thedrifter
12-08-05, 12:18 PM
Ladies' Night draws a gun-toting crowd
By Delaney Hall
The .22 pistols are best for novices, explains the man behind the counter. He raises his voice over the gunfire: "They don't recoil as much as some other makes." I am peering into the glass display case, trying to decide whether to rent the cylinder revolver or the semi-automatic. Both are fun, I am told, so I will try both.
This is Red's Indoor Shooting Range, where Mondays are Ladies' Days and so I - a lady - do not actually have to pay for my guns; they're complimentary. I still buy two boxes of Blazer bullets and the range time, but it's half price.
The man, Steve Lucas, slides a short form over the counter. The form asks me to check boxes, identifying my skill level with a variety of firearms. It also asks: Have I ever been "adjudicated as mentally deficient?" Have I ever been addicted to drugs? I check novice, no, and no. Lucas takes my driver's license and, confirming I'm over twenty-one, places it where the .22 pistol used to be.
Carefully, Mr. Lucas explains how to load the revolver, deftly unhinging the chamber and filling it with ten bullets and then clicking it shut with a steely snap. The semi-automatic has a magazine which slips from the handle of the gun. Bullets are loaded one by one and the magazine slides back inside. The revolver is heavier than the semi-automatic.
To my left, through a thick window, is the range. It's a long, low concrete-walled room stretching back about 100 yards. Lined up in the ten stalls are mostly men. Karen Ziegler, the owner of Red's, explains that it's almost deer season and hunters are practicing.
Some use rifles (deep, resonant gunfire) and some use handguns like my own (punchier gunfire, flames blaring briefly from the muzzles). Backs are turned, arms are raised, targets, which flutter back and forth on ceiling-mounted tracks, are peppered with holes.
There are at least two other women here for Ladies' Night, standing at the thick window and waiting their turn.
"I heard about [Ladies' Night] over the summer," said Cindy Green, an environmental engineering graduate student at UT, "but I couldn't find a partner in crime until now. Maybe I shouldn't say 'partner in crime.'"
Green occasionally shot guns as a child at summer camp in east Texas, she remembered. And a housemate is an avid shooter, she said, but he never takes her to the range so she decided to come herself. Ladies' Day is appealing, she said, because it's cheaper.
The original idea behind Ladies' Day, which started fourteen years ago, was to get more women interested in shooting, an activity usually dominated by men, said Ziegler.
"A lot of ladies were taking handgun classes with us," she said, "but, especially if they were new shooters, they were a little intimidated by all the guys with loud rifles."
Ziegler said that few women would show up at the range to practice, and she started thinking about ways to encourage more women to come.
"Monday nights were quieter than other nights," she said, probably because so many men were home watching Monday night football. "Ladies' Night became our answer to Monday night football. We wanted to give them something else to do if they weren't football fans."
Ladies' Night eventually expanded to Ladies' Day, and has grown more popular. There are regulars, women who hire baby sitters or leave their husbands at home. One group from a real estate company comes regularly, wearing shirts that say "Stress Relief."
Ziegler, who prefers a .45 ACP caliber, didn't start shooting until she was in her thirties. "My husband had guns and traveled all the time and I was afraid of them," she said. "I grew up in the city and, like many people, I was fearful of the gun itself. I realized what you should be afraid of is the person with the gun." Ziegler took lessons with an army marksman, loved it, and six months later she was shooting in matches.
"I don't really look at a gun as a weapon," she said. "I see it as a sport, like bowling. If you put the ball down the right way and give it the right spin ... Shooting's the same way. It's a mental game."
Enamored with shooting, Ziegler started loading her own ammo, something most women don't do. "I bought the powder, I bought the bullets, I packed them," she said, tweaking her recipe until she got it right.
Ziegler doesn't shoot much anymore. She said she has rheumatoid arthritis which makes it difficult, and her time is mostly spent running Red's. She still teaches when someone requests a female instructor, as she's one of only a few in Austin.
To get into the target range, you first pass through an antechamber where you sign another form, relieving Red's of responsibility for any injuries or mishaps. The form is, again, short, and asks me to confirm that I "understand and acknowledge that guns and ammunition are destructive devices capable of inflicting serious injury or death, and are inherently dangerous." I sign and date.
