How to Become a Gun Tooting Teacher

The last few weeks has been quite a sprint, but now the lectures are over with and come Monday I'm getting a feel for the every-day life of a teacher. Heading off to two different schools I'll be observing in class the first week or so, then start teaching said classes myself the following weeks. I'll be teaching Social Science at middle school level, and psychology in High School. Looking to be an interesting few months.

In other news, I went to a handgun safety course yesterday with the aim of doing a little recreational shooting. There's an outdoor shooting range not far from here; I didn't even know how close it was until I headed up there yesterday. There's actually a more action oriented shooting range in a bunker underneath the park next to our apartment, but they only admit seasoned veterans who can bring their own gun. I'm not quite there yet, but it's good to have long term goals.

Ruger Mark II, our training weapon.

So, after spending a few hours in the club house going through very simple safety rules and routines, presented in quite possibly the worst possible way you can when trying to teach people mechanized behavior, we headed off to the shooting range to fire off some rounds and getting a feel for the weapons. It was a somewhat interesting crowd that walked up the small dirt road gun in hand, age ranging from 13 to well over 50 and with backgrounds equally diverse. Sadly the social aspect of the club hasn't delivered at all so far, but we'll see how that develops as the weeks progress. More guys then girls, yet more girls then you would expect. According to our instructor, shooting is the second most practiced sport in Norway with only soccer rated higher. Makes sense I suppose, seeing as there are more guns pr. person in Norway (and Switzerland, interestingly enough) then any other country in the world. Not that you would know this from the media coverage.

Handling a gun again, and I say again seeing as the last time I fired a gun was 10 years ago back when I was in the Air Force, was surprisingly mundane. Maybe it was the cold weather, the old fashion barracks they called a club house, or simply the fact that we had spent hours going through rigid safety regulations and being fed a description of shooting which made it sound about as interesting as playing solitaire, I don't know.

What I do know is that these people are running around with guns, and they need to be socialized.