Igor Volsky - Guns Down: How to Defeat the NRA and Build a Safer Future with Fewer Guns

GUNS DOWN

GUNS DOWN

HOW TO DEFEAT THE NRA AND BUILD A SAFER FUTURE WITH FEWER GUNS

IGOR VOLSKY

2019 by Igor Volsky

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 120 Wall Street, 31st floor, New York, NY 10005.

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2019

Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution

ISBN 978-1-62097-320-2 (ebook)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Volsky, Igor, 1986- author.

Title: Guns down : how to defeat the NRA and build a safer future with fewer guns / Igor Volsky.

Description: London : New York, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018052117 | ISBN 9781620973196 (hc : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Gun controlUnited States. | Firearms ownershipUnited States. | Firearms and crimeUnited States. | Public safetyUnited States.

Classification: LCC HV7436 .V65 2019 | DDC 363.330973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052117

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CONTENTS

PREFACE: SHOOTING GUNS IN THE DESERT CAN SURPRISE YOU

We do not teach people how to shoot; we teach them how to think, Mike, the second-in-command at one of the nations largest firearms training institutes, tells me over an early dinner. We are at a country club twenty miles north of the gun range where I just spent the last two days firing two hundred rounds of ammunition and learning how to safely carry and operate a handgun.

A tall, distinguished-looking man who bears a slight resemblance to former president George H.W. Bush, Mike is wearing a yellow polo shirt, neat, clean khakis, and a belt with a holstered handgun and two full magazines. As we sit in front of a beautiful Rocky Mountain backdrop, the tops of which will be covered with snow in a matter of months, I take a big swig of coffee and search for a tactful way to ask Mike the question that has been swirling around my brain since my first day of training at the firearms institute.

I blurt out, I still dont understand why youre lying to your clients. A silence falls over our table. As Mike looks away from me, I look directly at him and wait for him to respond.

Forty-eight hours earlier, I had boarded a plane to learn how to shoot a handgun from the best instructors in the business. The opportunity arose through my friend Sam (not his real name), who, in the course of my writing this book, has become my guide to the world of firearm enthusiasts. Sam invited me to travel to the Southwest and experience a two-day elite firearm training course with people he described as the best instructors in the world. I will take it with you, and then after, you can interview all of the trainers, he said. They all hate the NRA. He had arranged for the range to comp me the two-day course and rental equipment, plus complete access to the other students, instructors, and its leadership team.

Sam, a white, boyish, fast-talking ex-Marine and hardcore gun enthusiast, had passionately pitched the idea to me by phone months earlier: Youll love it and really get a taste for what its all about, meet some great people, and Ill do it with you. Fashioning myself an open-minded and adventurous person, I jumped at the chance. Surround myself with six hundred armed Americans and thousands of rounds of ammunition for two full days of gun shooting in a hot desert? Sign me up. What could go wrong?

So there I am, a city slicker who hasnt sat behind the wheel of a car in three or four years, driving my fully insured economy rental car literally into a desert at sunrise one Friday morning in October. Im blasting a local hits station with the windows rolled down, singing at the top of my lungs in an effort to wake myself up enough to handle a handgun. Yes, Im belting out Sia while doing seventy down a dirt road without another car in sight.

As I get closer, I turn off the radio, make the right turn, and take a deep, deep breath. Ahead of me, I see a line of cars about thirty deep and a large sign displaying the logo of the institute. Next to it is a larger placard:

WARNING

UNSAFE TO ENTER WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION

LIVE-FIRE TRAINING AREA

RISK OF SEVERE BODILY INJURY OR DEATH

I have arrived!

Before I know it, Im on a five-hundred-acre compound in the middle of the mountains. I drive up to the parking lot, suddenly overcome by the vastness of this place, and pull into a spot.

Sam meets me and tells me that more than six hundred people will be taking twenty different classes at the institute that day, most of which involve handguns and rifles. After lunch, classes on automatic machine guns will be available.

My eyes grow wide at the idea of even being near a machine gun. I smile at him and look around to see people carrying coolers and equipment, behaving as if theyre at an amusement park or some kind of sporting event. This is my first feeling of panic, of being found out as an interloperor, worse, a spyin a foreign world. We move into a line for equipment rentals, and Sam points out the people in the best tactical outfits and reviews their looks. Finally, something I can get into.

Sam himself is decked out in a slick black shirt, which accentuates his military build, and inverted cargo pants with pockets that expand into the leg, an outfit suited for concealed carry, he tells me. Everyone around us is wearing a variation of this military-style clothing, and I realize that these are specialty clothes designed for recreational firearms shooting. Some even have custom hats with their names embroidered on the front and back, as if theyre actually serving in the military. These folks are really hardcore. It has really become a lifestyle, Sam says to me.

I glance down at my jeans and bright red sneakers and realize Ive made a horrible mistake. As if reading my mind, he says, Youre fine! and starts to examine the kit the young attendant has just handed me, making sure I have everything I need.

We move forward toward a long row of tables where staffers are inspecting all weapons and ammunition. Its his first time here, Sam says. Magazines, two hundred rounds of ammunition, safety goggles, electronic ear protection, holsters you got it all, the inspector says, mostly for my benefit. I smile and make a mental note that those things that hold the bullets are called magazines, not clips, and oh, by the way, its rounds, not bullets.

Okay, lift your hands up, the attendant says, and before I know it, he and Sam are putting a belt around my waist and sliding the ammunition holder and the gun holster onto it. The inspector confidently drops a Glock 17 into the gun holster on my right sidethe firing sideand Im carrying a firearm for the very first time in my life.