Adrienne,
At the Smithsonian (as you well know), we have one of Sitting Bull's
rifles.  Our Department chairman "fired" it recently under the watchful
eye of conservators using basically an empty shell casing, not live ammo.
This was done so that the marks left by the rifle on the casing could
be compared to stuff excavated at the Little Bighorn site to see if that
particular gun was used there (no match has been made so far as I know.)
***sorry if the above is vaguely written but I am doing it from memory
and posting from home since the Smithsonian is closed due to the government
shutdown/budget crisis***
Anyway, this was a test done for scientific research that did no harm to
the gun and is a good/justified example of "use" of an artifact after it
becomes a museum object.  It would have been interesting if a particular
person's location could have been "tracked" in the archeological record of a
battle.
It seems to me that photos or film or video footage of your VIP breaking
the world record with that gun would be better documentation in the long
run than a used target from 1995.
I *am* curious how you equate firing your gun with the feeding of Zuni
masks, however, as such feedings can be done in such a way that the
artifacts are not affected (from a Conservator's standpoint anyway :-).
-Felicia

*************************************************************************
* Felicia Pickering  Processing Laboratory  Department of Anthropology  *
* National Museum of Natural History  *****    Smithsonian Institution  *
* Internet:  [log in to unmask]  ***********  Bitnet:  mnhan063@sivm  *
*************************************************************************