Never is Heard a Discouraging Word

Have you ever been to a firearms practice range and heard anyone heaping disparaging commentary upon another shooter? Has anyone ever seen another shooter boistrously drunk? Have you ever been asked to leave because of loud foul language or rudeness to fellow shooters? Ever pitched a fit over a missed shot?

Me neither.

I'm not saying that the occasional whispered epithet has not escaped our lips when when a shot failed to cut the 10 ring, or a clay target floated off like a great orange bird into the trap range burial ground while your cloud of number 11 shot continued to punch a hole in the sky. All of us are relatively human. We are all prone to fits of self-deprication -- but they are usually just that. Take that measuring stick to a football game, a golf course or a tennis court and run your survey. There's something about the skill of marksmanship, combining a high level of physical and mental control in an act that is so totally exposed and solo that directs rage over a bad performance inward. When we're at the range cradling that wood and metal shooting machine, we bring our party manners. This is something you teach kids like the First Tee program in golf and junior programs in tennis and some of the solo heat team sports.

Shooting is a solitary communion between the shooter and his gun, part of a tradition that is in the American Shooter DNA from the earliest man to hurl a missile and bonk a mammoth. Track and field athletes know about it. On that field of competiton they are part of a brotherhood of solo performers. A shooter is no less an athlete when he or she steps up to that firing line and plants the shooting boots. Ask a dust-streaked, sweaty, red-faced three-gun match shooter if marksmanship is physical.

And think of how you would feel if your last shot was followed by the roar of a crowd and a trip to Disneyland? If you want to put patriotism on the line, remember, we were once a nation of marksmen and women and were proud of it.