Thursday, March 03, 2005

More Joy of Shooting

I wrote a post a while back on the joys of shooting. There really is a lot of fun involved with shooting. Because there are too many people hostile to gun ownership, we bloggers get caught up with self-defense issues, defending our gun rights, arguing with gun grabbers, and discussing firearms in the news. We need to do all of this so we don’t let our guards down. But I like to remind myself periodically of all the fun I have while shooting and collecting guns.

For instance, Bill and I are going to our bullseye league tonight. We’re going there to face a challenge and to enjoy ourselves. We haven’t been shooting bullseye in an organized fashion for long, but we’re improving each time we go (almost) and we enjoy the sport's discipline and concentration.

As spring comes to New England, we’ll be getting out the shotguns and getting ourselves onto skeet and trap fields. We’ll go to rifle ranges and shoot our antique military rifles and modern black rifles too. We’ll do informal bullseye-type shooting since our league ends soon. We’ll take our handguns to the range and do just plain plinking-for-the-hell-of-it and do defensive drills within a range’s limits.

Our recreation centers around guns year around. When we take a vacation, we check to see what ranges are near, what travel restrictions we face, and ensure we meet laws of the state(s) we stay in.

We talk to each other about adding more sports to our repertoire. I used to do some practical shooting and we may resume that. We want to shoot more sporting clays courses. We may even dress up like cowboys, call each other pardner, and do some Cowboy Action Shooting.

When autumn comes around again, we’ll sight-in our scoped muzzleloaders and centerfire rifles. Then we’ll take to the field and see if we can find a careless deer or game bird.

There’s almost an infinite variety of gun games we do or can do if we want to—limited only by what is available to us here in New England and the season. Winter curtails our participation in a few sports since I don’t want to stand in a snow bank to shoot trap: I’m not that dedicated, almost but not quite.

We’re proud gun nuts and will defend and support our sport. Gun grabbers want to end our way of life. And, that’s why we resist them by joining pro-gun organizations, giving to the NRA education and defense funds through my job’s charity program, and it’s why we started Ten Ring. So support and enjoy your favorite gun sport.

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