Home on the Range

"So how would you like to go shoot guns with me?" came the request from the voice on the other end of the line.

Nora was a colleague I'd met earlier this year, a publicist for the Beretta gun company. Now also involved with the New York Sportsman's Club, a high-end shooting range and lounge a short hop from my office, she was offering me the opportunity for some hands-on experience with some of the world's finest high-caliber weapons. For a moment I hesitated - outside of video games and non-lethal toy versions, I'd never actually fired a real gun. Growing up, my family was very much into team sports, but not at all into sport shooting. Even when my brother briefly flirted with hunting as a hobby, his weapon of choice was a bow-and-arrow. What if I was no good at it? Then other things came to mind: I had just been through a solid month of deadline hell, Christmas shopping hell, party-planning hell, and the various other hells that accompany the holiday season in New York City. Setting aside for a moment my notorious inability to say no to an attractive blonde, slinging some hot lead at a hapless target somehow seemed like the perfect year-end release.

Despite the deceptively mundane exterior - the entrance is downstairs from a pizza joint - the New York Sportsman's Club security is cutting-edge: cameras follow your every move, and access to the club's inner sanctum is achieved only through a high-tech palm detector. Once inside, Nora and I sat down with the club's president, Martin Fainblatt - a seasoned veteran of law-enforcement and firearms training for army intelligence and "some other agencies I'm not allowed to talk about," to quote the man himself.

Fainblatt has been the driving force behind the club's recent revitalization, as both an upscale sporting lounge for New York's part-time marksmen and a serious training facility for those in the policing and security business. Lately, like many businesses in lower Manhattan, Fainblatt's been facing an uphill battle to get newcomers to venture down to his place, the refurbished club having opened its doors shortly before the terrorist attacks of September 11. Still, he's confident that the sheer novelty of a shooting club - it's one of only two in Manhattan, and is, lo and behold, cigar-friendly - will prove irresistible for "red-faced Wall Streeters blowing off steam," and according to Fainblatt, the clientele is slowly growing, along with sales of firearms and gun license applications. Fainblatt also hopes to lure in more celebrities, like radio shock jock Don Imus, who's visited the range on several occasions.

Another major thrust of the Club's marketing seems to be attracting the fairer sex - from the comfortable lounge area outside the shooting range, with its espresso and juice bars, to the private instruction, as well as chemical (read: mace) training. Fainblatt and several other instructors there hammered home some interesting facts: Among novices, women are better shots than men; they have better innate hand-eye coordination, are more patient, and are more willing to accept direction. Well, I wasn't about to let something like male bullheadedness cause me to screw up - I wanted to look like Dirty Harry out there, not Harry Connick, Jr. So I hung on every word uttered by our instructor, Roy Campa - who sounded a bit like James Gandolfini - as he took us through the basics of sport shooting.

Some of the basics we covered: When there's red showing, the safety is off. ("Red means you're dead," Roy quipped.) Always assume a gun is loaded when someone hands it to you. Never put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to fire. Hold your arm straight: the gun is an extension of your arm. When you put the gun down, even empty, make sure it's pointing downrange... not toward another person. And never put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to fire.

I had was packing a Beretta M9 Series 92FS, a semiautomatic pistol with 40-Magnum rounds. A weapon of choice for many military and law enforcement organizations, this was definitely not intended for shattering clay pigeons at the family picnic. For a first-timer, I found that once you get over the fact that the piece of metal in your hands was manufactured specifically for the purpose of killing, the rest is like any other sport: skill, concentration, and practice. "Think of it like tennis," Fainblatt advised. (I tried, but couldn't get past the image of an irate John McEnroe pumping hot lead into a line judge.) Well, I certainly wasn't going to let this wee slip of a lass get the better of me in such a decidedly testosterone-laced sport. However, as the silhouetted target settled into place downrange, and I steadied my gun hand and aimed, one disturbing thought kept coming to my mind: namely, that I'd always really sucked at darts.

Quickly burying the negativity, I squeezed the trigger. After a loud crack and a stiff recoil, I was pleased, and a bit surprised, to see that I'd gotten off a close-to-perfect shot, right near the center X. I squeezed out two more, both of which also came close to dead center. Then seven more, which got progressively further from the middle circle, as my arm got wearier and less steady from absorbing the recoil. All in all, an excellent showing for a novice, according to my helpful instructor Roy.

Then the moment of truth: my competitor, er, companion - who actually had fired rifles and shotguns in the past - got on the range and loaded up. Would that female hand-eye-patience thing be enough to trump my own boast-worthy performance? As it turned out, Nora's experience with the bigger guns proved to be a hindrance in mastering the smaller, semiautomatic firearm, as her first shot hit directly in the target's head, with subsequent ones falling progressively downward, toward the Adam's apple. If the target were a real victim, he'd have been headed for a closed casket funeral. Roy and I joked that maybe she had some unresolved issues with men... though, thinking back, maybe we shouldn't have while she was still packing heat. Nora did become a pro at the headshot, though; we later agreed that whereas I might make a better cop, she would make an excellent black ops assassin.

My male pride intact, I rolled up my trophy target and Nora and I bade adieu to the Sportsman's Club, with an eye on returning soon. Sport shooting was indeed a uniquely liberating, stress-busting experience, on par with going several rounds with the heavy bag. Between terrorism, anthrax, recession, unemployment, and maniacs trying to blow up airplanes with their shoes, there's a growing sense of helplessness and unease in this country, and with it, an undeniable undercurrent of aggression and violence. To me, there are far worse things you can do with that current than channeling it into a safe and exhilarating leisure activity. Now, if I could only find some of those targets with Bin Laden's face on them...