Lately, I’ve had this irresistible urge to try new things.
I tasted a Mexican roll for the first time (sushi with jalapeno and better than you’d think), walked the long way to campus without an iPod (it’s broken) and even ate some salad.
But I wanted to go deeper.
You know, find out a little about myself, learn more about the culture of Los Angeles and maybe even come out with a whole new outlook on life.
So 10 others and I, we went out and did what anybody would do in that situation.
We went to the gun range.
Yes, a gun range with real guns, real bullets and eerily realistic paper targets. Much like eating sushi with peppers in it, I had no idea what to expect. I pictured a high-security compound with bulletproof glass everywhere and a team of trained somebodies ready if things got too frisky.
Instead what we got was Jell-O to my imagination’s creme brulee ““ the Los Angeles Gun Club. It could best be described as simplistic, with no bells or whistles, just plenty of guns.
We arrived and were greeted by a middle-aged couple who spoke hesitant English and wore loaded sidearms strapped on at the waist. We stamped our thumbprints and signed our names a couple times ““ once to show we were 18 or older and another time declaring we weren’t drunk or addicted to marijuana. All standard procedure.
After a show of hands exposed everyone who hadn’t shot a gun before, the man behind the glass counter gave us a safety demonstration. If you can call it that.
For about 90 seconds, he explained how to shoot a pistol. Basically, “Push this button, put in some bullets, pull there and squeeze the trigger. Oh, and don’t shoot anyone.” It was far less detailed than a tutorial at Q-Zar and simpler than every “emergency procedures” speech I’ve ever heard on a plane.
Conspicuously missing from their walls was one of those “Accident-Free For X Number of Days” posters.
So we picked out a few paper targets, including a couple with terrorists posing in the desert, and headed onto the range with our ear muffs on.
We set the targets back about 40 feet, loaded half a dozen different pistols, and started squeezing.
For the first time in my life, I felt like a NASCAR fan.
The noise was absolutely deafening. A poster inside warned pregnant women from entering the range ““ apparently the sound harms fetuses. They weren’t joking.
Even the little pistols were louder than a plane breaking the sound barrier or facing the Warriors in Oakland or the guy who screams about Jesus on campus. And that’s with the ear muffs on.
The only thing more surprising than the sound was how hard it was to actually hit the target. Putting holes where I wanted was about as hard as hitting a half-court shot with a bowling ball, only with more recoil.
One of the few guys who was any good is a future Navy SEAL by the name of Jeremy Gessow. At one point, I had finally managed to create something resembling a cluster of bullet holes near the bottom of the target, but he wrecked it with four straight shots to the ear. And that’s on one good knee.
For someone shooting guns for the first time, putting four shots on a target’s ear from 40 feet is like accidently learning quantum physics ““ just downright hard to do.
If you ever need a long-range ear piercing, he’s your man.
So with our targets full of holes and $5 L.A. Gun Club trucker hats, we left the range with our ears still ringing.
Now, I can’t say I learned anything meaningful about myself ““ except that I’m a bad shot ““ and it didn’t change my perspective on life. But we shot some guns.
And that’s pretty cool.
E-mail Feder at jfeder@media.ucla.edu if you think he should just stick to sushi.