A final observation on inexperienced gun users

“You should be wearing a regular shirt and shoes,” the taciturn shop owner told my daughter at the outdoor shooting range sitting off a country road a half hour from our North Carolina vacation beach house. “Those shells are hot when they are ejected, and we don’t want you doing the hokey-pokey with a shell between your toes.” Alas, it was me doing the dance 20 minutes later, waving a loaded semi-automatic pistol in the air, pulling at my shirt to let a cartridge out, then putting the gun on the ground so I could pull on the shirt with both hands. After which an even more taciturn range officer came over to me and unhappily explained that next time I would put the gun on the stand in front of me, facing the target, instead of on the ground facing other shooters.