In the spring of 2020, Alaina Hicks was going stir crazy in her Southern California home. Information about COVID-19 was slowly rolling in, and Hicks was adjusting to homeschooling her 5-year-old daughter.
“I was going nuts,” recalls Hicks. “One day, my social media manager calls me up and says, ‘Get ready, because we’re going out. We’re going to go have some fun.’ He brought me up to Taran Tactical, and I shot a gun on my own for the first time. I was bad, but I loved it.”
Hicks shot with a Glock 17 Combat Master that day, staggering as she got accustomed to what felt like an explosion going off in her hands. She had to be shown where to put her fingers and how to aim (not that she hit anything remotely close to the target that day). Hicks had no idea what she was doing; she hadn’t grown up around guns. Her grandfather, who raised her in her parents’ absence, was a Vietnam veteran with severe PTSD. So there wasn’t just a lack of guns in the home; they weren’t really discussed at all.
However, there was something about the experience at the range that day that stuck with her. Something about the way it felt to start to get the hang of it, to get used to the weight and the feel of a proper grip. It gave Hicks a sense of something she’d never really felt before — confidence. She wanted to feel it again.
“I do not like defeat,” she says.
