Description: In which we go to the sticks (the East Bay) and learn from crusty old white guys how not to shoot our foot off.
(Marty's Report):
So, given we're training in such a discipline, guns start to seem like just another variation on the techniques and tools that you're already internalizing and making peace with. Systema has some of the healthiest individuals I've ever met, and a large part of that is a healthy and ethical relationship to power and the use of power. Where a properly placed strike can cause devastating results, a projectile weapon seems like just a variation on a theme.
Also, I had a striking experience with my father at the beginning of the year, where he took me to the outdoor gun range in Rancho Cordova (a suburb of Sacramento). He had, a couple of years ago, started buying and shooting guns, and I was game to check it out with him. So we went to a large facility out in the dry weeds and scrub land of Rancho, and shot his rifle and pistols, the first time I've done that since I was maybe 17, with my brother and his friends.
What struck me was the deeply ethical context created by shooting. You're standing there on the firing line with a dozen other (primarily, but not exclusively) men, and there's no physical reason or restraint from turning your weapon a few degrees right or left, and killing someone. You can say, well, they'll kill you and if you could get away with it, you would. But that's not it. What you have is people who have come to grips with the fact of this kind of power, the consequences of the use of this power, and have chosen and continually choose, to exercise it ethically and situationally. I've met much, much scarier people, in the political activist and even Buddhist circles, who have not wrestled with the issue of lethal power, and thus don't know how to handle it ethically. They may not attack or shoot you, but they can be emotional savages, and given the opportunity are likely to be much more dangerous than one of the old Red State codgers popping away at targets. I'm not romanticizing guns at all, or certainly not what is referred to as "gun culture," but my experience so far is that the truly scary ones are often the peace-toters.So, that was really powerful, and it was built on my experience last year of doing a seminar with a Systema trainer named Sonny Puzikas, who specializes in firearms training. I wouldn't recommend him to be your kid's birthday clown, but he knows his stuff and has been there, and demonstrates a deep recognition of violence and power, and its place in human culture and relationship. He struck me as a deeply wounded man (and literally wounded, having fought with the Russian military), but deeply ethical and responsible for his choices and actions. One thing that he said that sunk in deeply was that, despite how young bucks can talking about fighting and killing with an aplomb, that no one gets off free when killing another human, that you cannot not be scarred.
This is what I so respect about these men, their honest reconciliation to an aspect of reality--the violent dimension of human interactions--and their integration of it into full lives that (at least with the crowd I've met) are honorable and social and not telling pretty stories to tamp down or cover over the part of human life that is awful and terrible, and apparently necessary.
So, that's the lead up to why we found ourselves at the Chabot Gun Club, out in the East East Bay, a little chunk of the Anthony Chabot Regional Park. As usual, Heather had taken over the research once I'd put the bone in front of her by asking my brother and father for gun info. I didn't plan it this way; she accuses me of that now, but not true. It's just how she rolls. So she found this range and after clearing it with our Systema gun mentors, set us up for a daylong handgun safety course, taught by an old range master named John Maunder. We rose bright and early on Saturday, and drove through the painfully beautiful clear blue day (painful because we're in a see-errr-iou-sss drought) into these hills neither of us has been in (well, maybe once at Chabot lake to paddle our inflatable wedding canoe), and found the range off in the sticks. We were fashionably early, so sat in the funky old clubhouse place while a range of folks wandered in and were greeted by John.
You just don't know who owns a gun, or who is carrying. We, for instance, look like solid card carrying hip/hippie/progressives/tree-hugging folk, and yet there we are learning that even a jammed weapon can be used at close range for a heart-stopping chest strike. The other attendees ranged from a social worker type and her Older Gentleman, a couple of techies, a twitchy Berkeley woman, a sweet and kind of frumpy Latino couple, and a soccer mom. The professionals tend to share a common body type and demeanor--they seem oddly cerebral and their bodies reflect a genial neglect, and their minds are relaxed in their vigilance--but the amateurs are all over the map.
We stared with a light history of firearms, and then the theory of gun safety. That took a while, with John laying it out fairly neutrally, with only short excursions in Red State opinions. Though many gun folk have these views (basically boiled down to gun ownership equals maintenance of freedom), I've yet to meet a zealot. I know they're out there, but they don't seem to show up in this or the Systema contexts, which is curious. Maybe when individuals are in applied situations, either as professional gun trainers or as professional soldiers, it weeds out the wing nuts who don't have their emotional and ego attachments challenged by the actual reality of violence.
