I was reading today about the dearth of rifle and pistol ranges in the city of Chicago even though the City Council approved their opening. Sounds like a good deal until you read the restrictions concerning "where" a range is permitted to exist. Running down the list of "forbidden" locations ("within 1,000 feet of a school" -- hell, when I was a kid on the South Side, we had a rifle range IN our high school), it appears only a concrete bunker built on an artificial island way offshore in Lake Michigan would be suitable real estate. Now, THERE's a use for abandoned Northerly Island!
Sportsmen and women are asking why do we have to drive 40 miles outside the city to receive firearms instruction classes demanded by the city to obtain a gun permit? Why are ranges barred from being built near any human habitation? Do City Council members fear shifty gun owners in long overcoats standing on street corners trying to peddle firearms along with their Rolex wristwatch knock-offs, or selling guns out of car trunks in alleys...? Oh, wait, that's what's happening now.
We need more rifle and pistol ranges and more instruction locations where adults and young people can plug back into an American tradition. We need rifle or pistol teams to get at least as much newspaper sport section space as local Bass Fishing tournaments! And I love bass fishing. Shooting sports are great character builders requiring practice, physical skills, responsibility and rigorous respect for the rules of safe gun handling.
Let the gun worshiper patriotic bullies woof, stomp and bellow while the anti-gun crowd slithers around with their sweat-stained statistic pads. The rest of us can just keep working to take back our sport.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
.38 Caliber Therapy
Ever have a day when you felt everything you touched turned into poop and you just had to leave for an hour with your favorite Smith & Wesson .38 Special Military and Police five-screw Hand Ejector six-inch barrel revolver, fully nickel-plated with reddish walnut combat grips and pump half a box of wadcutters down range until the black circle in the middle of that target was just a big ragged hole? I feel better just writing about it.
Of course, exorcising demons is only one use for heating up a perfectly innocent firearm. Some mornings at the 100 meter rifle range, beneath the cool corrugated ceiling and loading your first clip of the day one shell at a time with a nine o'clock wind on your cheek, the day holds nothing but promise. The problem is, not enough shooting sportsmen can enjoy these simple pleasures whenever they wish. There are not enough ranges.
We need more pistol, rifle, and shotgun ranges. It seems odd to me that people get into bidding wars to live right off the fairway of a golf course. One fella got his retirement wish right downwind from the Tee box of the club's 16th hole; a nice brick home with a patio just off the master bedroom. On his second day in that lovely residence, he stepped out in his pajamas into the perfumed grassy breeze, stretched, yawned contentedly and then performed a perfect half tuck forward roll with a pike layout, assisted by a high velocity Titelist golf ball to the back of his cranium. For months afterward, he spoke in tongues and swore he saw Jesus with his dead cousin Ambrose. That could never happen at a properly run rifle range.
More decent firearms sportsmen and women are being needlessly injured every day as hapless targets on golf courses, or lunging for a baseline backhand at the tennis court. Hamstrings, concussions, pulled this and torn that, all injuries that could be prevented by spending more time on a safe firing line.
Read American Shooter, learn about our gun culture and help turn this mess around.
Of course, exorcising demons is only one use for heating up a perfectly innocent firearm. Some mornings at the 100 meter rifle range, beneath the cool corrugated ceiling and loading your first clip of the day one shell at a time with a nine o'clock wind on your cheek, the day holds nothing but promise. The problem is, not enough shooting sportsmen can enjoy these simple pleasures whenever they wish. There are not enough ranges.
We need more pistol, rifle, and shotgun ranges. It seems odd to me that people get into bidding wars to live right off the fairway of a golf course. One fella got his retirement wish right downwind from the Tee box of the club's 16th hole; a nice brick home with a patio just off the master bedroom. On his second day in that lovely residence, he stepped out in his pajamas into the perfumed grassy breeze, stretched, yawned contentedly and then performed a perfect half tuck forward roll with a pike layout, assisted by a high velocity Titelist golf ball to the back of his cranium. For months afterward, he spoke in tongues and swore he saw Jesus with his dead cousin Ambrose. That could never happen at a properly run rifle range.
