Hot shot

I have never been what you would call a gun nut. Sure, I've always taken libertarian pleasure in defending an individual's Second Amendment rights in a theoretical argument. But when it comes to real-life encounters with guns themselves, I've been happy to keep my distance. I know that "guns don't

kill people," that "people kill people," but it always seemed to me that the "people and guns" combo posed the greatest likelihood of doing real damage. So I've been content to argue consistently for a right to bear arms, while staying far away from those arms in my everyday life.

That's why it was so strange to find myself standing in the lane of a Florida shooting range recently, staring down a paper target through the sight of a loaded 9 mm Glock handgun, slowly moving my index finger onto the trigger. And enjoying every minute of it.

I don't come from Florida. I'm a Canadian living in Toronto. I was in Florida with my boyfriend for the wedding of one of my college pals, and I agreed to accompany him to the shooting range because he had been so patient and good-humored over the weekend in sitting through endless "Whatever happened to. . ." stories, innumerable SARS jokes, and much mocking of his Canadian accent, without complaint. If he wanted to spend the last evening of our vacation at a shooting range, I wasn't going to be an obstruction.