Clouds of sunlit dust rose from the mound of sand behind the target. Shock waves reverberated off the walls of the shooting range, and four shells landed in the gravel near her feet. She set her rifle’s sights to just above the sternum of her fictional enemy, having been instructed by Maesmanns to aim higher to account for the gap between the scope and the barrel, and pulled the trigger. Now, as blasts from adjacent firing areas rang out, Meister took a few breaths to steady herself.

The closest she had ever come to firing an assault rifle was at a carnival shooting gallery. Meister, who is 34, works in human resources for a tech company near her home in Lower Saxony, where she serves on the local council as a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party. Maesmanns, a former tank commander who is now a sergeant in Germany’s reserves and an electric-guitar teacher by trade, stood with a supportive hand on Meister’s back.

“Konzentration,” ordered her instructor, Oliver Maesmanns, articulating each syllable. Dressed in fatigues, helmet and bulletproof vest, she crouched about 20 yards from two human silhouettes, stand-ins for a hypothetical threat to the German homeland. Under a blazing July sun, Anne Katrin Meister prepared to fire a Heckler & Koch G36, the standard rifle of the German military, or Bundeswehr.

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