More decent firearms sportsmen and women are being needlessly injured every day as hapless targets on golf courses, or lunging for a baseline backhand at the tennis court. Hamstrings, concussions, pulled this and torn that, all injuries that could be prevented by spending more time on a safe firing line.
Read American Shooter, learn about our gun culture and help turn this mess around.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
"Weapons" or "Firearms"
No sooner did I finish the last post than I tuned into an interview on-line of Bill Maher by Piers Morgan. Normally, I love Bill Maher. Piers Morgan sails on neutral waters with his whiney British accent, but okay. They were discussing guns and the gun culture in the United States. Maher likened guns to his antibiotics. He accepts his pills, but he doesn't "love" them, doesn't polish them, doesn't worship them. They are there if needed. Morgan whined about having 300,000,000 "weapons" in the United states and that shut everything down for me.
All weapons are not guns and all guns are not weapons. A gun is designed to fire a missile at a distant target. Not a distant head, or a distant chest, or foot, or other body part. A knife is designed to cut -- not designed to cut throats, or commit hari-kiri. Just to cut. We make a gun or a knife a weapon. Fewer people are hurt on a rifle range than on a golf course, or a tennis court each year.
The police and military design guns to be weapons, because defending lives and property is part of their jobs. In some countries miliary service is compulsary and a military rifle is in every family closet and young men and women are trained in its use. We don't do that. There is a disconnect in the U.S. between "weapons" for the police and military and "firearms" for the general population -- or there should be. Gun manufacturers have chosen to beat the warfare drum and promise military superpowers to whomever buys one of their weapons. Testosterone-dipped Americans are brain-washed into buying the Rambo concept and every once in a while one of them goes off the tracks on onto the 10:00 PM news.
American Shooter supports the idea of that disconnect between military and police "weapons" and "firearms" for American sportsmen and women. The distinction is important if we are to return to our traditional roots.
All weapons are not guns and all guns are not weapons. A gun is designed to fire a missile at a distant target. Not a distant head, or a distant chest, or foot, or other body part. A knife is designed to cut -- not designed to cut throats, or commit hari-kiri. Just to cut. We make a gun or a knife a weapon. Fewer people are hurt on a rifle range than on a golf course, or a tennis court each year.
The police and military design guns to be weapons, because defending lives and property is part of their jobs. In some countries miliary service is compulsary and a military rifle is in every family closet and young men and women are trained in its use. We don't do that. There is a disconnect in the U.S. between "weapons" for the police and military and "firearms" for the general population -- or there should be. Gun manufacturers have chosen to beat the warfare drum and promise military superpowers to whomever buys one of their weapons. Testosterone-dipped Americans are brain-washed into buying the Rambo concept and every once in a while one of them goes off the tracks on onto the 10:00 PM news.
American Shooter supports the idea of that disconnect between military and police "weapons" and "firearms" for American sportsmen and women. The distinction is important if we are to return to our traditional roots.
Woof and Stomp Truth Management
On February 28, the Chicago Tribune published a canned feature called the "Truth-O-Meter" from an outfit called Politifact that analizes claims and statements made by politicians and their chums in an attempt to discover some grain of truth amid the rhetoric. Wayne LaPierre, boss of the NRA spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference. LaPierre claimed President Obama "endorsed a total ban on the sale and possession of all handguns." Based on a 1996 Illinois state voter multiple questionnaire, which the then candidate for the Illinois senate staff said he never saw, someone typed "yes" after a question on banning all handguns. This yellowing antique "evidence" in the sweaty hands of the NRA Truth Managers triggered a feeding frenzy culminating in the concept that the president is just "biding his time" to get re-elected in 2012 and then he springs into action to unleash a holy war on all gun owners. To date, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has given the president flunking marks in his views on gun banning and every survey known to man verifies this fact. President Obama should be judged by the only two playing fields that count: his actual statements and his actual record not by the aluminum foil hat people who use the Internet like a dirty hand towel.
While writng American Shooter and about our gun culture, I laid out my idea of shutting down this hopping from one foot to the other with savage glee every time some fragment of soggy-bottom logic happens to align with ideological stars and the torches are lit for another Muggles Parade. Mixed metaphor aside, American Shooting Sportsmen and women are developing a tin ear where hate and meaness are the tools of debate. Let's use our resources and imagination to let the public in on our traditional and character-building sport.
