Holding A Gun

I was never keen on holding a gun. No. Back-up, I never planned on holding a gun, I never wanted to hold the very thing that could take away a life so quickly. Just one small movement and life would be held in the balance. I know nothing about them, yet here I was, point blank and holding it in my hands, it felt heavy, uncomfortable, something was unnatural about the shape, or maybe it was the metal? The figure stood feet in front of me urging me to shoot, taunting me as if questioning my motive. He stood in front of me, motionless, as if he had already accepted something I couldn’t even face. The gun in my hands suddenly felt impossibly heavy, my fingers stiff around the grip. My pulse thundered in my ears while everything around us faded into a strange, quiet stillness. I couldn’t bring myself to raise my arms, couldn’t even look directly at him for long. Every instinct in me pushed back against the moment, against the terrible weight of what was being asked without words. The silence between us felt suffocating, stretching longer and longer while I stood frozen, unable to move. Then, I felt myself breath and somehow I pulled the trigger with my sweaty hand and bam! It landed right in the chest. Luckily, there was no victim; it was just paper. Target practice. I was at a gun range and not on the street with someone's life in my hands. I shot at the piece of paper that moved from the impact, and it straightened out again. I shot at it again, this time holding my shoulders back.

I breathed in again, trying to steady the tight feeling in my chest, convincing myself that this was not a person and that I was holding a fake gun, not a real one. Not something capable of suddenly turning everything into chaos. My mind raced anyway, spiralling through terrible possibilities I couldn’t seem to stop. I imagined the moment shattering, the quiet breaking into panic, people shouting, alarms blaring, the sound echoing through the building. In my thoughts, it all happened so fast—someone calling the police, people running, the world collapsing into confusion and fear. My grip tightened without meaning to, my heart pounding harder as the images flashed through my mind. I forced myself to breathe again, reminding myself over and over that none of it was real, that this was only a moment, only a practice, and that the storm of thoughts in my head was far worse than the quiet room I was actually standing in.

Yeah, it's maybe better to focus on the piece of paper, I shot again, and it was near the first hole, pretty sure that meant I was good at it. I shot it four more times, each time trying to build up my confidence. As I said earlier, I never planned on holding one, yet here I was lining up for the next shot and bang! bang! Okay, I was good at this. The target had holes in the chest, all relatively close to one another.

Using the gun felt deeply wrong, like every instinct in my body was quietly pushing against it. The weight in my hands didn’t just feel physical—it felt moral, like I was holding something that carried consequences far beyond the moment. My fingers hesitated around the grip, stiff and uncertain, as if they understood before my mind did that this was not something I wanted to become comfortable with. Even pointing it forward made my stomach tighten, a quiet voice in the back of my mind reminding me that this object existed for harm. No matter how still the room was, no matter how controlled the situation seemed, the feeling lingered that I was standing too close to a line that should never be crossed. I would never hold a gun again. I carefully put it down on the desk. I could feel my body shaking. I shook my head. No one was hurt: it was literally a piece of paper, but if it ever came down to it and I had to shoot someone in the chest, I could do it, and they would be dead. That I knew, but I did not need to know more. When you hold that much power in your hands, it is the item that can decide if someone lives or dies. Standing there, I couldn’t stop thinking about how fragile life suddenly felt when a small object could destroy a family, a life. I would never want to hold something like that in my hands again.