It's even noisier in this room. "Close your ears," says Luke Fuller, the range officer, handing me a pair of red soundproof ear muffs. We shout to each other now. Fuller says he got into guns in high school but has never been hunting. Starting at 15, he'd go to ranges in Longview with his parents, he says.
Because of the noise, there is confusion about where to go next. I stand for a moment looking at a sign on the wall which says, "No food, drink, shot shells, tobacco products, tracer ammo, or bare feet allowed on the range." Eventually I'm led to cubby number five.
The loudest guns - the deer rifles, 270s, Lucas tells me - make sounds that reverberate in my deepest guts. In stall one, a hunter has run his target to the far end of the range and is peering through a sight on his gun. Another person walks in with an AR 15 - an assault rifle similar to the ones currently used in Iraq, Lucas says. Another man, in a shirt that says, "It's happy hour somewhere," sniffs the gun-smoky air, saying, "Such a good smell."
Though the cubicles are separated by plywood walls, brassy shells expelled from gun chambers fly over and ding against the pockmarked walls. Fuller pushes a broom, sweeping up the carpet of shells, tinkling, and depositing them in a bucket.
I pick a target, human-shaped, pin it up, and run it out 10 yards or so. Lucas supervises the first shots, which - in terms of recoil - just quickly pop my hand up and then set it back down again. The gun jumps like a little creature, briefly animated.
I'm nervous handling it. Since I didn't grow up around guns, I suspect that they might misfire in a moment, that the back-end might explode or the front-end jam. I shoot, and I hit my target pretty much in the heart. To the left and right, targets are riddled with bullets in the heart-regions and head-regions.
A few cubbies down, a man has retrieved his target, peppered with holes. He holds it up when he sees me watching and gives a thumbs up.
I exhaust two boxes of bullets and then return the gun to Lucas. "Did you have fun?" he asks, and I tell him I did. He points out a U.S. Secret Service Certificate of Appreciation presented to Red's which hangs on the wall near the gun case.
"A lot of those people come in here for practice," he explains, as do police officers and other government officials, along with the hunters, sportsmen, home defenders and gun enthusiasts.
I pay for my time and ammunition. Near the cash register a sign reads "We don't dial 911," and below it hangs a pistol. The man at the register is very friendly and encourages me to come again.
Ellie
By Delaney Hall
The .22 pistols are best for novices, explains the man behind the counter. He raises his voice over the gunfire: "They don't recoil as much as some other makes." I am peering into the glass display case, trying to decide whether to rent the cylinder revolver or the semi-automatic. Both are fun, I am told, so I will try both.
This is Red's Indoor Shooting Range, where Mondays are Ladies' Days and so I - a lady - do not actually have to pay for my guns; they're complimentary. I still buy two boxes of Blazer bullets and the range time, but it's half price.
The man, Steve Lucas, slides a short form over the counter. The form asks me to check boxes, identifying my skill level with a variety of firearms. It also asks: Have I ever been "adjudicated as mentally deficient?" Have I ever been addicted to drugs? I check novice, no, and no. Lucas takes my driver's license and, confirming I'm over twenty-one, places it where the .22 pistol used to be.
Carefully, Mr. Lucas explains how to load the revolver, deftly unhinging the chamber and filling it with ten bullets and then clicking it shut with a steely snap. The semi-automatic has a magazine which slips from the handle of the gun. Bullets are loaded one by one and the magazine slides back inside. The revolver is heavier than the semi-automatic.
To my left, through a thick window, is the range. It's a long, low concrete-walled room stretching back about 100 yards. Lined up in the ten stalls are mostly men. Karen Ziegler, the owner of Red's, explains that it's almost deer season and hunters are practicing.
Some use rifles (deep, resonant gunfire) and some use handguns like my own (punchier gunfire, flames blaring briefly from the muzzles). Backs are turned, arms are raised, targets, which flutter back and forth on ceiling-mounted tracks, are peppered with holes.
There are at least two other women here for Ladies' Night, standing at the thick window and waiting their turn.
"I heard about [Ladies' Night] over the summer," said Cindy Green, an environmental engineering graduate student at UT, "but I couldn't find a partner in crime until now. Maybe I shouldn't say 'partner in crime.'"
Green occasionally shot guns as a child at summer camp in east Texas, she remembered. And a housemate is an avid shooter, she said, but he never takes her to the range so she decided to come herself. Ladies' Day is appealing, she said, because it's cheaper.
