GUNS AND THE GUIDE DOGS

In the US, being blind is no bar to owning and carrying firearms. The blind people who do it say they are simply exercising their constitutional right, and present no danger to the public.

When Carey McWilliams went to the sheriff's office in Fargo, North Dakota, to fill out the paperwork for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, the staff immediately noticed he was holding the harness to a guide dog.

The woman behind the desk pointed out that he would have to pass a shooting test before being granted the licence, but McWilliams said he knew that. He told her not to worry.

"So then she took a picture of me, and my application then went up through the ranks - it got the signature of the chief of police of Fargo, the sheriff and the state attorney general's office - and they kept calling me and calling me, saying: 'There's a shooting test, there's a shooting test.'"

The day of the test came, and McWilliams duly went along to the police firing range with a friend who was also trying for a permit. The targets were half-size cut-outs of assailants, positioned seven yards (6.4m) away. McWilliams fired a series of shots with a .357 magnum, all of which landed in the heart region of his target.

 

 

Clearly, he knew what he was doing.

He had been into guns since he was 15, when, as an air force cadet, he went on a military camp. The marine in charge of the shooting range had a brother who had lost his sight but they still went hunting together, so he let McWilliams handle the M16 machine gun. McWilliams, who before he lost his sight at the age of 10 had dreamed of joining the armed services, was instantly hooked.

 

Three years later, he asked to enrol on a pistol marksmanship course run by the Reserve Officer's Training Corps, the body that trains officers for the US armed forces. At that time there was no requirement to be enlisted in the army to take the course, and after much discussion, the instructor agreed

 to take him on. On the range, McWilliams learned to take aim by listening to the sound of his target being wheeled back against the wall. It served him very well. McWilliams says he shot better than two-thirds of his class, and in his final exam scored 105 out of 100, with one bullet somehow ricocheting and passing through the target twice.

He used the same technique in October 2000, in the police firing range in Fargo.

"The deputy sheriff said: 'Well, you have all these stickers here telling me that you're blind, but you passed the test, so you got your permit. Expect a lot of grief because you're a test case for the whole system, no-one's done this before.'"

 

Concealed carry permits - the licences required to carry a gun in public - are issued at state level, and the criteria and rules vary across the US. While there is nothing in North Dakota's statutes to prevent a blind person - or a person with any physical disability - carrying a gun, in Florida, for example, a "physical inability to handle a firearm safely" is listed as a reason for ineligibility. Yet even there, a blind person with a North Dakota licence would still be able to carry his or her gun, since Florida recognises permits from that state.

McWilliams says he used to be against hunting, but became an ardent fan

It's even more straightforward for blind people to own guns if they are content to leave them at home. In most states, you don't need to perform a shooting test or get a licence to buy a gun. Consequently, no-one knows how many blind Americans own guns for home defence, target practice or hunting.

 

Carey McWilliams started hunting in 2008. When ducks fly across the sky, he says, they make a sound like bicycle tyres on a pavement, and he traces them with the barrels of his rifle. For other types of hunting, such as stalking elk, he goes out with a companion, who whispers directions - up a bit, left a bit, right a bit - but who is not permitted to touch his weapon.

Hunting in this way is not unskilled, says McWilliams. Ever the military enthusiast, he argues that it is no different from how sniper teams work in a warzone, with a spotter giving verbal directions to a marksman. At the moment he presses the trigger, the adrenaline rush is huge. "You could probably lift up a car at that point. After you're done it's like popping a balloon and you just get tired."

The bigger the game, the bigger the rush.

"In the beginning I thought it was a joke, that somebody was blind and wanted to go on alligator hunt," says Mark Clemens, who runs a company specialising in shore hunts in Florida. "Then I sent an email back and I guessed he was serious. And once I got him on the phone, you know, he said that he was having a hard time finding anybody that would take him. That's what the sad part was. Everybody thought he wasn't capable of doing it. He was definitely capable of doing it, if he had instructions."

