The Range

It always bugged me that I wasn’t naturally talented at anything. I always wanted to be a natural athlete. To throw farther, run faster, jump higher – the first time out at whatever the sport might be. It would have been nice to have the instant skill to be a great chef or seamstress. Or to have the innate ability to paint like Monet, sing like Adele, dance like Ginger Rogers. The skills that were quickly identifiable in me was the grace in which I could fall UP a flight of stairs, my talent for growing a head of hair that resembles a Chia-Pet, and of course, my knack for being able to select the correct vowel on Wheel of Fortune. Things changed in the area of natural ability for me yesterday when I went to the range to take my first firearms lesson. I handled a six-shooter like I’d been doing it all my life or at least writing about it for several years. I consistently hit the center of the target and was told by my instructor that I was a “natural” at firing the weapon. What a comfort it is to know the one thing I can do with little effort is shoot. Why it’s what every mother dreams for her little girl. You know, guns are part of this country’s DNA, they’re inextricably woven into the fiber of our psyche. American was founded by rebels, liberated by guerrillas, and settled in no small part by outlaws. I have a healthy respect for guns and as controversial as the idea is, I believe in a person’s Constitutional right to own bear arms. I won’t ever own one myself because as I mentioned, I fall UP stairs. With that kind of grace I can be expected to shoot my own leg off if I were carrying a gun…and going up stairs. I think some guns should be banned however. We can’t obviously do though because many of them are used for the recreational sport of hunting. And people have to hunt because it’s a simple fact that deer have to die. They have to be taken out, because if they aren’t, they’re just going to keep dashing through the forest, frolicking in the fields, and nibbling the leaves and berries off the trees and bushes. I mean, come on, Bambi is begging for it. Maybe if we just make guns harder to get. They should at least be harder to get than a reservation at Chevys.