One of the more unusual events of the last week was when I got to participate in the unarguably American hobby of firing small bits of lead off at high velocities. The photo on the left still feels absolutely surreal for me to even look at.

In Britain, through the general ban on firearms, we're taught to fear guns and their effects, and we never really use them or even lay eyes on them most of the time. As chance would have it, for most of my time in Scotland I happened to live opposite the only licensed gun shop in the entire region, and gun-owning Americans have asked me if this ever made me feel unsafe in any way. No, it didn't, because the town was a quiet place where nothing ever happened. However, if I had also been living next door to the Fred Nutter Institute for the Criminally Insane, then that would have posed a problem - and unfortunately I view a large amount of America as rather closer to this. Not the people I was staying with - they were extremely responsible in their use and knowledge of them, and I was given a strict safety course and an eloquent speech about a gun being a simple tool - but, for example, the idea that most of the people on FA who regularly post pictures of their arsenals are allowed to handle anything sharper than a 2B pencil quite frankly scares me to death.

Given the frightening image surrounding guns from my own point of view, I was very surprised at how this sort of mythically powerful weapon seemed so normal and almost toy-like when viewed up close. wolfekko will have to come in and say what I was actually firing again - because all the guns that I know anything about are used online and have names like the ASMD Shock Rifle, I was only able to refer to the two I experienced as "the big one" and "the small one". The larger of the two weapons was actually the less powerful of them, despite looking more intimidating because of its size and the scope bolted to the top of it - this was a pellet gun, and the other was a rifle that fired genuine bullets. In a similar way to their innocent look, it's surprising that they don't make the noise that you're used to from films and television, and if anything, the sound is a sharp SNAP, like a small firework being set off. I'm fairly certain, however, that both of them would hurt a lot - we did untold damage to a plastic bottle and a tin foil baking tray from a distance of fifty paces while we were out there.

On my own end, I had insisted for a long time that playing violent games wouldn't teach you how to handle and fire a real weapon, so it's rather unfortunate that I was told that people who played games tended to have a large head start in the co-ordination required to aim accurately. And I was rather proud of knocking one of the two targets over on my first attempt, even if there's video evidence of me being rather surprised by the recoil. In fact, it's frighteningly similar to just playing Silent Scope - only with the addition of being punched in the shoulder a bit every time you fire.