RiverBender Blog: I Shot Robot Zombies at Precision Point Armory

When I walked into my second training session with Precision Point Armory and Ben Julian, I was ready.

In my first session, I wrote down the four universal safety rules. I dry-fired a few guns. I learned the difference between revolvers and Glocks and what semi-automatic means. In the week that followed, I even practiced my grip and stance randomly in my kitchen while waiting for my microwave popcorn dinner to heat up. Clearly, I was going into my second session much better prepared.

Ben and I chatted as he pulled up a few PowerPoint slides on his computer. He offers a full weekend-long concealed carry class once a month, and plenty of additional classes in the meantime, including basics and safety refreshers.

It’s important to Ben to create responsible firearm owners at Precision Point, and that’s what he’s aiming to do with me: take a scaredy-cat gun beginner and turn me into a clear-headed, responsible shooter.

I was very intimidated by this idea at first, but I’m starting to warm up to it. I don’t mean to glorify gun use. These are serious machines, with the potential to do serious harm. It’s important to treat them with the respect they deserve, which Ben does.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing that I’m a little intimidated by the guns. It means I understand what they can do if I’m not careful.

But the thing is, shooting can also be fun. It’s a sport for a reason. And there’s nothing wrong with knowing how to handle a gun, just in case. Being scared is how you make mistakes. Being prepared is how you avoid them.

With this attitude, I rolled up to my second session and listened intently as Ben showed me slides with diagrams explaining how a gun actually fires. It may sound basic, but as someone with really no prior knowledge, it was good information to learn and understand a bit more about the mechanics of what I was doing when I pulled a trigger.

And then, the fun part. Ben set me up with a VR headset so I could shoot a video game gun. He promised it was pretty realistic; though the game can’t simulate the recoil, the sound and the grip of the plastic gun were good ways to practice before we actually go out on the range.

It felt realistic, until Ben put on a zombie robot shooting game and encouraged me to hit as many as possible. That stretched my imagination a bit. But I got the hang of it and soon was taking out zombie robots left and right, with single shots delivered right where I needed them to land. Eat your heart out, Rick Grimes.

I played around with the VR set for a while, really enjoying myself as I spun around in circles and shot at the animation. But then it was time to get serious.

We put the game away and turned our attention to the real guns on the table. There was no live ammo, but I still approached with caution, having been taught to treat every gun as if it’s loaded.

Ben brought out the snap caps, training bullets that act like the real thing without the bang or the recoil. He showed me how to load a magazine, then passed it over for me to try. I took several minutes to stuff six snap caps into the magazine, clumsy and not used to the maneuver. Of course, Ben filled the magazine within ten seconds.

Then, time to dry fire. He showed me how to cock the gun, remove the safety, and fire at a target.

Usually, the gas from the bullets in these semi-automatic guns will push out the casing and reload quickly, so you can shoot back-to-back. Because these weren’t real bullets, I had to do it manually. But it started to feel more instinctive as I cocked it, aimed, fired, and cocked it again. I started to go faster.

Ben is all about muscle memory. He encourages his students to train as much as possible so they can quickly and easily remove a gun from their holster, aim, and fire.

He got candid with me while I dry-fired. He was honest: He never wants to be in a situation where he needs to use this training. But he believes it’s better to be prepared than not. He encouraged me to practice with a holster and get used to quickly raising and aiming the firearm.

As the lesson wound down, we got to talking about next week. We’ll actually be on the range then, and I’ll be working with live ammo for the first time. I will have to manage the bang and the recoil. I am certain it will, once again, intimidate me.

But I feel more ready. I feel like I can do it safely, which is the most important part. In fact, I’m excited.

Stay tuned, Riverbend. Your girl is going to be a sharpshooter yet.

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