This past week I wrapped up my last piece of work with Chilean law enforcement. One of the agencies wondered if I'd like to go shoot with them at their gun range. The first question was if I had ever shot a gun. I simply replied that I lived in Los Estados Unidos (the United States). Guns are pretty hard to come by in Chile and very few people have them. A couple weeks ago in Erin's Spanish class the conversation of guns came up and they asked how hard it was to get a gun in Los Estados Unidos. Erin explained that you could get one with your groceries at Walmart. No creo que! Nobody believed her. So when I was asked to go shooting with the agency, that is a pretty big deal.
Now my Spanish es malo (not too good) and I thought that they shot every Thursday at an inside gun range. Oh no. I was to find out that they were doing a qualifying shoot and it was out in the desert. This is done twice/year. Of course, I didn't bring a jug of water - and thinking we were only going to be shooting for an hour, didn't bring food either. Then of course is the Spanish sense of urgency. Drive like crazy to get out to the desert and then wait for a couple hours. No problem - the conversation was good. But in the back of my mind is the food/water thing. Turns out what I thought was going to be a one hour deal turned out to be all day.
The range was interesting in that there were about four dug out ranges in the side of a hill with only an entrance toward the back. There was a set of bleachers with an overhead roof providing shade, so it wasn't that hot waiting. At the end where you shoot were 27 stacks of twelve tires around a wooden pole that were full of dirt. Pretty good use of tires actually. Then there were 6 adjacent targets so that there could be 6 shooters per sequence.
The first thing to be shot was a 9mm pistol using two hands. Now I have only shot rifles and shotguns, and my pistol experience is limited to a BB gun or squirt gun. So when it was my turn the instructors quickly corrected my grip and explained the proper way to put a bullet in the chamber, eject the magazine, and one other thing you do before shooting that I don't know what it is called. It basically brought the trigger half way back. My understanding of the translation was that there was no safety once the gun was cocked. We shot two sequences of five shots and I managed to hit the target pretty well.
The next time up we were to shoot with una pistola en cada mano - shoot the gun with just the right hand and then just the left hand. My eyesight isn't the best but I'm ambidextrous, so I was curious to see how this would go. One of the big chiefs from the agency was shooting next to me, so I know he was going to be watching the gringo - heck, everyone was. There is a small circle in the target representing the heart that you go for. After everyone shoots, the instructor circles all the hits with a black felt pen so that you can see where you hit the target - assuming you hit it at all. With the right hand I put one shot in the small circle and four more right below it in a tight little pattern. Tight patterns are good. The big chief had more of a W shape more down by the belly and fairly scattered. I know he looked at mine as I was standing right next to him. Then the instructor blew the whistle for us to shoot with the left. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. All five shots from my left hand had a tight pattern in the little circle. The instructor went to circle my shots and then kind of looked back at me slowly. Here was this guy that didn't even know how to hold the gun or put a bullet in the chamber shooting perhaps the best score out of all the waves of shooters.
The next time up we were to simulate chasing someone down. There was a particular way to hold the pistol close to your chest and then when the whistle blew the idea was to shoot two quick shots and then bring it back to your chest, two more, back to the chest...until all 10 shots were fired. Through this sequence I put every shot right in the center. The instructor came buy and circled my hits and then turned around and looked at me. I smiled back and he gave me a thumb's up. The big chief asked me if I wanted a job and said he would go out on a raid with me any time.
Here's the deal. I bet if I went back and tried to do the same thing that this would prove to be beginner's luck. Then again, who knows, maybe I shoulda been a cowboy...
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