Bang! What comes next?
Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2022 6:13 pm
I was eating dinner with some friends last week at a nice outdoor biergarten, enjoying the weather and return to a semblance of pre-Covid life. Then there was a bang.
The family next table over had an obnoxious-looking young boy beating on his siblings with a balloon, tied up clown-style to resemble a sword. It took me longer than I like to admit to process the sound. I've witnessed a shooting before, one shot, maybe 20 feet away on a busy street. That time, I'd thought that one was a car backfiring before I saw the victim clutching his arm, the shooter running away. Since then, I've spent a lot more time on a range. I know what gunshots sound like. I would like to think that my subconscious mind pegged the noise as the balloon popping before my rational mind questioned what was going on.
That would be more comfortable than the alternative - the realization that my reaction time to a potential shooting incident was at least a couple seconds before I might have begun to respond. If I'd been carrying. I wasn't - I have the license, but my guns are a bit large. And I was out of state. In a biergarten. Enjoying a cold one.
Then I considered another potential problem - what if someone else was packing heat, and jumped to the wrong conclusion? Got a little trigger happy? What then?
I am grateful that it was simply a balloon. I am grateful that, if anyone was carrying, they took stock and responded in a cool, rational, and responsible way. This time.
The family next table over had an obnoxious-looking young boy beating on his siblings with a balloon, tied up clown-style to resemble a sword. It took me longer than I like to admit to process the sound. I've witnessed a shooting before, one shot, maybe 20 feet away on a busy street. That time, I'd thought that one was a car backfiring before I saw the victim clutching his arm, the shooter running away. Since then, I've spent a lot more time on a range. I know what gunshots sound like. I would like to think that my subconscious mind pegged the noise as the balloon popping before my rational mind questioned what was going on.
That would be more comfortable than the alternative - the realization that my reaction time to a potential shooting incident was at least a couple seconds before I might have begun to respond. If I'd been carrying. I wasn't - I have the license, but my guns are a bit large. And I was out of state. In a biergarten. Enjoying a cold one.
Then I considered another potential problem - what if someone else was packing heat, and jumped to the wrong conclusion? Got a little trigger happy? What then?
I am grateful that it was simply a balloon. I am grateful that, if anyone was carrying, they took stock and responded in a cool, rational, and responsible way. This time.