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Lock and load
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Today my road ends in Palisade. I’ve come to hold up my end of a deal. Ari Armstrong, a libertarian whose writing appears periodically in Boulder Weekly, publicly challenged me to take a National Rifle Association personal defense course ("Pamela White gun challenge," Speaking Out, Dec. 19, 2002). His challenge came in response to a column I had written about the night my apartment was broken into by two men with switchblades. Saved from being raped at knifepoint by the timely intervention of two CU police officers, I spent years coping with the trauma of that incident. My column was intended to share what I felt was some level of transcendence over the violence of that night. In the column, I explained that, although I’d have shot and killed the two intruders if I’d had a gun that night, I now feel violence is not the answer, even when the issue is self-defense. ("The night I would have killed," Uncensored, Aug. 22, 2002.) In response, Ari wrote, "It pained me to read her ignorant perspective on gun ownership and the right of self-defense… She misunderstands the nature of self-defense and the appropriate use of a gun." Not one to turn down a dare, I publicly accepted his offer. As Lee Boren, an NRA member and lifelong hunter whom I was about to meet would say, "A deal is a deal. You stick to it until hell freezes over and you’ve walked five miles on the ice." Ari tells me he hopes two things will come out of this weekend. He hopes first of all to demystify guns so that I come to see them as tools, as opposed to little metallic monsters, the embodiment of violence and evil. He also hopes to combat stereotypes I might have about people whom we in Boulder might simply call "gun nuts." We stay the night at the home of his father and stepmother, Linn and Sharon Armstrong. Linn is a Vietnam Veteran, a certified NRA instructor and one of the founders of this course, which has trained some 2,000 people since 1991. I go to bed feeling more than a little nervous. Before I fall asleep, Neo pops into my mind. "Guns," he says. "Lots of guns." I’ve never even held a gun. Digging double taps The first day of the class starts at 7 a.m. No skinny vanilla latté to wake me up, just the scenery–green orchards, the high walls of the desert canyon and the muddy waters of the Colorado. We arrive at the Grand Valley Training Club, and I meet Dean Blanck, our lead instructor. He helps me sign in, hands me a packet of information. Right away I realize something significant: I’m the only gun virgin in the room. Everyone else has arrived carrying handguns, which they deposit on a table. They all know each other and talk in code. "D’you bring your 22 or the semi-auto?" "Gonna try my 22 today. Bringin’ my new nine millimeter tomorrow." Whatever. I slink into a corner, the lone representative of the People’s Republic. Dean and Gary Barto spend the morning instructing us in basic handgun safety. "ALWAYS keep your gun pointed in a safe direction. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until you’re ready to use it. ALWAYS handle a gun as if it is loaded." It’s a drill we repeat throughout the weekend. Dean and Gary teach us how guns work, how to check them to see if they’re loaded, what to do if one jams or misfires. I find I don’t always understand what they’re talking about. I raise my hand and ask questions to which everyone else already knows the answer. "What’s automatic about a semi-automatic?" Just before lunch, we get to try what we’ve learned, while handling unloaded handguns. Ari hands me a .22 double-action revolver. (I now know what these words mean.) I accept it as if it were a rattlesnake. Slowly, I check it for cartridges, click the cylinder in place, practice the stance they’ve taught us and–it feels like a big moment–pull the trigger. Except that I can’t really pull the trigger. It’s too heavy. I have to use two fingers, and even then it’s tough. Then it’s time for lunch. I do my best to eat, but with a belly full of butterflies it’s not easy. (OK, so I make extra effort where the chocolate brownies are concerned.) At 1, we gather at the shooting range. A group of instructors has joined the class, including Linn Armstrong. They will act as personal coaches for the afternoon, giving one-on-one attention to participants, many of whom enrolled to qualify for concealed carry permits. One of the instructors–all volunteers–is Lee Boren who, after hearing my name, says, "Oh, you’re that gal. I didn’t think we’d ever see you over here. I told them that if you came over I wanted to be your coach." Each of us is given a spot along the firing line. I’m in front of target number nine. Before me sits a box of .22 cartridges, the .22 revolver and a .22 semi-automatic, safety goggles and ear protection. As Dean coaches us through the rules of range, my coach, Jeannette Tyson, realizes there’s no way I can pull the trigger on the revolver and suggests we switch to the semi-automatic. I don’t know what I think about that, but Dean is telling us to load five rounds, so I put on