The alligator that Carey McWilliams pulled in with Clemens and his team in 2009 was more than 11ft (3.4m) long. As McWilliams recounts how he killed the beast with a .44 Magnum bangstick - a cross between a gun and a spear - his voice fills with emotion. He paints a picture of lightning, lassos, trucks nearly falling off dykes and a second alligator creeping up on the group from the shore. "They don't die like they do on TV," he says darkly.

Since then, McWilliams has killed a black bear and is now set on African game. He owns "eight or nine" guns, including an AR-15 machine gun, the civilian version of the M16 he handled as a teenager. Meanwhile, he has continued advice other blind Americans about how they can go about getting their concealed carry permit - he says he has now mentored nearly 100.

One of those is Jim Miekka, who in social terms comes from a different world. Carey McWilliams is unemployed, and lives in a trailer home with his wife, Victoria, who describes him as "a redneck - but a harmless redneck - if Carey could drive he would have a big pickup truck". Jim Miekka, meanwhile, is a financial trader who divides his time between Florida and Maine, where he lives on an 80-acre property. But both men have an indefatigable attitude, take pride in being free-thinkers and are completely hooked on guns.

In his 20s, Miekka lost his sight - and two of his fingers - in an explosion in his kitchen, while he was trying to develop a chemical that could be used in mining. Not long afterwards, he began to apply his ingenuity to his new situation. With help from his father, a chemical engineer with about 20 patents to his name, Miekka bought a cadmium sulphide photocell and wired it to turn visual information into clicks like those on a Geiger counter. The clicks intensified when the device was pointed at the outlines of objects, allowing Miekka to make out the edges of buildings and roads.

"I found out that it worked best with a telescope," Miekka recalls, "and at about the same time my best friend Bill was getting into target shooting, and he said, 'Why don't we try mounting it on a gun and seeing how it works?'"

"I like going out to the range and out-shooting people that can see," says Miekka. His father, Dick Miekka, has never beaten him, and says he's remarkable to watch. "He finds the centre of his target. And then nothing happens. Nothing moves and the bullet comes out. He is absolutely, totally still. You'd never know that he'd fired the gun except that you heard it and saw the result on the target."

Throughout his life, Jim Miekka has brought this extraordinary single-mindedness to bear on a series of intellectual puzzles. He is the creator of two mathematical algorithms for predicting downturns on the stock market - the Miekka Formula and the Hindenberg Omen - that have long been used by Wall Street traders. More recently, he has become obsessed with a 22-year-old murder case after watching a TV documentary, convinced that the scenario presented to the jury was against the laws of physics and the accused was wrongly imprisoned.

 

But when asked what achievement he is most proud of Miekka says he likes the fact that if you put the words "world's best target shooter" into Google, the first result you are likely to get is a video of him on his range. Myakka’s love of guns doesn't end with target shooting, either. He also enjoys dressing up as a cowboy and competing in fast-draw competitions under the nickname the Midnight Gunslinger. He can draw and fire his six-shooter in half a second.

 

In 2007, Miekka came across an enticing-sounding book in the tape library catalogue, Guide Dogs and Guns. "My shooting ability is well-documented and undeniable," read the blurb on the back cover." So prepare to step into a world filled with Braille, machine guns, canes, killer whales, guide dogs and nuclear weapons. This isn't a soft, blind man conquers all type of fluff biography but it is a hard-hitting, bare-knuckles, although at times humorous, look into the life of America's first sightless gunslinger."

 

Miekka says he needs the permit so that he can take his weapons to the range and to quick-draw events. But he also takes the pistol with him when he goes on his daily walks through the countryside, because he is afraid of being attacked by a dog. "There's a 99% possibility that if you have to use it in self-defence it'll be against a dog," he says.

Carey McWilliams is also concerned about dogs, and has good reason to be. In 2009 he was attacked by three German shepherds and had to spend days in hospital receiving treatment. For weeks afterwards he was scared to leave home and is still on morphine today. He says the incident is the reason he can no longer work.

 

“Well, that last paragraph was the justice in this story… I have no respect for people who kill animals. To me they are sick people who should receive treatment and how dare that man think he was wronged by dogs attacking him? Just what he does to poor innocent animals.

 

Blind people can do so much, and even better than some sighted. But

hunting? Crazy.