On Target : Shooting Course Convinces Many That Guns Are Good Defense, Others Still Wary

With the flip of a switch, the human silhouette targets swing into position as Patty Avery prepares to shoot.

Wearing protective glasses and ear coverings, she methodically aims the pistol and fires six bullets into the paper target before putting the weapon aside. Retrieving the target, she finds her aim was far from perfect, but the smile on her face indicates that she is nevertheless pleased.

Avery is one of the 20 latest graduates of an introductory handgun course taught at the San Diego Indoor Range. Over a period of a month they have learned how to load, clean, care for and fire a handgun and have spent more than seven hours firing into the paper outline of a human body.

It is a varied assortment of people who have elected to take the course, including housewives, an electronics technician, a schoolgirl and several physicians. “We get a real high caliber of students--no pun intended,” manager Jack Pearson said.

Some take the course out of curiosity, others to take up target shooting, but most are interested in self-protection, Pearson, a former police officer, displays marked enthusiasm when it comes to amateur initiative in defending life and property.

He decided to teach shooting skills to citizens after spending 18 years on the police force, serving as president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn. for 10 years and head the National Assn. of Police Organizations for three. He converted part of a health and racquetball complex into a firing range, opening a fully equipped gun shop and holding classes for all levels experience.

“There is an awfully big gap,” Pearson notes, “between what law enforcement is capable of doing and the dangers that people perceive to be out there. Although the police here in San Diego do a tremendous job, I know from my own experience that they often arrive too late.”

Pearson believes that the range, which opened in March, was badly needed in the city. “I want to fill that gap, to give people the training and information they need to protect their loved ones. I’m not an advocate of killing people, but people should feel safe in their own homes.”

Similar courses are offered by the San Diego Community College, which holds classes at the San Diego Police Department’s range, and Grossmont Community College at the El Cajon police range. Shooters Emporium in Escondido is another indoor range that offers handgun training.

While some advocates of gun control might prefer that no private citizens owned handguns, Pearson feels that it is the most effective means of protection. “In the home, where you’re using a gun at close quarters, there is a much greater danger of being disarmed if you carry a rifle than there is with a handgun,” he says.

For $99 and the cost of ammunition the students receive three three-hour lessons and are given unlimited range time. At the end of the month, they take a test of the aim and speed with which they can fire the weapon; if they score 80% or better they receive a certificate of proficiency to hang on their wall.

Pearson uses a team of two instructors with each class and informs students about the technical, safety and legal aspects of owning and using a gun.

It is with the hushed and nervy air of initiates that the students listen to retired El Cajon policeman Bob Latrum as he tells them of the laws that govern the use of guns.

“Before you ever use a gun you had best be well informed about the circumstances under which you can take someone’s life, because that’s exactly what you are doing when you fire a gun--deciding to kill someone,” he solemnly intones.

“I am sure that all of you, at one time or another, have heard the advice to ‘drag the body into the house.’ People are forever being reassured that it’s OK to shoot as long as the body is found in the house. Well let me tell you something, with the state of ballistics and forensic medicine, there’s no way you’re going to fool anyone that way.”

The only circumstances under which it is legal to kill someone is when your own life or the life of another is in immediate danger, Latrum says. “So if someone is robbing your house and runs away, you better not shoot or it’ll be you that goes to trial,” he says.

“Well tell me this, does the law require that you help them carry the television out of your house?” asks an emboldened student.

“Naw, but you better make sure he doesn’t put his back out carrying it or he’ll slap a liability suit on you,” Pearson cracks.

For the first two sessions, the class has been trained only with revolvers--handguns whose rotating cylinders limit the speed with which they can fire. Because of their reliability and simplicity of design, they are the recommended weapon to tuck away in a shoe box. But because this is the last class, the neophytes will be allowed to try out semi-automatic pistols, which recock themselves automatically and fire as quickly as the trigger is squeezed.

Pat Patfield, veteran Air Force pilot of the Korean War, master gunsmith and champion rapid-fire pistol marksman, is called out on the floor to introduce the students to this latest weapon. Wearing black boots, a gray Stetson, a tattoo on his arm and an automatic tucked into his belt, he is a walking compendium of gun mythology.

Seeking to diffuse the introduction he has been given, he demures that “you shouldn’t think too much about what I did in Korea. The only reason I’m still here is because I was crazy and drank a lot.”

After breaking down and detailing the parts of the pistol he carries, Patfield launches into an impromptu lecture on the ethics and psychology that accompany the weapon.

“Always remember one thing about a bullet: a bullet has no conscience. It doesn’t care what you meant or didn’t mean to do; if you fire a gun it is going to kill,” he says.