The original idea behind Ladies' Day, which started fourteen years ago, was to get more women interested in shooting, an activity usually dominated by men, said Ziegler.
"A lot of ladies were taking handgun classes with us," she said, "but, especially if they were new shooters, they were a little intimidated by all the guys with loud rifles."
Ziegler said that few women would show up at the range to practice, and she started thinking about ways to encourage more women to come.
"Monday nights were quieter than other nights," she said, probably because so many men were home watching Monday night football. "Ladies' Night became our answer to Monday night football. We wanted to give them something else to do if they weren't football fans."
Ladies' Night eventually expanded to Ladies' Day, and has grown more popular. There are regulars, women who hire baby sitters or leave their husbands at home. One group from a real estate company comes regularly, wearing shirts that say "Stress Relief."
Ziegler, who prefers a .45 ACP caliber, didn't start shooting until she was in her thirties. "My husband had guns and traveled all the time and I was afraid of them," she said. "I grew up in the city and, like many people, I was fearful of the gun itself. I realized what you should be afraid of is the person with the gun." Ziegler took lessons with an army marksman, loved it, and six months later she was shooting in matches.
"I don't really look at a gun as a weapon," she said. "I see it as a sport, like bowling. If you put the ball down the right way and give it the right spin ... Shooting's the same way. It's a mental game."
Enamored with shooting, Ziegler started loading her own ammo, something most women don't do. "I bought the powder, I bought the bullets, I packed them," she said, tweaking her recipe until she got it right.
Ziegler doesn't shoot much anymore. She said she has rheumatoid arthritis which makes it difficult, and her time is mostly spent running Red's. She still teaches when someone requests a female instructor, as she's one of only a few in Austin.
To get into the target range, you first pass through an antechamber where you sign another form, relieving Red's of responsibility for any injuries or mishaps. The form is, again, short, and asks me to confirm that I "understand and acknowledge that guns and ammunition are destructive devices capable of inflicting serious injury or death, and are inherently dangerous." I sign and date.
It's even noisier in this room. "Close your ears," says Luke Fuller, the range officer, handing me a pair of red soundproof ear muffs. We shout to each other now. Fuller says he got into guns in high school but has never been hunting. Starting at 15, he'd go to ranges in Longview with his parents, he says.
Because of the noise, there is confusion about where to go next. I stand for a moment looking at a sign on the wall which says, "No food, drink, shot shells, tobacco products, tracer ammo, or bare feet allowed on the range." Eventually I'm led to cubby number five.
The loudest guns - the deer rifles, 270s, Lucas tells me - make sounds that reverberate in my deepest guts. In stall one, a hunter has run his target to the far end of the range and is peering through a sight on his gun. Another person walks in with an AR 15 - an assault rifle similar to the ones currently used in Iraq, Lucas says. Another man, in a shirt that says, "It's happy hour somewhere," sniffs the gun-smoky air, saying, "Such a good smell."
Though the cubicles are separated by plywood walls, brassy shells expelled from gun chambers fly over and ding against the pockmarked walls. Fuller pushes a broom, sweeping up the carpet of shells, tinkling, and depositing them in a bucket.
I pick a target, human-shaped, pin it up, and run it out 10 yards or so. Lucas supervises the first shots, which - in terms of recoil - just quickly pop my hand up and then set it back down again. The gun jumps like a little creature, briefly animated.
I'm nervous handling it. Since I didn't grow up around guns, I suspect that they might misfire in a moment, that the back-end might explode or the front-end jam. I shoot, and I hit my target pretty much in the heart. To the left and right, targets are riddled with bullets in the heart-regions and head-regions.
A few cubbies down, a man has retrieved his target, peppered with holes. He holds it up when he sees me watching and gives a thumbs up.
I exhaust two boxes of bullets and then return the gun to Lucas. "Did you have fun?" he asks, and I tell him I did. He points out a U.S. Secret Service Certificate of Appreciation presented to Red's which hangs on the wall near the gun case.
"A lot of those people come in here for practice," he explains, as do police officers and other government officials, along with the hunters, sportsmen, home defenders and gun enthusiasts.
I pay for my time and ammunition. Near the cash register a sign reads "We don't dial 911," and below it hangs a pistol. The man at the register is very friendly and encourages me to come again.
Ellie