my eye and ear protection and, with Jeanette’s help, load five cartridges. Dean tells us we can fire. The room erupts in noise so loud that, even with ear protection, I gasp in surprise. Something hot flies through the air and hits my face. I jump. "It’s just a spent cartridge from his .22, honey. It’s OK." The man to my right has a .38, and every shot sounds like a canon. I still haven’t fired. The surprise begins to wear off, and Jeannette coaches me into the right position. I click the slide forward, focus on the front sight, fire. One, two, three, four, five. The target is too far away for me to see the results, and I’m pretty certain my rounds ended up in China. But Jeannette tells me I nailed the target. "That’s a good group," she says. "How many years you been shootin’?" one of the other instructors asks me. "Those were her first shots," Linn tells him. Our targets are not the shady outlines of human beings or bulls-eyes, but white pieces of paper roughly the size of the adult human torso. When we go to collect our targets, I see my five shots would have turned someone’s heart and liver into pudding. It makes me queasy to view the paper as a human body, so I stop thinking about it and spend the rest of the afternoon focusing on how I handle the gun. We shoot sitting, standing, with our left hands, with our right, at close range, single action, double taps. I dig double taps. My aim stays steady, regardless of what Dean makes us do, and I find it ironic that I might have some talent for an activity that I’ve always considered distasteful. I begin to get into a rhythm. Load cartridges, pop in the magazine, click the slide into place, get my grip, focus, fire. By the end of the day I’m forced to admit that target shooting is, well, fun. I joke with the other members of the class about being from the People’s Republic of Boulder, but tell them I speak fluent Western Slope. They make self-deprecating remarks about being rednecks. The "gun nuts" and I get along just fine. Simulated attack The next day starts at 6:45 a.m. Palisade Police Chief Carroll Quarles gives a presentation about Colorado’s "Make My Day" law and the use of lethal force in self-defense, using real examples from his three decades of law enforcement. He tries to help us understand the nuances of the law. Are you immune from prosecution if you shoot someone who’s outside trying to steal your car? No. How about if someone breaks into your home while you’re asleep to steal your TV? It depends on the totality of the circumstances. During one of the breaks, I tell Chief Quarles about what happened to me–how two young men with switchblades had cased out my apartment in the middle of the night, how they’d broken through one of my windows with the backs of their knives, how the police had arrived in time to keep me from being raped. When he takes the podium again, Chief Quarles asks me to share the story with the class–proof that such a thing can happen to anyone. It’s not hard to talk about it. I’ve spoken about it many times, and it was many years ago. But when Chief Quarles leaves, we watch a couple of videos about home safety. Both illustrate the myriad ways people can break into your home. One scenario depicts an attack eerily similar to the one I endured. I find it very hard to watch. We break for lunch, then return for more shooting practice. But this time is different. Linn is in charge today and works to help us understand how stress can impact your effectiveness with a firearm. He adds elements designed to throw us off. Until we reach the point of confronting an attacker, I do pretty well, with the help of today’s coach, Sharon Armstrong. But when Linn instructs us to shout at an imagined intruder, I find myself suddenly struggling to focus. I don’t want to do this. Tears pour down my cheeks, pool in my goggles, as I force myself to shout the words. "Stop! Go away! The police are on their way! I have a gun! If you come inside, I will shoot you!" Somehow it feels too real, and my aim falters until the last few attempts, when I manage to get my emotions under control. Then we commence the next exercise, a simulated break-in. The object is to use words, backed up by the potential of lethal force, to subdue a would-be attacker until the police arrive. To illustrate, Ari plays the role of attacker, Linn that of the defender. I watch, feel something akin to panic. When it comes time to perform the exercise, I can barely find my voice. "I can’t do this," I say. I leave the range, lock myself in the women’s room. For 10 minutes, I can do nothing but cry. The raw terror I thought I had overcome years ago has returned, and I feel shaken. I splash my face with cold water, but eventually give up on trying not to cry and leave the bathroom. Sharon is outside waiting for me, gives me a hug. Lee, Dean and some of the other instructors come to check on me, offer a hug, share their support. Compassionate gun nuts. After two intense days, they feel like friends. Then Dean tells me how he was attacked some years ago, before he owned a gun. One night as he was making an after-hours deposit at the bank, he was attacked by a