Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [14]
She led the class down to one of the Cherokee Gun Club’s outdoor ranges. Everyone wore safety glasses. Quigley carried a bullhorn so she would be heard through the earplugs and pistol earmuffs everyone wore as protection against the damaging roar of the guns. “To those of you who’ve never shot before,” Quigley said, a warm smile playing across her face, “welcome. You’ll have a wonderful time.”
Many of Quigley’s former students report that the act of firing a gun for the first time triggered a revolution in their lives. Michelle Sullivan, of South Pasadena, California, took her fifth course from Quigley in January 1993. She took her first early in 1992. “The first time I stood there with a loaded gun, I wanted to cry,” she told me. “I thought, is this what my life has come to—I’m standing here holding a loaded gun?”
Sullivan hit the target on her first shot. “It was like I walked up to a psychological barrier, crossed it, and everything was fine. It was a complete turnaround in thinking. Complete.”
Each of twenty targets was papered with the black silhouette of a man’s upper body. Clear plastic bags draped the silhouettes to protect them from the rain. Half the class stood along the firing line seven feet away.
The distance may seem absurdly close, but armed encounters often occur at that range, according to police firearms experts. Quigley had an additional motive for putting everyone so close, however. She wanted her students to hit the targets as often as possible to bolster morale. Aiming and shooting a handgun is not the easy matter TV cops and robbers make it out to be. Even at seven feet, many of the women taking the course missed the silhouette portion of the target and struck only the background.
After a few basic shooting drills, Quigley moved on to more advanced exercises, including one she called Mozambique—two shots to the body, one to the head.
“It’s awfully fun to do this,” she said.
She issued the command to begin shooting. There was a wild, prolonged crackle of gunfire. Sharp puffs of air from my neighbor’s gun tapped at my temple. Georgia clay erupted from the hillside beyond the targets.
“I hope we all got some good head shots in there,” Quigley said heartily, “because that’s what’s gonna stop him.”
She checked the targets to see how well everyone was doing. A few wildly spaced holes led her to suspect some students had been jerking the trigger instead of squeezing it.
“Squeeze smoothly,” she told the class, a sly grin again playing across her face as she moved along the firing line. “It’s really kind of a sexy move. I always say be sexy about it. Squeeeeeeze,” she murmured, “squeeeeeeze. Okay? That’ll kind of get your mind into it.”
We shot our guns one-handed, first with our dominant hands, then our weak hands. We shot while lying on our backs, an exercise intended to simulate firing while still in bed. One woman, supine on a muddy ground cloth, hit the target in the face with the first shot.
“Ooh,” another said in admiring disgust. “Right where it counts!”
More exercises followed. Empowerment was in the air.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Quigley exhorted. “You feel the power!”
When the class at last returned to the meeting room, Quigley asked her students one by one to tell their reactions to the course. The room took on the feel of a revivalist camp meeting. “Lisa,” Quigley said to Lisa Hilliard, an Atlanta bank executive who had never shot a gun before. “When you first walked in, I said, ‘Oh, God, she’s scared.’ ”
Quigley turned to the other students. “I could see it on her face. She was scared.”
Then back to Lisa. “How do you feel now, Lisa?”
Hilliard considered. “Great. I can’t believe how much fun it was. I mean, I just wanted to get through it; I didn’t expect to enjoy it.”
Quigley pointed to another woman. “Ginger?”
She was Ginger Icenhour, manager of a computer store in Tucker, Georgia. She too had never shot before but now professed to be ready to take on an assailant.