Brandon Moyse | Giving shooting a shot

I'll get it out there: I'm a hypocrite. I'm against income taxes but pay them. I'm in favor of the death penalty but wouldn't want to get it myself. I'm a proponent of freedom of speech but occasionally censor my Facebook wall. And I'm pro-guns despite never firing or even holding one.

So when I received an e-mail from a friend giving me a heads-up that the Penn Outdoors Club was hosting a trip to a local firing range ($60 for a handgun and 50 rounds of ammunition), I jumped at the chance to go, simultaneously thrilled and deathly frightened at the prospect of wielding a lethal weapon.

Some of my friends were excited for me and gave advice as to which gun I should start with, how I should hold it and what I should expect when I shoot it. Others thought I was crazy, or objected on "moral grounds." A few thought I'd put a bullet in my foot. I just saw it as another way to spend a Sunday afternoon. After all, I go to driving ranges and batting cages - this would just be more harmless fun.

Thirteen people showed up for the excursion, about half of whom had never shot a gun before either. Most of them were like me: They lived in a foreign country that didn't give pistols out like candy. After a brief - very brief - safety tutorial from the range officers ("Don't point it at anything you don't want to kill"), a veritable arsenal, from 9 mm Glocks to .45-Berettas to a .38-special revolver, was laid out for us at the firing benches.

In light of the recent story about the Plaxico Burress copycat in West Philly who accidentally shot himself and told police he was robbed, I had two goals: to not shoot myself and to not shoot somebody else. Do that and everything else would be icing on the cake.

I started with a .40-Beretta. Once I managed to load the magazine, which was easier said than done, I raised the gun to the target (a photo of an angry-looking Tracy Morgan look-alike wearing a jeans jacket and pointing a gun at me), trying to steady my shaking hands by exhaling and strengthening my grip. I slowly squeezed the trigger, concentrating on what the range officer said abo - Boom!

It took a second to register that I had actually fired a round, and in that second, my wrists jerked back, the ejected casing bounced off the wall and hit me in the face and a burning, gaseous smell filled my nostrils.

The power behind the shot was incredible. A single thought filled my mind: I really don't want to be on the other end of that. Part of me wanted to put the gun down and walk away. Other first timers felt the same way. But holding the gun and taking aim was too much of a rush. With each trigger pull we became more confident and less afraid.

We kept shooting until both we and the bullets were exhausted. By the end, everyone was posing proudly with their Swiss-cheese targets and the various shotguns and rifles in the store.

In the end, it was indeed harmless fun. The only victims were some sore wrists and the back wall of the range. Does this mean I'm going to go out and buy a gun? No. But at the same time, would it be so bad if I did? One would be pretty hard-pressed to argue that there's something wrong with taking your .44 over to a firing line and squeezing off a few rounds.

Give it a try, though. For the people out there like me, you'll gain a new respect, and a healthy fear, for the awesome power of these weapons. For those of you out there who are anti-gun, you can at least say you've used one and didn't like it. But be safe, and I bet you'll have some fun.

Brandon Moyse is a College junior from Montreal. He is the former senior sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. What Aboot It, Eh? appears on Thursdays. His email address is moyse@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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