While writng American Shooter and about our gun culture, I laid out my idea of shutting down this hopping from one foot to the other with savage glee every time some fragment of soggy-bottom logic happens to align with ideological stars and the torches are lit for another Muggles Parade. Mixed metaphor aside, American Shooting Sportsmen and women are developing a tin ear where hate and meaness are the tools of debate. Let's use our resources and imagination to let the public in on our traditional and character-building sport.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Kindred Spirits in Shooting Sports
When Gordon Morris Bakken was asked by my publisher to pen a short blurb for the back cover of my book, American Shooter, he instead did me the honor of going all in on a "foreward." He followed my model by making his work a review laced with patches from his own life, growing up with firearms and passing that love of the outdoors and marksmanship to his son. When he wrote for the back cover:
“An informative and enjoyable excursion, both historical and personal. Souter sets out
the problem of the polarization of public debate about guns. He seeks to separate 'myths and truth’ and ‘insights and blunders.’ This book is not about the Second Amendment
controversy. Yet Souter explores the nature of our gun culture and how deeply ingrained it is,
both personally and individually, and broadly throughout American society.”
I felt a kindred spirit. We both love the sport of firearms marksmanship for the skills required and for the camaraderie of our fellow sportsmen and women. We both started out as kids toting .22 rifles and still enjoy the crunch of trail breaking leaves under our boots and the faint scent of gun oil in the crisp fall air. It is a nice feeling to be in the company of a learned gentleman with enough alphabet soup after his name to be comfortable in any academic circle and yet he is grounded in the real world. One day, I hope we can meet in person, maybe stand side by side and drop the hammer on a few distant targets. Until then, I can only thank Gordon Morris Bakken, B.S., M.S., Ph.D, J.D. Professor of History, California State University, Fullerton
Firearm Owner Flagillation
Do you own a firearm? Is it buried in a drawer, hidden in a closet, camouflaged to look like an artsy lamp, or locked in a gun safe in a secure undisclosed location? Are you embarrassed that you own one or more firearms? Showing off a new set of golf clubs, a composite tennis racket, or a tricked-out mountain bike doesn't take a second thought. But taking down from its pride of place on the dining room wall rack, a custom stocked 30-06 Winchester bolt action rifle with an eight power telescopic sight, well, that's just plain creepy. When you load your cased shotguns into the trunk of your car to go to the trap range, do you notice your neighbors shooing their children inside as if you were the neighborhood designated sex offender? Have children stopped coming to your house on hallowe'en?
All of the above are common in the U.S. today because of the melding of riot and rampage, murder and mayhem that must be dealt with by the police and military, and the law-abiding ownership of firearms for the express purpose of enjoying the shooting sports. Even though approximately 200,000,000 guns are in American hands today, most people have been conditioned to fear firearms. But a gun on every hip is no solution -- it just announces the gun toter's fear, or aggession no longer veiled.
Too many kids are taught that respect comes from the barrel of a gun while a kid who learns that marksmanship skills and safe firearm handling are valued and rewarded builds self-esteem not the fear in the gut from phony street "justice." The United States was once a nation of shooters and earned respect toeing the mark. It can be that way again if the patriotic bullies and false prophets of doom take a seat, have a cold beer and let the adults get on with it.
All of the above are common in the U.S. today because of the melding of riot and rampage, murder and mayhem that must be dealt with by the police and military, and the law-abiding ownership of firearms for the express purpose of enjoying the shooting sports. Even though approximately 200,000,000 guns are in American hands today, most people have been conditioned to fear firearms. But a gun on every hip is no solution -- it just announces the gun toter's fear, or aggession no longer veiled.
Too many kids are taught that respect comes from the barrel of a gun while a kid who learns that marksmanship skills and safe firearm handling are valued and rewarded builds self-esteem not the fear in the gut from phony street "justice." The United States was once a nation of shooters and earned respect toeing the mark. It can be that way again if the patriotic bullies and false prophets of doom take a seat, have a cold beer and let the adults get on with it.
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