell while he’s in “a string of shots,” don’t bother him.  HOLY CRAP MY LITTLE LEAGUE COACH IS A WORLD-RENOWNED MARKSM– oh, it’s some other guy.  This Other Jerry Mitchell looks a bit like Harvey Keitel’s cranky older brother, and while he joylessly finishes his string, Jim gives us more tips like “Don’t Shoot The Floor.”

I have to admit that I was thrown for a loop upon hearing that this world-renowned marksman has the same name as my Little League Coach, so I didn’t entirely catch the exciting conclusion of the training movie.  But I do know it contained some awesomely scripted “banter” between Jim and Marksman Jerry Mitchell.  Jim, considering the piss-poorness of his shooting, asks Marksman Jerry Mitchell to “check to see if the sight on his firearm is properly calibrated.”  Marksman Jerry Mitchell looks at Jim like he just crapped in his cereal, and we get more joyless shooting.  The gun is fine — of course, it’s a Smith & Wesson!

Yes, by the end of the training film, I was very ready to shoot something.