Much of the recent violence is blamed on Islamist militants.. He was known for simple industrial landscapes featuring uncomplicated factory workers. In late 2001, he headed a failed last-ditch effort to save the Taliban from being attacked by the US for hosting al-Qa’ida.Last week, two car bombs exploded near the US Consul’s Karachi residence and on 7 May a suicide bomb at a Shia mosque in the city killed 22 people. He was travelling in a pick-up truck to his Islamic seminary in the east of the city. A bodyguard returned fire, wounding one of the six attackers, police said.

One of Mr Shamzai’s sons, a nephew, his driver and a bodyguard were injured, but none seriously.Mr Shamzai, who was in his seventies, died of gunshot wounds in hospital. Hewas a strong supporter of Afghan-istan’s former Taliban regime and headed the Jamia Islamia Binor Town school where thousandsreceive Islamic education. The older ones are good, they take your advice because they want to learn to get better. We also get a lot of tourists, a lot of Orientals because handguns are forbidden there. They like to shoot when they come here because they can.”I went back to shoot some more, this time trying to work on my aim, which, frankly, wasn’t great. Unlimited ammo and enhanced aim may get me by in computer games, but the real thing is much harder. Carlos was very encouraging, so I asked him about the other female shooters he’d met.”When they come in with their boyfriends, the guy will come in all macho, thinking he knows everything.

But often, for the girl, it’s the first time, so she pays attention to the instructions I give her. The guy just wants to release some stress and shoot some guns, so when they both go to the range, the guy misses and he’s like, ‘Whatever’, and just keeps shooting off rounds. The girls, when they miss, they question why and go back to their techniques to see where they can improve. They follow the instructions and take it step by step, so they make better shooters than men.”Although I was enjoying playing the assassin, it was a sobering experience to fire real weapons rather than virtual ones. Marie-Claire Suter, one of my companions at the range, was less enthused by the experience. She works for Xbox and is an avid gamer, but her response to shooting for real was very different from mine.”Firing a real gun is 100 per cent different to shooting in computer games,” she said “I love games because they’re escapist, they’re not real.

Shooting is too real.” Marie-Claire admitted to having felt uncomfortable as soon as she walked into the building. “It hit me how serious it was – we walked in, picked a gun from a cabinet, grabbed some ammo and were told to get on with it I wanted to like it. I’m a tough girl, and I wanted to go in there and kick everyone’s arse, but I found shooting frightening and stressful. It’s too loud, we had too little instruction, and no one seemed to think twice about the fact that we were using real guns. It wasn’t a game.”It wasn’t so much the actual guns or shooting that unsettled Marie-Claire, it was the casual way the guns had been handed out and the lack of one-on-one tuition. “I wanted military precision, a supervisor each, an uncrowded range and fewer guys messing around saying, ‘Look at my gun!’” She won’t be returning “I’m glad I did it, but I won’t go again. I scared myself.”I felt chastened by her reaction, but I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the experience I’m glad that I’ve learnt how to shoot.