SIG SAUERS to the department, but I still had our personal guns. I was qualified on all of them, and I had a concealed weapon permit making it legal to carry any one of them.
Some states are picky about guns, but Florida, bless its heart, takes the position that people need to compensate for
something,
even if it’s just their own frightening imagination. The state therefore offers the right to tote a pistol to anybody with the guts to stare down howling hurricanes, venomous snakes, rapacious developers, and squirrelly election officials.
Actually, guns and responsible ownership of guns have always been part of my life. When my grandparents first came to Siesta Key, rattlesnakes outnumbered humans, and some of the humans were unsavory types one step ahead of bounty hunters. A rifle was a handy thing to have around for protection against all those varmints, and my grandfather would have thought it ludicrous for anybody to question his right to own one. On the other hand, he would think it equally ludicrous for civilians to claim they needed machine guns or assault weapons for personal protection.
When Michael and I were little, our grandfather would take us out to the country and let us shoot tin cans off fence posts. He’d preach that guns were dangerous weapons not to be left loaded or lying around. On the way home he’d make us giggle with the old Jimmie Rodgers song our grandmother wouldn’t let him sing in her presence: “If you don’t want to smell my smoke, don’t monkey with my gun.”
I was always a better shot than Michael because he was too physical to enjoy the precision that shooting requires. Good shooters are precise people, like clockmakers or safecrackers. Either because of my grandfather’s training or Jimmie Rodgers’s blue yodel or some genetic trait, I wasone of the best shooters the police academy has ever had. Michael, on the other hand, doesn’t own a gun and thinks armed civilians are ridiculous Clint Eastwood wannabes. I sort of agree with him, except that now I’m also a civilian with a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
My preferred gun is one of my former off-duty guns, a snub-nosed, five-shot, J-frame .38 caliber. It has a stainless steel two-inch barrel and cylinder, and an aluminum alloy frame with an exposed hammer. Its checkered black rubber boot grip is easy to handle and it fits well in my hand. No safety to worry about, no decocking levers to slow me down, no magazines to fail. Only thirteen ounces, it’s a sweet, simple, dependable gun.
I doubt that I’ll ever go back to being a law enforcement officer, and I have no fear of hordes of murderous aliens—either from outer space or other countries—coming to hurt me. But good shooters like to remain good shooters, and my lightweight .38 has a wicked recoil that can ruin my aim if I get sloppy about practicing. I therefore spend some time every week at the handgun shooting range. They all know me there, and the young man who led me to a vacant booth didn’t bother to tell me the rules. He just put up the paper target and left me alone.
If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I don’t practice just to stay a good shot. There’s also something about putting on the eye and ear protectors, spreading my feet, and aiming at a fresh piece of paper with a bull’s-eye painted on it that gives me a feeling of kick-ass Wonder Woman power. I might get the same feeling if I just put on the Wonder Woman costume, but I don’t think so.
I shot with the pistol held in two hands and then inone, and when I was satisfied that I was still a good shot, I loaded everything up and left the range still feeling like Wonder Woman. I remained Wonder Woman until I remembered that I’d just practiced the art of killing another human being. Because let’s get real, that bull’s-eye target stands for a human heart, and every shooter knows that.
Enjoying target practice with a gun is probably the way people feel if they own profitable
Some states are picky about guns, but Florida, bless its heart, takes the position that people need to compensate for
something,
even if it’s just their own frightening imagination. The state therefore offers the right to tote a pistol to anybody with the guts to stare down howling hurricanes, venomous snakes, rapacious developers, and squirrelly election officials.
Actually, guns and responsible ownership of guns have always been part of my life. When my grandparents first came to Siesta Key, rattlesnakes outnumbered humans, and some of the humans were unsavory types one step ahead of bounty hunters. A rifle was a handy thing to have around for protection against all those varmints, and my grandfather would have thought it ludicrous for anybody to question his right to own one. On the other hand, he would think it equally ludicrous for civilians to claim they needed machine guns or assault weapons for personal protection.
When Michael and I were little, our grandfather would take us out to the country and let us shoot tin cans off fence posts. He’d preach that guns were dangerous weapons not to be left loaded or lying around. On the way home he’d make us giggle with the old Jimmie Rodgers song our grandmother wouldn’t let him sing in her presence: “If you don’t want to smell my smoke, don’t monkey with my gun.”
I was always a better shot than Michael because he was too physical to enjoy the precision that shooting requires. Good shooters are precise people, like clockmakers or safecrackers. Either because of my grandfather’s training or Jimmie Rodgers’s blue yodel or some genetic trait, I wasone of the best shooters the police academy has ever had. Michael, on the other hand, doesn’t own a gun and thinks armed civilians are ridiculous Clint Eastwood wannabes. I sort of agree with him, except that now I’m also a civilian with a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
My preferred gun is one of my former off-duty guns, a snub-nosed, five-shot, J-frame .38 caliber. It has a stainless steel two-inch barrel and cylinder, and an aluminum alloy frame with an exposed hammer. Its checkered black rubber boot grip is easy to handle and it fits well in my hand. No safety to worry about, no decocking levers to slow me down, no magazines to fail. Only thirteen ounces, it’s a sweet, simple, dependable gun.
I doubt that I’ll ever go back to being a law enforcement officer, and I have no fear of hordes of murderous aliens—either from outer space or other countries—coming to hurt me. But good shooters like to remain good shooters, and my lightweight .38 has a wicked recoil that can ruin my aim if I get sloppy about practicing. I therefore spend some time every week at the handgun shooting range. They all know me there, and the young man who led me to a vacant booth didn’t bother to tell me the rules. He just put up the paper target and left me alone.
If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I don’t practice just to stay a good shot. There’s also something about putting on the eye and ear protectors, spreading my feet, and aiming at a fresh piece of paper with a bull’s-eye painted on it that gives me a feeling of kick-ass Wonder Woman power. I might get the same feeling if I just put on the Wonder Woman costume, but I don’t think so.
I shot with the pistol held in two hands and then inone, and when I was satisfied that I was still a good shot, I loaded everything up and left the range still feeling like Wonder Woman. I remained Wonder Woman until I remembered that I’d just practiced the art of killing another human being. Because let’s get real, that bull’s-eye target stands for a human heart, and every shooter knows that.
Enjoying target practice with a gun is probably the way people feel if they own profitable
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