Annie, get your Glock

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Devon Chester, a petite 24-year-old in a pink sweater and designer jeans, plants her white Puma sneakers a little more than shoulder-width apart, squares her body, leans back slightly, aims her targeting laser, and empties the magazine of her Glock 9 mm pistol -- bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! -- into the paper target 10 yards away.

Chester sets the pistol down and examines her work. Several dime-size holes pepper the target's man-shaped silhouette. If this were a back-alley thug, he would be wounded but probably still on his feet. Chester, who lives in Lowell, turns to her boyfriend, 22-year-old Josh Armstrong-Levanthal from West Newton, shaking her head and smiling sheepishly.

It's Sunday evening -- Ladies Night at the Manchester Firing Line -- and Chester and Armstrong-Levanthal are here to take advantage of free range time from 5 to 8 p.m. The Firing Line, a bunker like facility across from a little league field on a quiet residential street, started Ladies Night in 1999 to attract women who may never have visited a gun range or pulled a trigger before .

``I wanted to see what it felt like," Chester says after she finishes shooting. ``I had only shot a BB gun before."

Thanks largely to the popular Ladies Night promotion, women now represent about a quarter of the Firing Line's business, says owner Jim McLoud -- a veritable coup for the testosterone-driven gun range, where the only woman on a staff of six full-time and five part-time employees is a back-office accountant.

``Very few women were coming in before," McLoud says. ``Now, a lot of the women are police officers and security guards. More women are going into that market. A lot of women bring in their children because they want them to learn [how to shoot] right; they don't want them to learn from their friends at school."

Ladies Night is so popular that on many Sunday nights women fill up the firing lanes and men have to be turned away. McLoud says that , beginning this fall , he plans to begin offering free range time to women all day Sunday.

The Firing Line rents everything from a .22-caliber rifle , which is slightly more deadly than a slingshot, to the .45 -caliber pistol favored by SWAT teams and Hong Kong action director John Woo , to the AK-47 assault rifle used by United States special forces units in Iraq.

The biggest, baddest, most expensive gun on offer is the M-60, which saw major use in the Vietnam War and is still used on US Army helicopters. If you want to pay $100 plus the cost of ammunition to shoot the M-60, you have to call ahead so that employees can link together by hand the M-60's individual bullets into long cartridge belts. A belt of 100 rounds will set you back $63 and last about 15 ear-splitting seconds. For safety, two employees must accompany you onto the range, and after you've finished , the gun will be disassembled for cleaning.

Around 6 o'clock, a young Somerville couple enter the range , looking for something slightly less macho than the M-60. Neither has fired a gun before. Night manager Jay Roberts, a 30-year-old Navy veteran who is training for his police exams, takes three revolvers from the display case and places them on the counter.

``Oh, this one is heavy," the woman says, hefting a big silver Smith & Wesson . The couple (who didn't want their names published) choose the medium-weight revolver.

Roberts patiently explains how to load the chamber and delivers a quick primer on gun safety . He hands the couple paper targets, two pairs of earphones and eyeglasses, and directs them through a heavy, soundproof door to the indoor range.

``A lot of girls come in skeptical," Roberts says. ``But when they leave , they're like, ` That was so much fun.' And they come back."

Jeni Benos of Chelmsford, who arrives later that evening with her father and her Walther P22 , a model similar to the Walther PPK made famous in the James Bond films, is not one of the skeptics. Since purchasing a membership at the Firing Line in May she's been coming to the range about three times a week. ``I needed a new hobby," Benos says.

With her bright blue jeans that flare out at the ankles into rainbow-colored bell-bottoms, Benos, a jewelry designer, hardly seems the National Rifle Association type. She could be heading to a Grateful Dead concert.

But diversity is what Ladies Night is all about. The promotion is part of an industry wide push, spearheaded by the NRA, to bring new members into the gun-toting flock. The NRA -- which estimates that 2 million American women hunt and an additional 4 million do target practice -- sponsors women's shooting classes and women- and couple s -only hunts across the United States. According to the organization, annual attendance at its women-only hunts grew from about 500 people in 2000, the first year of the program, to 6,000 last year. Even the NRA president is a woman, only the second in the organization's 135-year history.

Zach Ragbourn , a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence , the country's major gun control organization, calls outreach efforts like the Firing Line's Ladies Night cynical attempts to expand the market.

``We don't think it's a gun issue and we don't think it's a gender issue," Ragbourn says. ``[The gun industry] is selling a commodity, and they'll do whatever it takes. My boss likes to say that next year they'll target left-handed midgets and have Left-Handed Midgets Night at the gun range."

GUNS 'N' MUSIC

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It's no accident that the Firing Line is in New Hampshire and so many of its customers are from Massachusetts. New Hampshire has some of the most permissive gun laws in New England, while Massachusetts prohibits any ``assault weapon or large capacity feeding device [more than 10 rounds]." (The Brady Campaign gives Massachusetts an A- for its gun laws. It gives New Hampshire a D-. ) That means no AK-47s and definitely no M-60s. If you want target practice, stay in Massachusetts ; i f you want to play Rambo, go to New Hampshire .

At the Firing Line's hot, noisy gun range, Benos expertly loads the magazine of her P22. She shoots a few rounds with her right hand, her body sideways to the lane, then turns around and shoots with her left hand. Her form and aim are excellent.

``It's a nice sport, it really is," Phil Benos says, watching his daughter shoot. ``And cheaper than skiing."

As Ladies Night draws to an end, the crowd at the Firing Line starts to thin out, but the Somerville couple who had never fired a gun before are still in their lane, having traded out their medium-weight Smith & Wesson revolver for an Uzi -- an Israeli submachine gun that was illegal in the United States from 1994 to 2003, when President Clinton's assault weapons ban, which prohibited most automatic weapons, quietly expired.

When working properly, the Uzi fires 650 rounds per minute. Right now , though, it is jammed.

Joe Giorgi , a Firing Line employee, heads over to help the frustrated couple.

``Uzis are always hard the first time," he says with a shrug.

Michael Hardy can be reached at mhardy@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in yesterday's Living/Arts section about a Manchester, N.H., firing range mischaracterized Massachusetts gun laws. Residents with a Class A gun license may purchase semiautomatic weapons. Residents without a Class A license may shoot semiautomatic weapons at a gun range or gun club that holds a Class A license. Certified police firearms instructors or firearms collectors who hold a machine gun license may purchase machine guns. Also, the story should have made clear that US laws prohibit private ownership of fully automatic machine guns manufactured after 1986. The Uzi mentioned in the story was never illegal because it was made before 1986.)