When I was a wee lass growing up in the rough and tumble middle-class suburbs of Chicago...we shot pool...or hoops...or occasionally dice (it was a street game that we liked to call 'Yahtzee')...but guns?

Not so much.

Shooting guns doesn't really occur to me as something recreational. I'll never look at a big new gun and say, "That looks awesome. Check out that sweet stock. I can't wait to shoot it." But I'm a Libertarian. We're supposed to love guns. I'm supposed to turn into the brand of elderly woman who sits on her porch with a rifle on her knee, sips Bartles and Jaymes, and waits for trespassing kids to walk onto her lawn to collect an errant frisbee. Yet, I'm pretty squeamish about the whole idea of firing deadly projectiles.

So, wanting to better understand the fascination, I went to a gun range today to fire off a few rounds (notice how I've incorporated all of this new gun lingo into my vocabulary..."rounds"..."stock"...the local confederate militia will no doubt accept me as one of their own). And call me a wuss, but it was scary. They didn't have any water or cap guns as I requested, so I used a .22 caliber pistol. I wanted one affixed with a bayonet...but apparently they don't do that with pistols (you learn something new every day!)

I'm not too bad...

And if there's an evil-doer out there who looks exactly like this...

...and he remains perfectly still at 5 meters (probably wouldn't be going anywhere too quickly without legs)...

...while I carefully load a round...

...and take off the safety...

...and aim...

...then his lower right-hand abdomen is toast!