Jonathan Block

After work I drive to South San Francisco. The face of a nearby mountain displays “South San Francisco The Industrial City” in giant white letters. We drive through an area of the city close to the bay and north of the San Francisco Airport. The neighborhood is filled with large warehouses and corporate looking office parks straight out of the 80’s. Large parking lots are mostly deserted because its Friday night. I pass several 18-wheelers which seem deserted on the side of the road. We arrive 30 minutes early for our 7PM lesson at Jackson Arms Shooting Range, so I look around the showroom. A small and somewhat dirty store room just the size of most Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants. I hear random booming gunshot ring out from behind a concrete wall with a window made of bullet proof glass (or plexiglas.) An occasional louder boom rings out making the other shots seem like the popping of bubble gum. The guys behind the counter, although nice, seem a little young for such a serious business - renting lethal weapons to random guys like me off the street.

I look at the counter -there are a few dozen pistols and revolvers. The walls are lined with more weaponry such as shot guns and rifles. Behind the counter on the wall are targets you can buy. I find it odd that almost all of them have the outline of a man… only one or two have traditional circular targets. There’s another counter elsewhere in the gun shop where a bigger guy with tattoos is going through paper work. Next to him is an old TV with a kung foo movie playing.

Our instructor appears and gathers our class of 6 together and we head to the back room. Over 45 minutes, he covers the basics of gun safety, how to operate a gun, reload, deal with the magazine, jams, stance, aim, etiquette and rules at the range and more. There are only 3 buttons on my ‘22 caliber pistol, but I swear I can’t remember the right order to push them and in which direction. Time to head into the range.

After signing a few waivers we file into the range with a bucket in hand containing bullets, the gun, and target paper. I’m wearing eye and ear protection. The range is cold. I think they pump fresh air in in order to remove the smoke produced by the exploding gun powder. The scent of gun powder is a new smell to me. We set our bucket down at our stall. My instructor clips my target to a pulley system and flips a switch which pulls the target away about 40 feet. I’m nervous to load a live gun for the first time. My instructor comes over and helps me with the bullets and the loading of the magazine. He helps correct my stance and reviews each of the critical steps with me until its time to fire.

The first time you shoot a gun, you aren’t sure how much you’ll have to pull on the trigger before it goes pop, and you aren’t sure how much it’ll kick. Compared to the guy at the stall next to mine, I’m dealing with a pea shooter. There is almost no kick what-so-ever to my gun, but the gun shoots and I hit the orange center area of my target. Very easy. I go on to shoot 100 bullets 10 at a time. I practice over and over the act of removing the magazine and pulling the slide back into its open position.

Overall, I do a good job aiming for my first time. We consider upgrading to a much more scary looking gun, but decide against it because we realize its been two and a half hours since we arrived. I tell the guys behind the desk that they did a good job of teaching me and that I’ll be back again to shoot bigger guns. They like that.

Before I leave, I wonder as to why they would post the line in the constitution about militia and guns in a prominent location in the store. The line reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

It seems to me that the founders tied the concept of a *Militia* to the people’s *right to have guns*. It’s even in the same short sentence. In simple terms…

*regulated militia* *allows for free state* *requiring arms*. In other words, “don’t infringe on the right for arms so that we may conduct a well regulated militia to have our free state.”

I’m not so sure what the founders would have thought about Jonathan Block going to the shooting range just to have guns for entertainment. Entertainment was achieved nonetheless.