To officially celebrate my birthday, I decided to do something that I've been wanting to do. And coincidentally, the class I needed to prepare for this adventure fell on my birthday so...I figured it was pretty much in the stars for me to spend my 25th Birthday at the gun range.
I'd planned to go by myself because I was going to take the Firearm Safety and Familiarization class which was a whopping 4 hours long before actually going to shoot. I decided that would probably be best since I had no intention of becoming the next Cheddar Bob (side-eyeing you, Plaxico). To my surprise, my LS decided to join me so I was really happy that I wouldn't be there alone.
I arranged everything with our new friend, Dunlap (yes that is a last name, yes he goes by that as if it were a first name, and yes his first name is EXTRA country). I got all dressed up, stopped to pick up a few of the 25,000 cupcakes ordered for me at Red Velvet Cupcakery and headed out to VA. When I got there (late) I was greeted by Dunlap's sidekick, Bernadette. I looked around the room and the seats were slim pickin's, so I plopped down next to Big Tigger and saved a seat for 27. Next to her were the mechanic shop boys, the woman that probably will end up shooting herself a bunch of walls vases in her house, there was the redskins fan who I think was there with her partner, and finally the couple with the husband who has a news story for every scenario and a trigger happy wife. That only left the two pretty girls...the one who readily admits she will scream if she gets shot and the other will assume she's dead.
Dunlap opened up with some personal stories, a little bit of legal advice about how to "talk" to the jury when you are in court for shooting someone, and a lot of humor. The class was progressing well until he was showing us the magazine release button and the two bugs came
up out of the carpet and scattered away when the magazine hit the ground. 27 and I looked at each other and wondered if anyone else saw that....apparently no one did. Then I looked down to the floor where our purses were secretly hoping nothing that made its way into the bags. After about 3.5 hours, the fun began. We had 25 seconds to load our magazine as there was an intruder coming our way. I managed to load 7 bullets and when he shaved off 5 seconds, I only got 6 in. But Dunlap didn't stop there, he then decided to make us all blind and challenged us to load as many as we could in about the same time frame. Aside from his legal advice, he likes to give real world survival skills. Then he had us load with our non-dominant and and then with that hand behind our backs (the goal there is to at least get two in-shoot the assailant and then run to safety). Loading guns was fun, but I was ready to go shoot. You know, I think I'm a thug sometimes...so I was ready to get started.
After leaving the classroom, we drove through the Blair Witch Project to get to the gun range. We were greeted by two jolly men in the gun shop. As soon as I stepped in, I started looking for the pink guns. I asked the guy how he sold pink guns to women if they weren't on display. He pointed them out to me and then asked me if I really wanted to know how he sold pink guns. Curious George said yes...and he pulled back his shirt to reveal his pink handled pistol. His words " 'cause I carry one". That was priceless. So we went into the range. Got our eyes and ears on...and loaded the magazines. Dunlap told us to put one magazine in and to cock the guns. I think this point that my heart sped up just a little bit as I realized that I was holding a real 9mm pistol with real bullets that could really hurt someone. We waited for our orders and fired off!
AND RIGHT THEN THE SHELL FLEW DOWN MY SHIRT BURNING MY STOMACH! No, not like a 3rd degree situation, but when I turned around the Range Chief was like "I can't go down there and get it." For the record, I wasn't asking him to, but I didn't know if I could just pull it our or what. So we fired more shots, I flinched EVERY TIME, and even found myself closing my eyes at some point. I WAS A TOTAL PUNK! Then came the "lights" out shots. They turned off EVERY light in the range. We were simulating being at home and having to shoot an intruder in the dark. The directions were to fire as quickly as you could but to use the flash from the muzzle as the light to show you where the target was. "Trigger Happy Wife" was apparently afraid of the dark and when the Range Master (I don't remember his correct title) turned off the lights, she objected loudly. I'm not sure if she shot or not, but he cut those lights back out and gave our orders to shoot. Me, personally, I shot all 6 as quick as I could. I wasn't looking for a guiding light. I was just shooting, hoping to get the target. After that we tried different distances. At one point, the range yeller dude came to me and said, "you need to know that you can't do anything about recoil". Basically he was telling me not to flinch on that because it is going to happen.
After all was said and done...and the guy next to me let of a bunch at once, I looked at my sad little target. It appeared to have the least amount of holes in it. 27, however, is a dangerous chick with pretty nice aim so you might not wanna eff with her. Four shell casings in my shirt later...it was time to go.
We had a lot of fun and I am really excited to go back. I think I just need to get used to the sound of other people's shots. You can anticipate your shots and the noise, but then there are like 10 other people popping off. EEK! I also think that next time I'll opt out of wearing the v-neck shirt and 4 inch heels. Turtle neck and Timbaland boots in summer it is! (the thought of wearing that makes me barf!)
A great way to bang into 25. Looking forward to heading back since we got a "free" membership for a bit to the range and a "free" lane and gun rental. I will be opting for something smaller tho...BL has suggested a .380...hmmm...
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