Target Practice
“You can either live in our house or own a gun.” Our infant daughter was sleeping in her crib down the hall. My husband and I had taken up separate camps on either side of our living room when I lobbed this at him.
The gun would have been for hunting, and I was stuck on the thing I feared about people who want firearms: the primal instinct to dominate. I summoned images of a deer’s eyes, wild with fear while it panted through its last breaths. My husband was talking about things like wildlife overpopulation and morally responsible hunting. He and his friends from their childhood camp in New Hampshire believe it’s unethical to eat an animal you can’t kill. I should probably go vegan.
Nine years later, I was at that camp with my family when we stopped by the riflery center. The instructor caught my eye and asked if I wanted to shoot a .22. I surprised myself by saying yes. Ten minutes later, I was wearing orange noise-canceling headphones, had learned that my left is my dominant eye, and was lying on the ground, looking through the sight. He told me to pull the trigger on an in-breath, then hold it after I fired until I relocated the target. This is how to follow through on your aim.
I was using live ammunition and expected to feel jumpy. But as I aimed, everything around me quieted and my breathing slowed. It was just me and the target. I fired five rounds, and when I examined those black-and-white circles closing in toward the center, I was shocked to see a bull’s-eye. I showed the instructor and joked that it must be all my yoga and meditation. He said, “Target practice is deeply meditative. I often come down here in the early mornings, when it’s quiet, to shoot.”
According to the Pew Research Center, 30 percent of gun owners cite sport shooting as the reason they own a firearm. The only reason I’d previously considered was taking a life. My newfound perspective didn’t change my mind. I still don’t want a gun in my house. It asked me to soften to someone else’s experience and allow it to exist next to mine. I’d like to hang out with the riflery instructor, even if he keeps company with guns.
*Excerpted from my introduction to the book, “Hindsight 2020.” It’s a collection of essays from the Inkhouse community about moments of clarity that open us up to another point of view.
