RE: Lead Flowers - an introduction to spending bullets
I can fully understand what you mean in this article. Reading it made me remember my first (and last) shooting experience. It was during my high school years, we had to go to the army shooting range, it was mandatory. We were given rifles and four bullets each. The army commander gave the order when to lie down on the ground, when to shoot, when to get up and so on. It was a rainy day and we were all lying in mud, soaking wet :) My first shot was a perfect disaster, I shot my neighbor's target which was made of wood and fell down instantly :) Anyway, that my story.
Back to your story, I totally agree with you, the interest in firearms has nothing to do with killing.
It’s the extreme physics, the focus, the discipline, the calm understanding of how the gun works and needs to become an extension of you in order to allow the gun to perform the way it was designed.
Totally agree and I'm really happy you had the opportunity to experience this, even though I don't know you :)
Thank you :)
I can just imagine that day at the commanders disposal so vividly. Did your neighbour take credit for the target?
Fascinating that it was a mandatory school practice. Something like that here would be completely unheard of.
It was a bit frightening to tell you the truth and not because of the firearms. This happened in Romania during the last communism years. After that, this"special school activity" disappeared forever. I would never give teen-agers firearms without proper training.
We were explained how to load the rifle in like two minutes, then shouted at to get in line, go to the shooting place, get down, shoot, reload the rifle, shoot again and at the end get up, give back the rifles and the shell cases. All in real army style. We were told if we don't behave and something goes wrong, there will be serious consequences. It was frightening. In fact no one cared how we shot the target, and how could we shoot right? That takes practice, you know that. Four bullets are not enough to learn to shoot. This was just to demonstrate the power of the army. Stupid communist style.
After all those years, looking back seems very stupid along with so and so many other things we had to do back then. On the other hand, if it wasn't for this occasion, I would never have the occasion to shoot a firearm.
Romania has very severe rules about firearms. Here to get a gun for personal use you have to convince the police that your life is in real danger, then you get a licence and a gun. Of course you can get a hunting rifle but that's not so easy either.
So ... you can imagine how it was 😀
That would have been so daunting for a teenager school student, perhaps some were excited about the lesson as well? In any case to imagine being in your shoes then would have seemed like some sort of bizarre dream, especially if that doesn’t happen anymore. Firearms come with their power trips and brutality and I’m sure there’s a bigger picture at play governing the different laws applied to different countries. I don’t know too much about it as I’ve grown up without them, you’ve opened my eyes just that bit wider, thank you.
There was a guy in our class, a hotshot, a really tough guy and he was shaking, literally shaking. He could hardly get himself together to do the shooting. So yeah, I agree, it was daunting.