House of Burgess

I'll be the first to admit that my views on politics often skew fairly liberal, but some primal part of my psyche is fascinated by the idea of firing a gun. So, when I was given the chance to cover the Ukiah Gun Club's Saturday Open House I tried to observe with the utmost professional journalistic objectivity and detachment. As you'll see from the pictures below taken by our Chief Photographer MacLeod Pappidas, that didn't last long.

Before we entered the black powder section of the shooting range I really didn't have any idea what that meant. As I found out from my instructor, Bob "Badger" Jones, (and yes, that is a badger pelt on his head) that actually meant the use of black powder, a lead ball and a replica flintlock.

As my only experience with these weapons centers around the few Civil War reenactments I've seen in my life and the Oregon Trail computer game I played in elementary school, we had to redo my turn with the weapon because I wasn't aware that the gun was a hair trigger. I found out what this meant when I was taking aim at the metal plate in front of me and the gun went off seemingly instantaneously after I touched the trigger. Mr. Badger was kind enough to reload for me.

One of the other aspects of the gun that amazed me was the amount of time it took someone even with as much experience as Mr. Badger to reload the weapon. He told me that a more advanced version used in the War of 1812 had all the components (the lead ball, the powder, the paper) in a single package that the operator would open with their teeth. I tried to picture myself replicating this action in the heat of battle. All I could see was myself accidentally ingesting a mouthful of gunpowder. This reminded of a portion of the Notorious B.I.G. song "Warning" where he says he feeds his rottweilers "gun powder so they can devour the criminals tryin' to clock my decimals". I figured this was probably an exaggeration of the positive effects of ingestion of the substance on Biggie's part, so I let Mr. Badger finish on his own.

As I watched this process unfold in front of me, I came to the conclusion that firing a gun back in the day was way harder not only because of the time involved, but the accessories required. There's the lead ball, the black powder, the paper and the cap you have to load on the top. Mr. Badger even showed me how the gun had an extra trigger you had to pull before the front one. I took aim and tried not to kill anyone.

This whole experience reaffirms my belief that: a) when used safely guns are actually pretty fun to shoot and b) were I forced to use a black powder rifle or any other primitive firearm to gather food in some survival-type situation, anyone depending on me for meat would probably do better searching for some edible moss or insects.