I held a gun.

Yep. A gun. A sodding firearm.

Oh, I know I joked about it. I know I had the odd giggle here and there about shooting Mexicans/Gypsies/chavs/dickheads. But really. Fucking hell.

I never thought I would actually hold a gun. It's true what 'they' say that they are heavier than you anticipate. But what they don't tell you, or maybe what they can't quite prepare you for, is that feeling that you are holding in your hand - and trust me I was holding the pistol very gingerly, finger away from the trigger, no matter how unloaded it was (very unloaded) - a piece of equipment that will kill. As in murder, destroy, end, finish, expire a life. It will kill.

That is a very scary and alien concept to me.

To Americans (and I guess especially to Texans) a gun is something you don't think twice about. For fuck's sake, some people have five guns in every room.

But Marcus calls it a necessary evil. And I totally understand why. If your area has been plagued with break ins and robberies, then christ, load yourself up and take aim at your intruder. The police take 10 minutes to get to your hours. A gun takes thirty seconds to kill. Which would you rather have to protect your property, never mind your family.

What really drove it home was when Marcus handed me a single hollow point bullet. At this point, I would like to stress, the gun was far, far, faaaaar away from the bullet. One of those fuckers can rip into flesh and cause a surgeon a nightmare. And that is never good. They kill without even letting you know that you are dead. They're that bad.

Okay, I may be overstating things, but you try holding a fucking weapon in your hand, no fuck it, a fucking gun. A GUN FOR PISSING HELL'S SAKE. And you tell me that you don't feel terrified, for even a fraction of a second.

But by the same token, you feel the power. But for me, the power was such a tiny, insignificant feeling that it barely registered.

So, what have I learnt? Well, I dislike guns. I was never one to pass judgement on them before, and that was simply because I had never had reason to come into contact with them. Now that I have, I know where I stand. And I don't like them.

I would not be adverse to actually firing one - in a very controlled, very safe, very bubble-wrapped scenario. I think in order to get a fuller understanding of what I have just dismissed as the Devil's work, I owe it to myself to shoot one. But that is a long time down the line.

A loooooong time down the road.

Huh. Had that gun not come out this post would have been about American grocery stores - by which I mean supermarkets on steroids.

Or it would have been about the dive of a bar that we went to that encapsulated a slice of real America.

Maybe those will come at another time. I dunno. It depends if I handle any bloody rapiers along the way.

P.S. Excuse the spelling mistakes (for I am sure there are some), but I am typing on my new lappy and I am not sure if the grammar/spelling doodah is set up correctly. Ho hum.