There were 5, maybe 7 officers. All were kneeling behind their cars, and aiming right at me. They more or less fired at once, as I was running past them. The sound was just awful and the reek of gunpowder filled the air.
I had on PolyCarbonate wrap-around eyewear, my pair of gun range ear muffs, long sleeved shirt, long pants and a baseball hat. I did not have gloves on.
My hands were peppered with small pitmarks which bled a bit, but nothing more than that. The PolyCarbonate glasses were pitted badly, after 3 or 4 takes.
The lens was a $ 9,000 Zeiss SuperSpeed Prime Lens. It was protected by an optical flat glass, which we knew would be sacrificed for the shots.
Anybody who tries to tell you that full-load blanks have no force are lying. I’m pretty anti-gun, but this isn’t about gun bias. It’s about the amazing reality of running by Glock 9mm guns, firing away at you madly, being sprayed with the particulate matter shooting out.
I hope I never get shot with a bullet. That was frightening enough. Running past those flashing barrels… :eek:
Drunk yahoo chased me down in his car for no apparent reason one time in Denver, let one loose from a .25 auto, missed. That’s as close as I ever want to get, frankly.
I guess you can say I had a “self inflicted firearms wound.” Well, not really. Read on…
My dad collected antiques when I was a kid. One of his “treasures” was an authentic cannonball. This thing was as big as a bowling ball and weighed 80 lbs. One day, when I was about 12 years old, I rolled the cannonball outside to show it to someone. To prove how “strong” I was, I picked it up to waist level. I then proceeded to put it back down.
Well, I set it down too fast. My left hand’s pinky finger got caught between the 80 lb. cannonball and our concrete driveway. Smush. My pinky looked like a banana after being run over by a car. Flesh and blood was everywhere, and the bone was sticking out. The rest is predictable… went to the hospital, got it operated on (skin graft), etc.
Today, the left pinky is still there, but it’s about ½ inch shorter than my right pinky. And there’s only one joint instead of two. The bonus is that it’s a neat conversation piece. The bummer is that I like to mess around with the bass guitar every-now-and-then, and I can’t stretch more than about 5 frets.
And oh, the cannonball… my dad gave it to me about 12 years ago. It’s sitting on our living room floor, in the corner.