Firing No More
Since last year, I and my friends from graduate school have been planning for a firing spree. Most of my friends in graduate school are policemen/women, one is an agent of PDEA who is armed in almost every day, another is a BJMP staff who makes sure that jailed people do not get their freedom in his stead.
And because the plan has been inadvertently postponed every now and then, it took us a number of months before the actual event transpired. While I was getting ready, I was the first one they called to try the 9MM pistol. I was shaking, my hands were cold even though we were already briefed on what not to do, and what we should do during the actual firing. After three or five or seven trials with the loading, trigger, and the firing, I still couldn't get to load the gun. And after several tries, I waved the empty gun to my audience, making them shout at me for not following that cardinal rule on gun safety: Always consider the gun loaded, and never point the gun to anybody.
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| Armed and Dangerous |
And so the prac
tical shooting/firing began. After a while, my nervousness left me, and I was able to fire a good shot at a plate using the 9MM. After which, we tried the M16 or more commonly called the armalite. I was not able to hit the target using that weapon, maybe because it's a hard thing to get the target down as using the armalite needs for you to be farther from the target plates. After 8 tries, I wasted all 8 bullets on nothing. Same thing happened when I tried the .45 caliber. Nada. I shot the wind. But I cannot blame the .45, but instead my shaking hands, and my failing reflexes. I realized that when you point a gun and take a fire, all of your body shakes. And you have to hold the gun really well to put it in place. Boy, those guns were heavy, especially the M16.
After a good bonding time with my friends, we called it a wrap up after three hours. What is funny is that after the activity, I saw a video of a man killing the guard while declaring a hold-up at a certain pawnshop in Koronadal City. The video became viral after the CCTV clip was released by the pawnshop. And there and then I realized how heavily wrong I was trying my best to practice firing/shooting.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against the use of firearms, especially maybe for the use of securing one's safety. It's just that while watching the video, I realized how fatal a gun could be. Just a shot and one could be dead. And that's what happened to that guard and other incidents of crime in different parts of the country. Very deadly.
And so I'm not going to waste my time trying to fire bullets even if it's for my safety. I will not use a gun to shed some blood. I abhor what I did, I suddenly hated myself for doing that, really.
But all has been done. And I am glad to have stricken off that thing in my bucket list, something which I regretfully did - firing. No, I can be pro-gun for the public's safety. That's responsible firing. But I condemn firing and killing lives for no apparent reason. It's just sad that some people can be very irresponsible with their weapons.
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