Last Friday Colin told me he had a surprise for me. Off we went down Emirates Road, passing all the places I thought could be ‘it’ until we got to the RAK Shooting Club. Cool, I haven’t done any shooting since I left Aus so this was really a lovely surprise.
By following the sound of gunfire we found the ‘range’ such as it was. It was like an old pre-fab classroom, the people shooting were leaning against the inside walls and firing out of the windows. The club uses 9mm handguns and the vibrations each time one was fired were really painful to the ears. A pile of earmuffs lay on a table so we grabbed a pair each pronto, unfortunately this made explaining that we wanted to shoot rather difficult but the message got through.
To my total amazement, both the guns and the ammo were kept in an unlocked wheelie-box near the door. Nobody asked for ID, we just strolled in, said we wanted to have a go and the guy took out a couple of Heckler and Koch 9mms and handed them over to us with a box of 50 bullets each. We were given a very brief description of what to do, and after following this procedure you sort of waved the gun around out through the window and this comprised the ‘safety check’. At the St Ives Pistol Club in Sydney, safety was of paramount importance and its what I’m used to, so the casual approach at RAK was a bit disconcerting.
Also taking part in the same session was a young Indian guy who was just learning and at the other end of the row two Russian guys whose shooting was alarmingly accurate!
Unfortunately there was a technical problem (the wire that pulled the target rack along had broken) and every single gun club employee including several carrying the Dubai All Purpose Maintenance Kit (a hammer and a bent screwdriver) disappeared out onto the range to do battle with the errant wire and pulleys. This left us with absolutely no supervision. We could have wandered off with the 2 guns, 100 bullets (maybe even more from out of the wheelie box) and there was nobody to stop us, except maybe the Russians but they probably had the same idea. Best of all we wouldn’t have paid for any of it.
Oh my god! I can see why you wanted me to read this!
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious, remember when we went shooting and our guns were chained to the wall and all we got was 10 bullets?
Kids ride merry go rounds when adults ride real horses, maybe Dubai gun ranges are a Russian's merry go round?
Ah yes we know, it's always so much better in your clean and neat country.
ReplyDeleteMaybe those people were merely TRUSTING you, having decided that you were looking nice.
But it seems you haven't been used to it before..
It's quite painful to be obliged to live in a constant state of mistrust and defiance, but that's how people are educated in the anglo-saxon world, aren't they ?
The concern raised relates to gun safety. No right thinking person trusts a complete stranger with handguns and ammo on the basis that the person 'looks nice'.
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