Shooting a Gun

Today, I shot a gun for the first time. Legally, and without harming another living soul - only inanimate objects, of course. Today I, aided with strong metal wires put in place to avoid potential maniacs from turning the gun to aim it at another human, won the battle against a 9mm pistol's recoil, an exhilarating experience it was, all but the price I was charged.

Wearing my aviator sunglasses as a fashionable statement, I entered the shooting centre, almost prancing. The centre was a large warehouse, lathered with the finest antiques - petrol pumps, a long line of rusty lawn mowers, rags, a large golden cash register, a Chevrolet Bel air, a strange golden table, and all other wondrous pieces, all circa the eighteenth century and before. I removed my aviators and spun slowly in circles, gazing at all of the decorative pieces, sprawling from the floor to the ceiling. I was not sure at this stage what I was most amazed about - the fact that my family agreed to accompanying me to the gun range or how many rare and restored antiques I was exposed to in one place.

"He's the collector," the young man behind the counter notified my awestruck father and I. From behind the antique bar emerged a tall, muscular man in his late fifties. He had a slight swimmer's build, and a petite moustache forming on his upper lip, almost hidden by his widening smile that was filled with pride. He said little, and always strode around slowly with a strong hint of his dignity touching the souls of all onlookers.

The man behind the counter talked me through how to load a magazine, load the gun and how to pull the trigger - slowly. The rest was meaningless to me - sure, I would remember to keep my thumbs out of the way of the strong recoiling - people in movies shoot guns all the time, how hard could it be? I just wanted to feel the grip between my fingers and to pull the trigger for the very first time.

Almost two-hundred dollars later, and my father, sister, mother and I stepped into the shooting range wearing protective glasses and headphones. We waited for the family before us to finish. Every time they shot their guns, my eyes automatically closed shut. It was something I could not control. The sound of a bullet exiting the gun was so loud, even under these headphones, that my eyes were frightened. After experiencing the sound of a few more shots, I decided to go first.

I pushed the magazine into the bottom of the pistol - easy enough, it locked into place. I placed my hands correctly around the pistol, keeping in place my firm grip. I brought my vision to the rear sight, and tried to line it up with the front sight, and aimed at the bullseye - surely I would miss, and surely I did - not the entire target, but the bullseye. My first shot landed two rings out of the bullseye, the rest I cannot recall from my excitement. When I tried to reload, I could not hear the safety ranger notify me that I did not need to, and when I did I felt foolish. I kept shooting until the magazine was emptied.

I only missed the six targets six times. Mind you, this was my first time and I am proud of how well I aimed with the flimsy wrist that I have. "So you two girls haven't shot a gun before? This is going to be good," the man behind the counter laughed before he led us into the shooting range. We performed better than he ever expected. In fact, my sister's first bullet pierced the paper a few millimetres away from the bullseye - having spent my life as the elder sibling thinking that I would need to protect her in bad circumstances, I am now beginning to think that she can protect both of us, had we the ability to own a gun.

On our drive back to the hotel, I could not contain my smile. It turns out that attending the shooting range instead of the wax museum turned out much better, despite paying so much for shooting a gun and fifty rounds of American ammunition.

Oscar Grant

After having just viewed the film 'Fruitvale Station' starring Michael B Jordan, taking the role as Oscar Grant, I felt a strong need to write about his murder, seeing as I felt infuriated as soon as I found out that Oscar had been shot to death for no apparent reason. I had placed myself in his family's helpless position and his, and I was angered at how his perpetrator was lightly dealt with.

Living as a white female in the safety of Melbourne, Australia, and being blessed with education, health, safety and wealth and endless things beyond that, I sometimes loose grasp of knowing how it would feel to be someone else in a different place and under different circumstances, of placing myself in somebody else's shoes, somebody who is not as fortunate as I am, and this happens too often. It is during moments like viewing the film Fruitvale Station in which I am slapped in the face, so to speak, with reality, and after something like this I am left utterly shaken. Firstly, I cannot believe that an easily irritated and infuriated person like me who believes in the righteousness of justice for all individuals did not hear about Oscar Grant's shooting. Had I have heard about it, though, I suppose there would have not been much that I could do to assist his family in bringing their deceased son the justice he deserved but never received, however I am, despite how late I am of knowing of his passing, rather appreciative of the film to have exposed me to this severe injustice, for it is every day that I learn more about the inhumanity which exists in some humans, and it is every day that I better myself beyond these inhumane people.

Just like Oscar Grant, I too am currently twenty-two years of age. I have not yet lived my life to its fullest potential, in contrast to Oscar having been through alleged jail sentences and having his beautiful daughter, Tatiana. I understand that his lifestyle would have differed from mine in every way imaginable, but that does not make me any better of a person than he was. Our circumstances do not determine who we are, it is how we face them that does so, and according to some of his family members' statements, he attempted and fulfilled bettering himself for the benefits of his girlfriend and daughter. And just when he tried to tackle his circumstances, a thorny hand of fate on New Year's Day in 2009 had swung from the earth and into Johannes Mehserle's gun and took Oscar's life via his lung before he had the chance to defend it. Claiming that he mistook his gun for his taser, I strongly never will stop believing that Mehserle did not require the need to taser Oscar. The video evidence of this occurrence shows that Oscar was indeed complying with the police, even moments before he was shot, when his head was being compressed into the floor by the other officer's knee. In the event of having my head crushed by an authoritative figure who quite possibly felt the need to be racially unjust, I too would be squirming, but squirming much more than Oscar was before his death, and squirming justly too, seeing as my skull would feel as though it will impede on my brain. This squirming would not have harmed anybody though, thus it would not have needed to be dealt with by a taser, let alone a gun. Besides, Oscar was unarmed. Honestly, what harm could a handcuffed young man do to a trio of police officers whilst his face is lodged between one of the officer's knees and the floor?

