Converting another

[PennsyPlinker]

We have a good friend whom we have known for years. She grew up in the city, and has been a city girl all her life. She has been terrified and against any kind of guns for all her time here on this earth. Today that changed. She and her husband, who is one of my best friends, came out to visit (they are from New Jersey) and after lunch, while sitting around talking, I asked her if she would be interested in shooting a gun sometime. She said yes.

"How about right now?"

I showed her a short video of a friend of mine shooting a suppressed .22 LR pistol, and explained that it would not kick and it would not make noise. She was a little nervous, but she agreed. We packed up all the range stuff and proceeded down the hill to PennsyPlinker's Private Plinking Place. We set up the targets, which I will describe in a moment, and then had a short course on firearm safety.

The targets came from a case of 16 oz Coors Lite beer. A, it was in cans, and B, it was lite beer, which C, means it was unfit for consumption right from the start. It had been sitting around waiting for a special occasion such as this, so I broke it out. There is nothing like a reactive target to get someone's enthusiasm going. Below is a short segment of a video of her shooting. There is no identifying information, so I don't have any problem with posting this much. I can be identified of course, but the government already knows who I am.



She had a blast - literally. She was giggling, and laughing, and saying how cool this was right up to the point where we had to pack up and run for the house because of the coming thunderstorm. She informed me that she was definitely up for this again, and as they were walking out, she turned to me and said, "I guess from now on when I tell you how much I hate guns, you aren't going to believe me, are you?"

No, I'm not. And she won't believe herself either.

[ErSwnn]

I've had the pleasure of turning several people around, most notably a liberal social worker from Philly. She actually thought a recoiling bb gun could knock down her 6'2' son. He was 14 at the time. So I took him shooting, she tagged along out of curiosity. Well since he was having such a good time and the facts became apparent that indeed firearms are completely safe when used properly, she opted to try it out.

He now owns a .22 rifle.


Another direction I like to take is explaining why firearms are important to society, both for personal defense and a citizen's obligation to protect the rights enumberated in the COTUS. Only a truely thickheaded, closeminded, unthinking dolt can attempt to argue the reason those aspects of firearms aren't valid. Yeah, ran into a few of those too.

Within weeks of joining this forum I recieved an infraction, and for good reason. In my apology I offered to amend the potential damage to gunowners and was told to go convert an anti. How'd I do EM?

[FNG19]

You are a true ambassador of the sport, Bill. Thanks for the effort!

[GrumpyBear]

Congratulations on another convert.I agree that you are a well spoken ambassador for the shooting sports.

I agree reactive targets are a lot more fun than paper.
Though believe it or not I sometimes enjoy a Cold Coors light draft,please don't hold that against me.

[Lexington]

Good work, Pennsy! Glad to see someone else from the People's Republic has come to love the sport.

Maybe she'll convince her husband that she needs a weapon of her own, too. Likely won't be able to carry it, but it'll at least be there when she's at home.

[PennsyPlinker]

Thanks guys. Grumpy Bear, I don't hold people's tastes in beer against them, so no worries on that. I prefer an IPA or something even hoppier.

While we have talked about many things in the past, this "event" gave me the opportunity to explain to her a lot of the fiction foisted on the public my the media. All of a sudden she had lots of questions and was very interested in the answers.