Well I came home and found Rick’s target from his hand gun class taped onto the fridge. Damn. I wouldn’t recommend anyone trying to break in, he’s quite a shot… He invited me to go skeet shoting with him sometime. I haven’t had to deal with this in quite a while, I’ve always felt pretty weird about guns. The last time this came up it was at one of Margret’s friends’ house. He brought out his Sig Saur to show it off. He passed it around and gave it to some idiot there. The firing pin was removed, so I knew it couldn’t go off, but it was still pretty unerving to have the thing pointed at me. I was always taught that you should NEVER point a gun at someone unless you were going to shoot them… The last time I actually shot anything was at boy scout camp around 1983 or so. We were using 22 caliber bolt action rifles. They took great lengths to teach saftey, but little on marksmanship. I didn’t hit a damn thing from 50 or 60 feet. I had plenty of friends that did target shooting or hunted, but I never could get into that whole culture. Maybe it would be a good idea to get over whatever it is I have by learning how to shoot. I don’t think that skeet shooting would be the best reintroduction, it would only amount to me firing a shotgun in the air randomly…:-) Anyway, the invatation was unexpected, I’ll have to think about it.
Isaac
2 replies on “”
I’m a bit unclear on my dad’s motivation to take shooting lessons, myself. However, I think that he’s looking at things from a reasonable perspective: he told me last night that it was unnerving to listen to some of the women in his shooting class asking the instructor what kind of ammunition they should buy to ensure that they would “take a target down.” *shiver*.
I’ve been both pistol and skeet shooting with a friend who I’d consider a “gun-nut.” It’s always a good thing in my mind to remember that, as in everything else in life, there are reasonable people and stupid people in every walk of life. No matter how enthused he is about any particular gun, he always treats a firearm as if it is loaded and could go off at any moment. Always. Even when it’s partially dissasembled for cleaning. There’s no reason not to behave that way.
I think that guns wouldn’t have such the social stigma they carry if it weren’t for stupid people behaving badly with them. *gah*.
– thppt –
Idiots
No question that idiots have ruined lots of good things for other people. The problem with guns and idiots is the lethality of the whole thing. That and the stigma of agreeing with the NRA… I think Rick is doing this just for fun. He mentioned that he’ll take a rifle class next, and then try skeet shooting. I understand the appeal of target shooting, but I’d be more comfortable with archery. I jokingly suggested that he put the target up on the door outside, that’ll have a much bigger deterrent effect than actually owning a gun!:-) Of course with such a ferocious watch dog, we don’t have to worry about that stuff anyway:-)
Isaac