If you’ve taken enough new shooters to the range, you’ll run across one who becomes less frightened/disturbed/bothered by firearms, but they still don’t quite get why people enjoy shooting. Â It’s not that they have a bad time, they just don’t get as into it, and they are legitimately curious about people who do enjoy it. Â What do you tell those people when they ask why you are a gun owner and shooter?
One LA Times columnist wants to know before she writes her next column.
Surely there is nothing new under the sun. I read the first two pages of comments and gave up, having read every idea I have ever read before about gun ownership.
Guns make action at a distance possible. That is a remarkably fun thing, for a human with a brain, because with discipline and practice the action at a distance is controllable and the holes in the paper appear at my command where I want them to appear. Well, being honest, they appear within a distance I will not detail of where I want them to appear, usually.
Golf is the same thing, controlled action at a distance. I like golf. So is baseball, in its way. So are video games, in a virtual sense. Many current games are like this – darts, ping pong, hockey, basketball, football (where a pass is involved, I suppose).
Apparently many humans like such control of action at a distance. Perhaps it evolved as a useful skill in feeding Og and the rest of the tribe.
More importantly, why does she enjoy watching guys run up and down a basketball court tossing a ball around?
I’d rather go shoot myself, and actually better my abilities than sit on my rear watching overpaid, barely educated immature twits.
Err, that is go shooting my firearms, myself, than watch or play b-ball
The columnist’s leading assumption is faulty – as a lifer gunny, I have never been in “love” with my firearms. They are useful, functional, and occasionally beautiful tools. They are very interesting to me both mechanically and historically. But, I enjoy the shooting sports in particular because I get pleasure from doing a physically difficult thing skillfully (I believe most human beings with at least average intelligence will admit that they get pleasure from executing difficult tasks skillfully). Additionally, shooting skills are adaptive – requiring hand-eye coordination, mental concentration, planning and endurance. The shooting sports provide quick feedback for effort, and a quick way (scoring stages/matches) to assess your improvements in skill. That’s what I tell people who ask why I am interested in guns and the shooting sports.
Tell her to ask the archers and biathlon athletes and see what they say. She’ll probably get the same response from them as we would give to her…
“What do you tell those people when they ask why you are a gun owner and shooter?”
Because I was an anti-gun idiot until I saw the light? Or that an unarmed man is a subject, but that an armed man is a citizen?