#overshare

I started shooting in second grade. The first time, we took a single shot .22 rifle to the creek and shot at cardboard on roll bales, cans, boxes. We shot at fruit in the creek, at cans and plastic bottles on twigs, and paper plates on logs. Once vaporized a Moon Pie with a 12ga slug. I learned to shot clays with my grandfather's 410 and my dad's 12ga. I got a little compound bow for my birthday in 4th grade, and a Crossman BB/pellet gun in 5th. I got a paintball gun in 6th grade and splattered the hell out of our back yard. I got my first .22 rifle in 7th grade and put over 1,000 rounds through it over the next spring break. I like shooting.

My dad tried to take us hunting for rabbits once, my brother carrying a 12ga 870, me with the 410 single and my dad with a Beretta 92 in his belt. It was pretty ridiculous and we shot nothing. I was maybe 9?

Guns were around and by 4th-5th grade, I was better at shooting than I was at math, video games, sports, or whatever else kids were doing in the 90s. Skateboarding? Yo-yos? Pushing a hoop with a stick?

I think a lot of boys get fascinated with guns and tanks and planes and all kind of military things at some age. Our society sure does pour a bunch of propaganda down our throats about the army or the police from a young age, so it happens to the best of us. Between my bother and I, I was the more outdoorsy of the two, so that's the route I went while my brother picked up basketball and baseball and later the guitar.

We rarely wore hearing protection, aside from dad standing behind us with his hands over our ears early on. Between guns and guitars, I think we both lost a bit of hearing to our hobbies.

Some things happened when I was 12-13 and I became absolutely obsessed with learning how guns worked. I took all of ours apart, learned to clean them, tune them, replace parts. I read manuals for every historic firearm I could find. I got very into the nuts and bolts of military history, firearm development, action types, mechanisms, applications, tactics, ballistics, etc. There's something about memorizing all the specs and numbers that makes you feel like you know something intimate and secret about them.

There was a while where I considered joining the military because shooting, walking around, and carrying things felt like my most marketable skills. But by God, war or not, I would not have survived among such a high concentration of men long enough to get out again. And war is stupid. Glad I stayed at art school.

I'm much less into the lore and legend of guns now because there is a lot of bullshit baked into it. Seriously, I've had veterans tell me an M2 Browning is so effective because you only need to get the round within 6in of a person to do damage. My retired-cop CCW instructor told all of us that he believes that some rounds are basically useless against an attacker high on meth. People claim a 7.62x39 from an AK is actually one of the least lethal modern rounds. Weird little anecdotal nonsense abounds that ultimately doesnt mean much. It's bonkers, and the ambient aggression of it wears on me.

I own a nice range of different guns. Certainly more than I need. I've carried in Ky where I felt like it was warranted. I have the training but don't carry where I live. It's a pain in the ass literally and figuratively and I don't need the pressure. I'm much more nervous around other shooters at the range than I am on the street. Not because I think they mean me harm, but because they're fucking around with guns. I think way too many people carry, and that includes the police. I train regularly on advanced first aid and stop the bleed, and I've done the extra wacky training where someone screams in your ear while you pack gauze into a big bleeding Vienna sausage. It was goofy but I see what people get out of it. It's beyond distressing how many people train to inflict wounds without ever learning to treat them.

I shoot whatever I can get my hands on though, air guns, rifles, pistols, shotguns, old, new, military, civilian, bows, slingshots, full-auto, black powder. I want to fire a t-shirt cannon at something. It's just a ton of fun to send a thing flying through the air at a target and see how well you can hit it and many times before you have to go home.

I used to shoot groundhogs for money in high school and college but that started to feel pretty bad and groundhog meat is not easy to work with. I used to hunt pheasant and chukars with my father in law, but again they don't taste that great, I'm divorced now, and shooting clays is more fun.

I try to get out to the range regularly. It helps me feel regulated. An hour of only having one thing to focus on that really engages the mind and body in something I'm good at is refreshing. I've struggled with body dysmorphia for as long as I can remember, and having something that my body does well gave me something to feel proud of. I think it was doing a lot of heavy lifting in the 35 years before I got my diagnosis. I didn't really notice how much until I'd been away from it for a few years.

That's a lot of words to say, "yes and no." Feels a little embarrassing to say but it's almost more of a relationship for me than a hobby. It's a complicated relationship but on the balance, it's given me more than it takes and those can be rare for a young queer kid who had trouble connecting.

The larger gun community is not a great place for me but meeting other queer folks online feels great. I love seeing more of us on the range. I love introducing new people to shooting and I'd love to find more opportunities to be a friendly resource for LGBTQIA folks who are are curious. It doesn't have to be such an angry old boys club. You can teach people to respect the dangers of it without having to come off as a hardened killer of men, an elite operator, or a sheepdog watching over the weak, resentful sheep. That shit sucks. Helpful as a cat fart for someone looking to learn more about history, design, or use of guns. 🐈‍⬛💨

America's gun culture has never been what I'd call reasonable but we've really lost something in the decline of those that see them more as a utilitarian tool to put food on the table or a sport to be practiced responsibly. Too much tactical warfighting, stand-your-grounding, race-baiting, offensive paranoiac homesteading, fragile masculinity trash on this fire.

So if anyone's curious feel free to hit me up. I'm no expert but I've certainly got more trigger time on a wider variety of guns than your average middle-aged queer cartoonist. Never seen combat but my father's almost shot me by accident at least twice. I've been shot at by strangers at least 3 times in Ky but I can't say how hard they were really trying. I know enough about gunfighting not to mess with it as they say.