After the didactic, we worked with deactivated pistols to learn to aim properly, hold the proper stance, and to load and unload weapons. It's not rocket science, but rather a body learning, a realm of muscle memory which simply has to be repeated to be deeply learned, and therefore to be "automatically safe." This was just the tip of training.
After lunch, we went to the range, to what I assume was the training section as there was no one else there but us in the class and the four instructors. We each had 10 yard targets, and moved progressively through 1 to 3 to 5 cartridge magazines, practicing aiming, firing, stance, loading, and clearing a jam. The different instructors cycled through, so we got to work with them all: John, his 20 year old son, and two old gun hands and range masters (which I'm assuming refers to a high level of training and responsibility). All were completely competent, knowledgeable, and skilled in teaching us newbies, both technically and supporting us and giving feedback. By the end of the sequence of practice, I was starting to put the pieces together, especially the "fire from reset," technique in which you control the trigger cycle for greater accuracy. Which actually worked. By the last time, John said he didn't have much to correct in what I was doing and praised my marksmanship. It felt like getting a gold star from the village elder, an archetype that has always been underrepresented in my life. Slightly foreign and novel, but very satisfying and reinforcing.
So that was that. We drove home comparing notes, and musings on this new branch of our lives, which is a bit surprising and at the same time obvious to both of us. It's such an odd process to watch one's life unfold when you try to let it take its natural direction. Your idea of yourself, or your reflections from others, always gets ignored, and the oddness stops feeling threatening. Rather, the weird turns become surprising and delightful.
(Heather's Report):
Well, as usual, Marty is so eloquent in his reports. But I'll give it my best.
So, when Marty started putting together our rather intense "Go-Bags", which we fondly refer to as our "Zombie Apocalypse Go-Bags", I think one of our Systema folks or maybe Marty's dad or brother, asked us if we were including weapons in the bags as well. Given what Marty said about Systema, that guns are in essence "Tools", albeit, tools to kill things with, it was something of an idea that got bandied about. I have been raised as an Anti-Gun person most of my life. Never mind my mom owned her father's shotgun which I used and cleaned or being in the Navy and having to shoot .45s converted to .22s in bootcamp. I did cry in bootcamp when I even picked up the empty practice pistol. I cried on the line when we went up to shoot with Marty's dad recently to check out a couple of different guns. I managed not to cry at Chabot. Progress!
But eventually I started to cave and tasked Marty with researching guns before I'd even consider going forward with this idea. We all knew where this would go. With me taking over the research. I'm usually the research person of the two of us. Mostly because Marty doesn't want to and because I'm too damned particular. So, he sort of started the intent to his dad and brother and they said come on up to go to the range and try out several different weapons. But from what I could, that was about the extent, so since I'm a bit... well... erm.... okay, super particular about research, I took over. I said if we were going to do this, we would be out at the range at least once a month to make sure we are practicing regularly, have guns that "fit" us, etc. A lot of my research basically went towards asking one of our Systema instructors "What's the best gun out there for 'home defense'?" and got a big list of "Well, this is what I suggest, here's a list of stuff to get."
I knew we would have to take a small test to get our handgun certificate and there was a copy of the booklet online but this wasn't enough for me. I wanted a course taught by someone knowledgeable. I again asked one of my Systema instructor (and fellow student, as Systema really knows little by way of "rank", but he knows a hell of a lot more than I do and is certified as instructor!) about some of the gun ranges, particularly Chabot Gun Club as they had gotten high marks on Yelp. And I am indeed a Comment Whore. I read many comments. And they offered an all day class for about the same price as other places three hour classes without the inclusion of gear and ammo, which Chabot did have. Our Systema friend said "You absolutely can't go wrong being taught to shoot a gun by crusty old white guys." and said Chabot was a good place. I hope he was kidding about the crusty old white guys comment...
And lo, after a long drive out to the range into the "sticks" (the East Bay), having made our little video (at the top of the page) for our friend Emily, we pulled up and wandered into the classroom and were promptly and in a welcoming fashion, greeted by a crusty old white guy. The rangemaster of Chabot, John Maunder, taught the class. He was very much indeed a crusty old white guy. I expected to feel out of place but as Marty said, the beginners seem to have a very broad range of representation. Maybe the soccer mom was wanting to have a gun in the house for home defense, maybe the social worker wanna be and her... well, Marty called him her Older Gentleman (indeed they were a curious couple, I wasn't sure if she hadn't, well, maybe been a he, at some point her life, hanging out with a dude twice her age with whom she seemed intimately affectionate but they seemed sweet together), but maybe they were there for sport shooting, the techie type to check it out... I mean who knows why people were there. Here were two tree-hugging San Franciscan types taking the course in order to buy guns for home defense. And zombies.