man who fired three .38 rounds at him at point-blank range. The attacker missed his target, but Dean was very shaken. "I know exactly how you feel right now," Dean says, his arm around my shoulder. I struggle to compose myself as the other students finish the last exercise, one designed to illustrate how quickly an attacker can reach you–and perhaps even overpower you–before you can make use of a firearm. I don’t need to do that exercise, because I already know. By 6 p.m., Dean is ready to hand out certificates. We each receive two, as this course combines two separate NRA trainings–basic practical for handguns and self-protection. I accept my certificates, feeling every bit that I have earned them. Someone asks me what I’m going to write when I get back home. I tell them I don’t know. "It’s going to take me a while to digest this." Guns or no guns? There’s a simple wisdom common to rural people, one you can still find on the Western Slope, where conversations are unhurried, honesty is expected and hard work the rule of life. Many are comfortable with guns because they grew up with them. Contrary to the image of gun-crazed zealots who just want to shoot–prairie dogs, road signs, people’s tires–those I met believed men and women have a Constitutional right to protect themselves and their families through the use of firearms. That’s why they volunteered more than 16 hours of their weekend to help others learn this skill. But over the course of the weekend, I heard Dean, Gary, Linn, Chief Quarels and others give more reasons not to shoot than to fire away. They painstakingly covered ways to thwart attackers without resorting to the use of firearms–then discussed how to use firearms as a last resort. This was very different rhetoric than what I had expected to hear. Still, I get stuck on one fact: The use of a gun can result in loss of human life. While firearms may be tools, they are tools designed to take life. Yes, more people might die in swimming-pool related accidents, and it is possible to kill someone with a dinner fork, but neither swimming pools nor dinner forks were made specifically to kill. Guns were. To their credit, the instructors were careful to make a couple of points. First, many criminals are frightened away once they realize their intended victim is armed; even should the worst occur, pulling the trigger is probably unnecessary. And, second, not everyone is suited for gun ownership. "If you don’t know for certain that you can pull that trigger, don’t own a gun for personal protection!" Dean told the class several times. I was happy to hear these things. But there’s more to it than this. Some of us want a world in which guns–and all forms of violence–are nonexistent. We believe we cannot achieve this society through the use of violence, but only through non-violence. Some of us even believe it better to lose your life to violence than to use violence to defend your life. Sound crazy? The world leaders I admire didn’t think so: Buddha, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But I admire Dean, too, and Ari, and Linn, and Sharon and Lee and Jeannette. They’re not weirdos living on the fringe, but compassionate, brave and honest people with a set of beliefs that demand they be responsible, armed citizens. So did Ari accomplish what he set out to accomplish with this gun challenge? I think so. It was a tough weekend for me. It forced me to face both stereotypes I might have had, as well as lingering nightmares. I discovered an ability I didn’t know I had–target shooting–and overcame my fear of holding a gun. I even learned that shooting targets can be fun. Where does this leave me? I had mixed feelings about guns before the training, and I have mixed feelings now. I’m a pacifist, but I’m qualified for concealed carry. Although I don’t want a gun, I know how to use one should the need arise. I understand the need to feel safe–I understand fear–but I’m not sure a gun could help me sleep more soundly at night. I guess I’ll be sorting this out for a while. I call up a close friend when I get back, talk about the experience with him. He asks if I want to come shoot with him at a range in Denver. I say I do, particularly if I get to try his father’s 9 mm. At the end of our conversation I tell him I feel a sense of pride about completing the course. I feel like I walked my five miles on hell’s ice and came away with a new insight–and, more importantly, new friends. With abundant thanks to Ari Armstrong for having enough faith in his own beliefs to challenge mine. Thanks to Linn and Sharon Armstrong for their hospitality and to all the instructors at Grand Valley Training Club for their wisdom and understanding. For information on this NRA training, call 970-464-5177. For another take on this, go to www.co-freedom.com/2003/05/challengeii.html. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com |
My first feeling at the sight of the desert mesas, the rolling Colorado River and the green valley below is one of intense homesickness. My parents live about 50 miles to the south in Montrose. I haven’t been home for almost two years, and I’m not going home now.
