When I was 11, I got a BB gun for Christmas. Along with a Panasonic Platinum ghetto blaster, a Queen The Game cassette, and a Blondie Autoamerican cassette.

A BB gun.

When you have a gun, you want to shoot something. For those of you who have never shot anything, it’s a special delight. You are here, and over there—far away—is something small. Common sense says that a tiny far-away thing cannot be affected by you. Common sense says that your power only extends to the edge of your skin. But a gun is a magic missile—with the tiniest movement of your finger you can touch a tiny far-away thing. Feeling your power go way beyond your skin is elating. Your reach is immense. All of space in a 50 yard radius is touchable.

Is shooting tiny far-away targets easy? No, and this is precisely what making shooting a sport. Shooting big nearby things is boring.

Hungry to meet a shooting challenge, I loaded my rifle, opened the front door, and looked around at what I might shoot. My first target: the stop sign in front the Zeppa’s house. It was quite fun, but not fun enough. The terrible urge to shoot a tiny far-away thing was growing fast. Days later, despite already hating myself even before I pulled the trigger, I shot a bird on sitting on the telephone line. I cried my eyes out, got a shovel, buried the bird, and said a prayer. And that was the end of my killing spree.