Fired up

PALMER — Although it was “silencer night” at the Matanuska Valley Sportsmen’s Indoor Shooting Range Tuesday during one of the last Ladies Only Nights, the Palmer facility was far from silent.

Between the buzz of excited female gun enthusiasts and the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun and automatic pistol fire, ear protectors were a must once you stepped into the climate-controlled, 12-point firing area at Mile 38.5 of the Glenn Highway.

But that certainly didn’t deter the 20 Valley women who took advantage of one of the club’s 15 Ladies Only Nights held every other Tuesday night each month since last September.

The last one is April 19 from 6 to 9 p.m. It will focus on safely cleaning, transporting and storing firearms during the first half hour before the range is opened up for target practice.

This week’s group attending the class on noise suppressors featured a variety of residents ages 5 to 65 who wanted to become more firearms savvy.

Florida transplant Windy Marshall watched wide-eyed as gun dealer and craftsman Keith Stegall went over federal and state regulations about suppressors and passed examples of different silencers and automatic pistols around the room.

Stegall explained that while Americans don’t usually use suppressors on their guns, other cultures employ them regularly.

“In Scandinavia, it’s considered rude to shoot a rifle without a suppressor,” Stegall said. “It’s like taking a muffler off a lawn mower.”

Some silencers are so effective you can hear a bullet hit its target, he added. He said regulations in this country have made it difficult to own and sell suppressors because they carry a $200 tax each time they are transferred.

Marshall didn’t seem to care much about all that. She just wanted to get her new automatic long rifle out of its box and take it for a test spin.

She said she never dreamed she’d own a gun. She won hers in a lottery drawing while attending a Becoming an Outdoor Woman seminar last month.

“I’m 61 years old and I’ve never fired a gun,” Marshall said after hitting a bullseye with her sleek, smooth-shooting .22.

“My father listened to opera when I was growing up, so I really didn’t have much of an opportunity to learn about guns. I used to be bad gun shy. Guns just scared me.”

A self-proclaimed computer nerd who has become a “technophobe” who doesn’t even own an answering machine, Marshall was completely fired up over her first round of target shooting with the help of Deputy Fire Chief Bruce Axtell.

She even beat Axtell’s shot that landed in the corner of the target.

In the shooting stall next to her was Lazy Mountain resident Ruth Jacobs and her 11-year-old daughter Pam. Though Pam had experience shooting rifles in the Matanuska Valley Sportsmen’s rifle marksmanship program, it was her first try with automatic revolvers.

“My husband has hunted all his life, so when we got married, it seemed only natural to learn how to shoot, too,” the mother of five said. “We want our kids to learn about guns as early as possible. They might need one someday.”

Jacobs said she appreciates the Ladies Only Nights because it gives women a chance to ask the “dumb” questions they might otherwise be too shy to ask in a class full of men.

“It’s not as intimidating with just women,” she said as Pam packed up their human silhouette targets full of holes to the head and chest.

Misti Schiewe, a teacher at the Career and Technical High School, agrees with Jacobs when it comes to teaching children about guns early on. She and her husband, Reid, own their own local firearms business, R&M Sporting Goods.

Their 5-year-old daughter, Sabrina, took a turn shooting a plastic, pink camouflaged Walther P22 pistol with a suppressor as her father helped her hold it steady.

After firing a couple of rounds, she put it down to watch an animated movie on a laptop with another members’ son out in the classroom area.

“Sometimes the air from the gun hits me in the neck and it kind of hurts,” Sabrina explained.

Her mother said Sabrina actually owns five of her own guns already, including a .22-caliber single shot rifle and a .38-caliber revolver.

“It’s good for her to learn about the rules and the differences in the safety releases and the magazines for each gun,” Schiewe said. “These events are great for the community.”

By the end of the evening, former Junior Iditarod musher Esther Huddleston earned her Pro-Marksman and Marksman patches through the National Rifle Association’s “Women on Target Pistol Qualification Program.”

She said that although she just found out about the program that night, it was fairly easy for her to earn the designations because she’s been shooting for many years.

“I do the bullseye shoots here with my dad,” the full-time mother said, adding she’s going to wait awhile before allowing her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son to shoot a gun. “They have plenty of time for that.”

For more information on Ladies Only Nights or on the Matanuska Valley Sportsmen Indoor Shooting Range, call Brenda Montgomery at 746-3090 or the main number at 746-4862.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.