Who: Johnny Reb, Twee, Emo What: Family time at the shooting range Where: Pick a range, any range, in Memphis When: Backdated to Saturday afternoon Warnings: Guns, language, the usual.
Teaching Emo to shoot properly (by Johnny's standards, though he already knew the basics) had been something fun at first. A means of sharing part of his life with the man, in exchange for all the shows and studio sessions and things he'd let Johnny sit in on. The war had been his life, and with that over only two things remained: reenactments, and guns. With the reenactment season pretty much over, Johnny turned to shooting as his shareable experience. It was fun, and good practice for him -- he had spent so long with a gun in his hand that care, loading, and actual shooting were all as simple and thoughtless as breathing, so having to sit down and put into words how it was done was an excellent reminder.
But teaching Twee to shoot? Now this was necessity. She'd been kidnapped and damned if he didn't feel a little bit guilty about that. If she knew how to protect herself, that wouldn't have happened. And in his mind, there was no better way to protect oneself than with a gun. So on the first Saturday they were all together at the house and not busy, Johnny packed up a half dozen of his favorite pistols and drove his boyfriend and boyfriend's kid out to a range he'd been frequenting lately. It wasn't very crowded, and finding enough space for all three of them was simple.
They'd already gone over proper handling, cleaning, and loading before leaving the house, so it was right into the heart of things now. Johnny opened one box and pulled out a pair of Colt 1851 Navy revolvers, keeping one for himself and offering the other one to Twee. "Show me how you load your weapon," he instructed. It was possibly not the easiest gun to start a beginner on, being a percussion revolver, but aside from one of the early Colt single actions, Johnny didn't own or know how to use anything more recent than Civil War-era guns. They were what he knew best, and therefore what he would teach.