Karma's Got A Gun

This weekend Garett drove down from Idaho to spend the extended weekend with his sister, DeLana, in Lehi. I was the one who benefited from his trip, however, since Garett invited me to spend Saturday at his sister's house. The day's activities consisted of shooting and Guitar Hero (I know, it's pretty much the perfect day). Not to sound morbid, but shooting was by far my favorite part of the day. I had never fired a gun before (ever), but had always wanted to so I jumped at the chance. I don't remember the official caliber size and names of the three guns I got to use, so bear with me. The first gun I fired was the shotgun. You're never fully prepared for the reaction of actually firing off a gun until you experience it. Although the kickback wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it still startled me a bit. I didn't hit any of the targets until my second round with the shotgun and (not to toot my own horn) one of the bottles that I hit literally popped twenty feet into the air. It was pretty awesome. Then we started goofing off and firing at clay pigeons that were only about ten yards in front of us. That left a lot of pretty black gun powder marks in the snow.

The second gun was a hand pistol. I had assumed that the kickback would be considerably less than the shotgun (smaller gun, less power right?), so I was extremely surprised when, after firing, my arm went flying back causing me to nearly hit myself in the face (I hadn't locked my elbow. The result of my first shot is why you can see Garett's arm steadying me in the above picture.). The hand pistol was harder to aim with, but I got the hang of it and was able to hit a few targets.

Last was the semi-automatic. This gun was the easiest to aim with by far, so I had a lot more success with hitting the targets. However, by this point my arms were pretty tired (those guns are heavy!) so that affected my accuracy a bit. Anyways, by that point people were thoroughly numb and it was getting dark, so we packed it up.

Since Steve, DeLana's husband, was kind enough to let us play with his guns, we all pitched in with the cleaning process. I was given the job of reloading the magazines (apparently that's what they're called) for the semi-automatic while Garett and Elaina (Garett's friend from Idaho) helped Steve clean the guns. After finishing up with the magazines, I offered my limited cooking skills to DeLana by helping her make dinner. After a dinner of homemade pizza, we all played Guitar Hero on their projector in the living room for a few hours. Good times.