Relative Something

I appear to be missing the gene for interest in guns, and as a result, have almost no experience with them beyond the safety course I took as a youth. I recall having returned home from one of the sessions to tell my dad about the plan to have us shoot a shotgun the next time we met, and that I had some apprehension about it. He seemed surprised. Maybe because I was the 5th of his 6 kids, he had lost track of who had done what, but I think it was probably more a function of his level of inebriation at the time. He didn’t realize I hadn’t fired a shotgun, and decided to remedy that right then and there.

He walked me out in the driveway, and we took a couple shots up in the air. I remember thinking what we were doing was violating a lot of what I was being taught in the safety course, but it was with my dad, and I was about 12, so who was I to argue?

As a parent, I didn’t encourage our children to learn anything about guns, but that didn’t stop Julian. He took up the hobby of Airsoft, became an active member of the MAA, and would buy and sell those non-lethal guns, often dismantling new ones to customize and modify them to higher levels of performance.

Recently, we asked him if he could loan us one of those guns to shoot plastic bb’s at a squirrel that is helping himself to the bird feeders. Julian brought over a simple spring-operated, single fire version of an assault rifle style gun, and gave me a quick lesson on loading and firing it.

We were both sober at the time.

Yesterday, I had the first opportunity to introduce the squirrel to our new toy. Eventually, I had fired enough times that I figured I should refill the magazine. Julian had only showed me once, so I’m not sure I was doing it by the book.

There is a spring in the magazine, that needs to be pulled down and set, allowing the bb’s to be inserted. I know to be careful not to let the spring snap back up, because it could break the plastic, so I was careful to hold it in the detent while I dropped a couple of dozen little green plastic balls in.

Then I released the spring.

The entire cartridge of bb’s shot up into the air and came raining down in the kitchen, bouncing and rolling in every direction. It was like being in a rain shower of plastic balls. It made a really cool sound. I couldn’t help but laugh at the hilarity of my action. I think I missed some part of the lesson. Do you put the magazine back in the gun before you release the spring?

I’m just really glad I don’t play with a gun that has real bullets.