Sports, Shooting Sports

I know this blog is usually about some fairly laid back activities like kayaking and hiking but today we go in a different direction. St. Ambrose said, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I say, when in Virginia long enough, y'all are gonna wind up shootin' (and quoting saints, apparently).

There's a group within the local Mensa chapter (yes, I'm a member) called BLAM: Blazing Lightly Armed Mensans. It's a group of Mensans who meet once per month to go target shooting. The group usually meets at the shooting range at the national NRA headquarters and let me say that the average IQ in the place goes waaaayyyy up when the BLAM folks walk in the door. Oops, there I go again, giving in to the stereotype that people who like to shoot are a bunch of idiot yokels. I have to remind myself that target shooting is a perfectly respectable sport - heck, it's even in the Olympics, including my favorite odd combo, the biathlon. It's just that if you hang around gun ranges in Virginia it's very easy to conflate those who enjoy shooting with Confederate flag-waving rednecks.

As a further digression, I learned the other day that the official adoption of the Confederate Battle Flag (the well-known "stars and bars") took place right nearby in Fairfax, Virginia. Generals Beauregard and Johnston chose it because the official Confederate National Flag of the time looked a lot like the U.S. flag and on a battlefield it's important to be able to tell who's you friend and who's your enemy.

Anyway, back to shooting. I've always felt like a total know-nothing when I've gone out with the BLAM group since I have absolutely no background in shooting. To rectify this I signed up to take the NRA basic pistol course. I have to admit I couldn't believe it myself, but sometimes it's good to stretch a little bit beyond what you normally do.

The day of the course comes and I show up at the address given to find that it's a private house - a typical suburban McMansion in Fairfax (no Confederate battle flags in sight, though). I ring the bell and a pretty, petite woman about my age answers, assures me that I'm at the right place, and leads me into her family room. It's a typical McMansion family room: vaulted ceiling, giant TV, family photos. Nothing unusual at all ... except for the big collection of handguns spread out on the coffee table. Revolvers, automatics. Big guns, small guns. The woman who answered the door introduces herself as Tina, the instructor, and gives a little bit of her background. It turns out that she's former Secret Service, former ICE federal agent, former air marshall. I quickly figure out that this little Southern belle is in fact one tough chick.

I was the know-nothing of this group too. My fellow students included a guy who brought several of his own guns along, a woman who says she currently keeps a loaded revolver in her nightstand for "home protection", and an Indian guy whose name was sufficiently difficult to pronounce that he went by "Z". Z is a current gun owner too. The class was a few days after the Tucson shooting of Rep. Giffords, which most present took as a sign that we all need to be carrying guns to protect ourselves from gun-wielding crazies. The majority opinion in our little group is that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and that as a result we all need to be armed.  I find myself once again a little bit of an outlier, but I keep my mouth shut.

Politics and paranoia aside, the course was very well taught. I learned everything I was looking to learn and feel much better prepared to hang out with the BLAM crowd. The class was supposed to end with a trip to the range at the Blue Ridge Arsenal but the range was 100% booked by a law enforcement agency doing practice. Instead, I met up one on one with Tina at the range a couple of days later before work. I opted to shoot .22 - the smallest caliber - so I could work on form without the bigger kick of larger guns. We went through a box of 100 rounds. Again, Tina proved to be an excellent instructor and I got better with each clip. Finally, my very last shot went right through the center of the bullseye. Success! I feel ready to start listening to country music and driving a pickup ... oops, there's that stereotype again.