Full Metal Natkin

New England suburbanites are generally not know for their prowess with firearms. In fact, generally we have had very little contact with the things. So when we entered the south, Jon and I began to fantasize about going shootin'.

At first, we attempted to get adopted by a hunter in Texas. Whenever someone in camo would talk to us, we would casually lament how it was difficult for us to go hunting as we couldn't carry a rifle across state lines (as if either of us had even owned a rifle). Another tactic, when someone told us he was "out in the sticks," to hunt, was to say, in a very sad voice, "oh, we've never been hunting before," and hope that the dumbstruck Texan would load us into his truck for an afternoon of siiting in the woods with guns.

After many failed attempts, we were finally told why no one would bend to take us out. In Texas, there is no such thing as public land. Individuals had purchased huge tracts of turf, fenced it off, and charged normal folks upwards of $300/ day to shoot things. As Jon and I had no desire to spend that much money to go shoot a cute little deer, (we prefered to do it for free) we quickly abandoned our hunting dreams.

So we continued our ramble across the southland, occasionally being buzzed by a pickup truck with guns in the window, or hearing the sound of gunfire off in the woods (more common than you would think), causing our desire to feel the cold steel of a firearm in our hands to grow. As we apporached Florida, Jon began to talk of his Appalachian Trail friend, Ninja (his trail name), a North Florida native and hard core libertarian who was studying criminology at FSU. Now, to me, the equation of southern native+libertarian worldview equalled only one thing - gun owner. With this knowledge, we quickly began pondering how we would convince Ninja to take us out for a fun filled day of shooting paper targets.

As it turned out, convincing Ninja to take us out shooting was a whole lot easier than we had anticipated. I simply asked "How many guns do you own?" to which he replied "8." I followed that question up with, "can we shoot them?" To my heart's delight, the answer to this question was, "of course!"

Moments later, we were off to the Tallahassee shooting range, blowing away pictures of Osama Bin Laden with glee.