Utter disgust is the only feeling pulsating through me as I type. This reminds me of Israel Hernández-Llach's murder back in August on the 6th, this year. Israel was tasered near the chest area and had a seizure, later falling into cardiac arrest. I am supposing that if Mehserle had tasered Oscar instead of shooting him, Oscar might have been brutally tasered, thus dying from a cardiac arrest later too. Either way, Oscar was treated with brutality, most likely for his ethnicity. Fruitvale Station implies racial prejudice, as towards the end when the officer was searching the train for the perpetrators, he was searching only for African American males, rather than the white male who had actually initiated the fight which Oscar and his friends were accused of initiating. Without the event of racial prejudice, the police would have asked the hundreds of surrounding witnesses for accounts of what had happened, seeped through the crowd to find the white male, and arrested both him and Oscar seeing as they were allegedly fighting, thus dealing with the two down at the police station later, rather than putting a violent display on for all those in that train on that fateful New Years Day. 

I suppose one possibility was that in light of Oscar's slight struggle whilst on the floor, Mehserle, being experienced in police enforcement for under three years, might have been startled and unfortunately indeed did mistake his gun for his taser. However, in all particularity, how could he have done this when he would have been familiarised with the location of either of these weapons on his own belt? The occurrence was not a terrorist attack or anything major as such, so would not he have noticed that his gun was on his right side and his taser possibly on his left? This is the common placement of those weapons on a police officer's belt. It is alleged that Mehserle preferred to wear his taser on the left side too, as seventeen days prior to Oscar's death, Mehserle had pulled the taser from the left onto two armed-robbery suspects. Also, in the footage of him pulling out the gun, he unclips the holster off his belt, whereas the taser is not clipped to a belt the same was that a gun is - it is either clipped on with a one or two-point holster, not generally stopping it from being stolen the way a gun would be, and not also strapped the same way as a gun - would not have that indicated that he was holding a gun? Also, there is a weight difference between a gun and a taser - a taser, in particular the x26 taser which is preferred by most BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, the transit in which Oscar was killed) officers due to the great package price, which would have been similar to that used by Mehserle, weighs approximately two-hundred and four grams, whereas a standard police gun would weigh around six-hundred and twenty grams without a mag inserted. Would the weight of the gun not have indicated that he was not carrying a taser? One would notice, especially after thorough police training, the difference in the weight of the two, seeing as there is a significant difference, in the same was a preschooler would notice the weight of a crayon compared to that of a pencil.

The BART officers I assume would have had a gun similar to the Smith & Wesson M&P Compact .40 and a taser similar to the x26, which I am basing both the weight and holster structure on to attempt to make an understanding as to how Mehserle had apparently 'mistook' his gun for his taser. Generally speaking, these two weapons are shaped differently, weigh differently and are placed differently and specifically, thus I am claiming that Mehserle's defence is false, and he deserves more than his two year jail sentence. I am shocked too at how he managed to be released from jail after only eleven months of his sentence, seeing as he was charged with second-degree murder.

A second-degree murder in the state of California leaves the perpetrator charged with at least fifteen years of jail time. How is it that Mehserle had received any less? Well, the judge had offered the jury three conviction options: either second-degree murder, which is fifteen years to life in prison, voluntary manslaughter which would land him three to eleven years in jail, or involuntary manslaughter, which would land him two to four years. The jury had come to the conclusion that Mehserle deserved to be charged with involuntary manslaughter. As involuntary as it had allegedly appeared though, I believe that Mehserle should have served over fifteen years in jail seeing as it was a clumsy mistake, thus a murder. A son, a nephew, a friend, a father and a boyfriend was taken away all by one avoidable mistake, and after Mehserle's first jail sentence being relieved by a bail of three million dollars being paid off by the police, all of this becomes more of a reason to make me angry. Imagine if Mehserle was an African-American, and Oscar a caucasian - would not the trial go quite differently? Indeed it would, because most members of our society unfortunately operate in favour of racial prejudice, and this case definitely depicts this.

With total sympathy, empathy and disgust in my heart, I hope that instead of Oscar's family obtaining more money than almost three million dollars from BART, that justice is served on behalf of Oscar and Mehserle is sent to jail for a longer sentence. I believe that his argument of mistaken action is seen as justified because of his lack of experience in the police force, but overall he did take an innocent man's life and was excused, per se, from his sentence because of the fact that he is an authoritative figure. 

Rest in peace, Oscar Grant, and I hope that you will certainly receive the justice you deserve someday soon, so that no other person will have to endure this sort of undeserved police brutality, especially on a celebratory day.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                         
References:

Oscar Grant's shooting Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART_Police_shooting_of_Oscar_Grant

Murder punishment in California:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_punishments_for_murder_in_the_United_States#California

Possible similar gun to that of Mehserle's:

http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product4_750001_750051_765698_-1_757955_757781_757781_ProductDisplayErrorView_Y

Possible similar taser and holster to that of Mehserle's:

http://www.taser.com/products/law-enforcement/taser-x26-ecd

BART taser budget, compared to a document from Henry County which quotes the same prices of deals for tasers which led me to relate the taser used by BART officers to the x26:

BART taser budget:

http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2011/news20110526

Henry County price quote for tasers:

http://henryga.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?meta_id=4013&view=&showpdf=1

Mehserle's taser and gun holster information:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Position-of-Mehserle-s-Taser-holster-may-be-key-3200231.php

Israel Hernández death information:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/israel-hernandez-lawsuit_n_3823813.html