CLINTON, N.J. — In a wooded area up a dirt road off an interstate highway, Jamie Cap peers down the sight of his new shotgun at a target about 40 yards away. He adjusts the angle by nudging a toggle switch, then fires.
He turns and nods his head — the only part of his body he can completely control.
It had been three decades since Cap fired a gun — Nov. 3, 1979 — and he remembers it clearly, mainly because of what happened the next day: a high school football game, a head-on tackle and a neck injury that left him a quadriplegic.
Cap, 46, recently won a 2 1/2-year legal battle to allow him to use, with the help of a partner, a 12-gauge shotgun fitted with a battery-powered machine that is operated by a breathing tube.
He described firing that first shot last week with a combination of wistfulness and enthusiasm another person might use to describe rekind ling a decades-old romance.
“I don’t know if there are words,” he said. “I’m so happy. When you find you can do something again after 30 years, you can’t put a price on that.”
