I jumped. The first shot was not as startling as I expected, but hearing my classmates’ shots certainly was. Here I was, just having fired a gun for the first time in my life, and all I could do was stare at the hole I had bored into the target facing me.

I could not help but envision the piece of paper as a person who was the latest individual to fall victim to gun violence. Since the Newtown, CT massacre, almost 3,300 people have been killed while staring down the barrel of a gun. I just experienced how easy it was to make it 3,301.

But getting to that point was not as easy as I thought. Three hours in a classroom had preceded that moment. I diagrammed a gun, learned how to discharge the firearm and get used to the recoil effect. Our instructions were clear and exact, quite different than the class I was expecting to take.

I walked into Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, a ten minute drive from the national headquarters of the National Rifle Association (NRA), expecting to be given ten minutes to learn how to fire a gun without blowing my hand off.

However, that image could not be further from what I experienced.

I was surrounded by students old and young in the four hour introductory course to handguns. Some had come for fun, others out of a concern for self-defense and more like me who were curious about the weapons that have been headlining national news for months. In fact, the instructor informed us that the range has had to double the amount of classes it offers since the massacre in Newtown.

In an attempt to satisfy my curiosity about how easy it would be for my dad (who accompanied me) to purchase a gun before we left the class that evening, I asked how a typical gun sale is transacted. I was disconcerted by the answer I was given. In accordance with Virginia’s gun laws, Blue Ridge asks for a license or other identifying form and runs a background check through an online system. It could be as short as ten minutes, the instructor said.

But my time there also reminded me of the vast array of nuances that plague the issue. My dad, a good Samaritan and without a criminal record, has every right to own a gun and keep it in his home. It is his constitutional right, after all.

But how can we stop a man or woman with the same sterling credentials as my father, but with a malevolent intention? It was evident to me as I was walking out Blue Ridge that placing more restrictions on access to guns is not the panacea to this issue.

It was clear that we cannot treat this issue retroactively. We cannot always look into an individual’s past and predict his or her future. The issue is that we are not doing enough proactively. We have failed to properly address people like James Holmes, the perpetrator of last summer’s Aurora massacre, before they can get their hands on guns.

I left the range with a greater amount of questions than the number with which I entered. How do we start, while protecting the right granted to us in the Constitution? How do we offer peace of mind to the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence, while we ensure that we are not infringing upon the agency of others?

I am not sure, as of yet. Three shots were enough for me before I had to take a step back and examine the enormity of the issue at hand.