Do you want a ticket...

To the GUN SHOW?!???

Ah, that joke just never stops being funny… to me at least.

I’m glad my teaser photo yesterday had the desired effect to illicit comments like “What?!? I thought you were a tree hugger??” I always like to keep you all guessing!

So it all started with a hypothetical discussion about gun ownership:

J: I want to have a gun in my house.

G: Are you insane? Why ever would you do such a thing? I don’t like guns. In fact, that might even be a deal-breaker for me.

J: What is this crazy-talk woman? Have you ever even seen a real gun before?

G: Do I LOOK like a shooter?

J: Gosh!

G: Fine!

Both: Okay, want to go for a bike ride? Yay!

Enter the neighbor; a retired Marine helicopter gunner/retired sheriff’s department guy (are they called deputies? Officers? Cops??). This is the guy who has every power tool known to man, (including a totally sweet miter saw, which I have to admit, made installing laminate flooring both a pleasure and an honor.) He’s just the nicest most helpful person in the world. Always offering to lend a helping hand (or miter saw, as it were) AND his wife makes really good cookies that are offered in abundance.

This guy teaches gun safety classes now (when he’s not organizing his garage or going on walks around the neighborhood with said cookie-making wife) and he offered to share some of his know-how with me. (True to form with his super helpful nature).

I just ran a google images search for “grandfather and gun” to see if I could find a graphic depiction of someone who was both grandfatherly and a sporting a weapon, to give you a visual idea of who I was talking about, but this was all I could find. Not really on the right track at all, but who doesn’t love a top hat?



Okay- So we went over to his garage for a tutorial on guns and amo. And safety. Lots to learn. I did a lot of smiling and nodding. Lots of caliber, millimeter, trigger, hammer, dual action, automatic v. semiautomatic talk. Lots of “Uh huh’s” from me.

Onward to the North Whidbey Sportsmen's Association shooting range (which today at least, would have to be a “sportsperson’s” shooting range).

There were two other groups there, they were shooting clay pigeons with riffles. Not us, we brought the hand guns only. I mean really, how am I going to learn how to “bust a 9” unless I well, bust a 9.?

As we were getting started, after the first few shots, I looked out beyond our targets (which were not very far away- actually, they were pretty damned close: I’d like to consider myself a natural sharp-shooter, but really, even I needed some “Ladies tees”). About 50 yards out from where we were standing, at ground level (the range is dug down about 5+ feet so your bullets doing just going flying willy-nilly into the open woods…) was a young deer. Just eating some grass, looking at us, and enjoying the sound of bullets cracking through the air. He was a boy-deer. Of course. If he were a human boy, I bet he’d be the kind of boy who lit of fire crackers in his hand and threw them at people. Dumb-ass.

You can kind of see him, but his coat is on the cutting edge of camouflage technology.


So we shot guns. And I learned about how they work and how to use them. I remember the basics, but still wouldn’t chose the have one on my own. But I feel somewhat okay with the idea of having one in my domicile. Because truth be told, when it comes to protection, Daphne isn’t nearly as vicious as she looks.