“What that means is that if you’re are going to point a gun at someone, you better kill him. It sounds cruel, but that’s the cruelty of reality. There’s a lot of crazies out there in life and you sure don’t want someone coming back for revenge.”

With this admonition in mind, the class breaks up and heads down to the firing range.

In the gun shop outside, the leering effigy of a gun-wielding thug is taped to the side of a soda machine and a glass case is filled with dozens of makes of handguns.

Students are exposed to more than a dozen guns during the course of their training and at the end of the course some may buy a weapon of their own from Pearson’s shop.

“We try to give them an idea of the equipment that’s on the market, make sure they don’t get stuck with some junk,” Pearson says. A quality handgun runs between $250 and $600, he says.

Sealed off by two airtight doors is the firing range, a 40-yard-long concrete cave with a steel trap at the end where the flying lead comes to rest. Ten tracks from which the targets are suspended creep across the ceiling and each person fires from a separate booth.

The carpeted floor of the range is littered with empty shell casings and a fan blows the gunpowder fumes toward the floor.

With all the targets in place the firing begins, and even with the ears protected, the crack of pistol shots assault the ears as the shooting builds to a crescendo. Despite the ventilation, gun smoke and the acrid smell of powder burns the throat and stings the eyes. In few a moments the noise fades away as the last shots are fired.

One by one the students break from the trance that repeated firing induces and examine targets. Then they reload and fire again.

Patty Avery and her 14-year-old daughter Jennifer VanHoften of Solana Beach decided to take the course so that they would feel more comfortable with the small arsenal that her husband keeps in their house. Her husband learned about guns while in the Marines and instructed each of their three sons about guns at the age of eight or nine, but the female members of the family had been left out.

“Since we don’t want to go out deer hunting with the boys, Jennifer and I never really learned. I decided that if we are going to keep guns in the house, I had better be comfortable and familiar with them.”

Avery said she is not disturbed about Patfield’s injunction about shooting to kill. “I feel that way exactly, that you have to decide to kill the person. That’s why it is so important to learn to be accurate,” she says.

Her one reservation about the course is that her daughter, whose natural ability has been acclaimed by the instructors, may prove to be too good. “She’s been terrific. I’ve been terrible. I’ve certainly got a lot of catching up to do.”

According to Patfield, female shooters are almost always better than the men their first time out. “They’ve got a steadier hand since their ego isn’t tied up in it. Once I was beat by a woman in a marksmanship contest. Boy did I feel humiliated,” he says.

While Avery says that the course has strengthened her opinion about the wisdom of keeping guns in the home, other students were less certain.

“I think every man and boy in this country has had the desire to fire a gun, but more than anything I think this course has taught me how dangerous a gun can be,” says Matthew Gleason, a plastic surgeon in San Diego.

Gleason, who does not own a gun, says that he is “perhaps even less inclined to buy one now. I think that if you go out with a neighbor plinking tin cans you don’t get the proper respect for firearms. By taking a formal course you gain respect for the weapon.”

Gleason decided to take the course along with a group of other physicians from the California State Military Reserve, who serve as a backup medical support for the national guard. “Since there is the chance we will be in a situation where guns are involved, we felt we should know something about them,” he said.

Susan Fortney, a Navy electronics technician, also questioned the wisdom of owning a handgun. “I certainly wouldn’t want one in my home. Statistically it’s proven that families don’t kill too many burglars with their guns; they kill each other. And I’m a great believer in statistics,” she says.

However, Pearson argues that proper training can cut down on the risks involved in keeping a gun in the home. “People have to learn that using a handgun is a discipline as well as a technical procedure. If people are trained and know what these guns can do, I think the danger of them fooling around is far less.”

Fortney said that her interest in guns was piqued when the men with whom she works began discussing the weapons. “I’ve always wanted to know how to do everything that men knew how to do, whether it be changing brake linings or firing a gun. It’s one more secret I don’t want kept from me.”

Now she hopes to reach the point at which she can hit a bulls-eye at 25 yards, qualifying her for a ribbon in the Navy. “I’m not interested in shooting people,” Fortney asserts, “I want to feel competent with it. I want to reach the point where I’m not afraid of a gun, where my heart beats stops picking up whenever I touch a gun. I haven’t reached that point yet.”

After an hour and a half of shooting, during which each student has shot in darkness, shot under time constraints and at varied distances, and has fired a selection of revolvers and automatics of various makes and calibers, the session draws to a close.

Fortney is told that she may keep her perforated target.

“Great!” she responds, as she takes her trophy and walks into the night.