I got super sick and nervous even messing with the practice guns. And I was shaking like a leaf on the live fire practice on the range. It's interesting though. Here's this piece of technology (which in essence has basically not changed in hundreds of years, some tweaking and such, but really, same deal), which is equated with death or danger or power or politics or whatever and really, boiled down, it IS a fucking piece of plastic and metal (we were working with Glocks in the class). Here's this interesting shape of plastic and metal that has been structured to do one thing and one thing only. Use a mechanism to drop something of force onto basically an explosive to set off a projectile. Now, that "one thing only", the firing of a projectile, is basically meant to harm or kill. There's no if, ands, or buts about it. You can take a hammer and bash your thumb or someone else over the head with it, but then you can take a hammer and build a table or a house with it. A gun... well, I couldn't build a house with it. Okay, unless I held up and threatened a construction crew with it... but that's still the threat of harm or death; the gun itself has no other purpose (well, I do come back and add in that it can be used for sport purposes). But nonetheless, still "just" a tool. I know, I know, it is FAR MORE complex than that.
So, I didn't cry this time. I did tremble and shake and feel queasy. It was good to hear the rangemaster say that it took about two years for him to finally lose the shakes when he was handing a gun. Wow, okay, that actually made me feel better. One, that a hardened gun user took two years to fully lose these shakes, but two, that he would admit it. And this is what makes what I remember Obama calling a particular set of gun people after Sandy Hook, "we still want responsible gun owners to be able to own guns". That America does have this reputation for being a "gun crazy" country but that a great deal many owners are very much responsible and you never hear about them because, guess what, they are super responsible and nothing happens. Marty likes to point out "How many times do you walk down the street and NOT get shot?" Our media gloms onto the times when people DO get shot, but apparently when put up against statistics of actually NOT getting shot, the rates of not being shot are super, super high and the stats of being shot are almost infinitesimally non-existent. Our media coverage totally skews the data.
But yes, my social brain that grew up with the idea of "Gun is Bad" is (was) totally in play when I pick up a weapon. I understand this is a powerful object. Not just in association but in reality. Mistakes, accidents, and so forth have occurred because of stupidity or basically not always remaining aware of the reality of what you are holding in your hand. Our instructor was clear about the Six Safety rules (my words):
1. All Weapons Are Hot!! - Always, always assume a gun is loaded unless you yourself have checked it over thoroughly by dropping the magazine out and opening the slide, even sticking your finger in to make sure.
2. Muzzle Control - Point the damn thing in a "safe" direction. Away from people, away from people through walls and so forth. We were taught to point up when not using. Know where your muzzle is pointing at all times.
3. Trigger Control - Until you are ready to fire, keep your finger outside of the trigger guard, down along the side of the gun. In the case of the Glock, the safety is actually IN the trigger, so when you take your finger off the trigger, safety is on. However, better even to take your entire finger out of the guard area. No mistakes.
4. Target Control - Know what your target is. That's always a good thing. What are you going to shoot at? But also, know not just your own target but what's in front of, behind and to the sides of your target. Remember, this is a very powerful tool that will go through things.
5. Gun Operation - Know how to use your gun. This may seem "duh" but it's pretty important to know if your gun has a separate safety on the side or in the trigger or whatever, how to rack the slide, how to get the magazine out, etc.
6. Proper Storage - CA law is very clear about proper and safe storage and transport of a gun. You have to have lock boxes and a trigger lock is suggested, etc.
If you don't follow these, or get complacent, then yes, something can happen. Even if you've been handling guns for 20 years, never get casual. I'm glad I don't have kids. Although the booklet says you have to keep locked up as if kids were there, in case they visit or something. And since we DO have dear children in our lives, we will take our precautions (we would have anyway).
So, anyway, here's my target. Between rounds, I sat and chatted with the sweet wanna be social worker and the techie type and we discussed our shots. Mine drop down and to the right, which I'm given to understand is due to the anticipation of the recoil. And that's exactly what I do. I close my eyes and my shoulders fly up to my ears, all squinched up. However, I'm not far off.
If I had to hit center of mass, maybe I could. I'll leave the head shots to take out the zombies to Marty.
No comments:
Post a Comment