(no subject)
Last night the Kilmores as a quasi-team event went to Bills Gun Shop in Robbinsdale to shoot handguns at a gun range. The back story is that Scary Moon Zombie just started working at Bill's and there's a new trainer there (they do gun safety/training classes there too) who offered a handgun safety class to all of us for free so he could get some experience in teaching. They also expressed interest in sponsoring the Kilmore girls.
So we talked it over on the Kilmores list to see what we all thought/felt about it. Because of my gut reaction on the topic - wildly anti-gun, wildly anti-conceal-and-carry, anti regular people having semi-automatic guns, fairly gun-phobic, etc (though very pro-hunting), I decided since it was free that I would explore my own impulses and antagonism on guns and do the class. As an aside however, I from the start was and am solidly against any kind of sponsorship by them - hells no. A few of the Kilmores were like "yeah no" and agressively against taking the class, and I made it very clear in our team discussion that it wasn't something for anyone to be lobbying for ( i.e. trying to talk anyone into) - we all get to feel about it however we do, and that the class is a totally optional thing.
Anywho - it was interesting. The guy teaching, Dennis, is a Hennepin County sheriff, and admirable for his safety-focus and no-fucking-around approach to firearms (the kind of pro-gun folks who aren't psycho/hysterical and at least don't make me want to knock their block off), and the class was pretty a-political. As a team bonding thing it was kind of cool, a sort of collective experience of sharing fears and opinions about it all, and having a range of opinions and feelings about it.
The shooting itself was a little scary, all I've shot before are hunting rifles (hunted and did DNR gun safety when I was a kid) and my dad's pistol. Last night we shot a revolver and a .22. The shooting left me feeling mostly just shaky and sketchy - such force and harm done/possible with just a twitch of your finger.
I wasn't surprised to have my overall opinions on carrying/owning a gun unmoved, it actually just clarified and reiterated to me my prior general notions about it. I'm still completely uninclined to ever buy/have a gun, though a couple of the girls were like "hey yeah I think I might sometime look into getting a handgun." For me I see it as there just being some core differences in how people think/feel about guns and fear and defense of themselves. Some folks are definitively in favor of being able to defend-themselves-by-gun in the event of getting assaulted/burgled/etc. However, I'm just mostly non-violent to my core where it comes it dealing with actual agression directed at me (roller-derby notwithstanding;), where in the event of getting assaulted or having a gun drawn on me, my impulse/intent is that I would (hopefully) choose to step outside of and try to circumvent the aggression in whatever ways I can rather than return it, and I'd rather take my chances and risk being harmed/killed w/out drawing a gun on another human.
On a completely different note, afterward gun class, Rainbow, Red Riding Crop, Dawny Darko and I went down to Pizza Luce dowtown for Triviasco with Ian, and finally - after months of going, we WON!! And awesomely what it came down to was us being tied with another team, so to break the tie we had a pint-guzzling contest. I went to bat for my team (confident in my water guzzling abilities, tho I hadn't tried beer before!) going up against some girl from the other team. The results? I guzzled that pint whole without even taking a breath - she didn't even get half thru before I was finished. Geez how frat-boy do I feel ;). So our prize was a $50 bar tab (which we used for our bill for the 4 of us) and $50 for Solera restaurant downtown. Sweet :)
So we talked it over on the Kilmores list to see what we all thought/felt about it. Because of my gut reaction on the topic - wildly anti-gun, wildly anti-conceal-and-carry, anti regular people having semi-automatic guns, fairly gun-phobic, etc (though very pro-hunting), I decided since it was free that I would explore my own impulses and antagonism on guns and do the class. As an aside however, I from the start was and am solidly against any kind of sponsorship by them - hells no. A few of the Kilmores were like "yeah no" and agressively against taking the class, and I made it very clear in our team discussion that it wasn't something for anyone to be lobbying for ( i.e. trying to talk anyone into) - we all get to feel about it however we do, and that the class is a totally optional thing.
Anywho - it was interesting. The guy teaching, Dennis, is a Hennepin County sheriff, and admirable for his safety-focus and no-fucking-around approach to firearms (the kind of pro-gun folks who aren't psycho/hysterical and at least don't make me want to knock their block off), and the class was pretty a-political. As a team bonding thing it was kind of cool, a sort of collective experience of sharing fears and opinions about it all, and having a range of opinions and feelings about it.
The shooting itself was a little scary, all I've shot before are hunting rifles (hunted and did DNR gun safety when I was a kid) and my dad's pistol. Last night we shot a revolver and a .22. The shooting left me feeling mostly just shaky and sketchy - such force and harm done/possible with just a twitch of your finger.
I wasn't surprised to have my overall opinions on carrying/owning a gun unmoved, it actually just clarified and reiterated to me my prior general notions about it. I'm still completely uninclined to ever buy/have a gun, though a couple of the girls were like "hey yeah I think I might sometime look into getting a handgun." For me I see it as there just being some core differences in how people think/feel about guns and fear and defense of themselves. Some folks are definitively in favor of being able to defend-themselves-by-gun in the event of getting assaulted/burgled/etc. However, I'm just mostly non-violent to my core where it comes it dealing with actual agression directed at me (roller-derby notwithstanding;), where in the event of getting assaulted or having a gun drawn on me, my impulse/intent is that I would (hopefully) choose to step outside of and try to circumvent the aggression in whatever ways I can rather than return it, and I'd rather take my chances and risk being harmed/killed w/out drawing a gun on another human.
On a completely different note, afterward gun class, Rainbow, Red Riding Crop, Dawny Darko and I went down to Pizza Luce dowtown for Triviasco with Ian, and finally - after months of going, we WON!! And awesomely what it came down to was us being tied with another team, so to break the tie we had a pint-guzzling contest. I went to bat for my team (confident in my water guzzling abilities, tho I hadn't tried beer before!) going up against some girl from the other team. The results? I guzzled that pint whole without even taking a breath - she didn't even get half thru before I was finished. Geez how frat-boy do I feel ;). So our prize was a $50 bar tab (which we used for our bill for the 4 of us) and $50 for Solera restaurant downtown. Sweet :)