Shooting at Las Vegas casino

I went shooting for the first time last summer. A shotgun, with three safety-conscious and experienced friends. I was uncomfortable the whole time. I didn't enjoy it at all. It just felt like we were inching too close to needless disaster.

I imagine it's different if you grow up around them or see them all time, but man, I hated it.

 

It is odd ... I haven't shot a gun in 25+ years, but I can remember the feeling ... how when I have a firearm in my hand the thought of "God, somebody could die here!" is always there. Yet that's also true of driving a car, which I do all the damn time without blinking an eye.

 

Yeah. It somehow felt like a finer line with the guns. Someone points that thing and pulls that trigger, and someone else is dead. Like I said, I imagine there are people who have grown up around guns and feel as comfortable around them as I do with a fork or a vacuum. But that was the first (and only) time I'd ever held one. It sure didn't make me feel tough. I felt like I was holding a rattlesnake.

 

I don't think that's odd at all. Your car's primary function isn't to kill people. And yes I know people use guns for target shooting, etc. but the gun was invented as an improved killing machine.

 

I felt that way using a real handgun loaded with blanks on stage. I couldn't put it down fast enough.

 

We're a sample size of two, but I wonder if Canadians have a lower tolerance because of lower exposure. I think I saw my first gun when I was 18, maybe, because I had a girlfriend whose dad was a hunter. Didn't hold my first gun till I was 42. Can't think that I had ever seen or heard anything more than a BB gun being shot before then.

 

Maybe, although I know a lot of Canadians who hunt and are comfortable with guns. I do think it's familiarity more than nationality that makes the difference. (I have immense respect for the man we rent our Manitoulin Island cottage from. He hunts moose with a crossbow.)

 

Cars only kill when things go unintentionally wrong. Guns kill when used as intended.

There's just something that feels fundamentally different about handling an object purposely designed to kill.

 

Gun owners like to equate guns to tools, and to a great extent it's true. I've never used a chainsaw and would be terrified to use one. But with a little instruction and some familiarity, it becomes just another tool even if it can easily kill or maim you -- probably a lot easier than a gun can, to be honest.

 

See, that's a good point. Because I'm totally fine (and maybe a little casual even) with table saws, chop saws, nail guns, lathes. Maybe it is just familiarity. I hear about people who leave their guns under their car seat or carry one in their purse and I don't understand it at all. I'd never not be thinking about it. But they obviously aren't.

A related point—I see these stories about open carry activists going into restaurants and stuff with machine guns on their backs. I'm glad I've never encountered one. I'm 99 percent sure that if I saw a guy with a rifle walking into the Chipotle where I'm eating, I'm fucking booking it.

 

Come on down, I'd be glad to take you to the range.

 

There are so many jokes to be made here, I'm paralyzed by the options.