“I had a poor view, a more negative view of people who like guns than I do now. I didn’t understand why people enjoyed it. I just thought it was very violent.” – MIT shooting team member Hope Lutwak (not pictured above) in Gun industry’s helping hand triggers a surge in college shooting teams [at washingtonpost.com]
Thanks to Larry and Brenda Potterfield, and anyone who shops at Midway USA.
Hearts and minds. Awesome.
Love my Midway….
Beat Hell out of Crappier than douche.
Ah Midway, the bane of my credit card, the boon of my inanimate friends. Knowing the Potterfields are good folk makes the bills a little easier to pay off.
I’ve never met a single person that went target shooting for the first time not like it…..you put a .22 rifle in their hands and let them plink a few cans and they are hooked..
Man, these people can clutch pearls like nobody’s business. They make it seem like the evil gun lobby is brainwashing the students with their blood money, then in the next breath admit that it has become more popular through word of mouth, and that opposition to it is too small to acknowledge. They don’t even get to exercise their actual rights; they must check their .22s out like library books and maintain neck breathing ninny control of them at all times. Their over educated parents (who worry about their genius childrens ability to handle chunks of metal) would just faint at a normal range.
Re the picture, I usually prefer to leave my water bottle well behind the firing line especially if shooting .22LR. I’ve never shot so consistently dirty a round.
Not so sure of the contamination issue there.
In my background working in analytical chem labs there was a health-safety push in the 90’s.
Before then folks would have their coffee and sodas ‘open faced’ so to speak doing their assays. That changed to requiring beverages with covered tops or water bottles.
At indoor gun ranges the blowers ventilate airflow downrange from the firing line.
Personally, I don’t see an issue for myself, but kids with developing brains may be a different issue. A better way for them would be outdoors with the breeze at your back.
The list of NCAA rifle teams is interesting to me. A lot of science/egineering-centric schools and strangely a few teams that are women only. Because mostly women were interested in shooting sports at those schools?
I’d like to see where these students end up after school. My guess is most science/engineering students don’t go into politics or social services. Too bad because we could use more logical thinkers grounded in the real world establishing policy rather than a bunch of angry ex-hippies who base policies on emotion. Politics truly is a field for folks who cannot make it in the real world.
I believe Title IX requires schools to have the same number of NCAA sanctioned sports for men and women. A lot of schools have things like rowing and apparently shooting for women only to balance the male-dominated sports like football, wrestling, and rugby.
“If you graduate with a liberal arts degree from a 4 year university you will be dumber than the day you started…..if you continue on and get a graduate degree now you will be dumb AND dangerous.”
Dennis Prager who notes exceptions for people who graduate with a business/science degree or students in liberal studies “who manage to stay drunk for 4 years and disregard the classes”.
You’re probably right. The last (only) technically -trained President I can think of was Hoover, who was I believe a Stanford-educated mining engineer. Extremely capable man, but even he made some missteps. Undeserving of history’s harsh judgment, though, in my opinion.
You’re right on point that these angry ex-hippies have spent their lives mostly whining and crying, instead of innovating and producing. I’m always leery of granting power to anyone who’s never accomplished anything by other means.
Hoover was a great man, responsible for saving the lives of over a billion people in total. His historical reputation is tarnished due to a misunderstanding of what happened with the Great Depression. Another one wrongly tarnished is Marie Antoinette (who never actually said, “Let them eat cake”).
The peanut farmer had something like a BS degree.
He’s very glad that Obama became president because the label of “worst president ever” is now removed from his resume.
One myth correction, however. President Carter was a submarine officer, but he was not a nuclear engineer.
He graduated from the US Naval Academy in June 1946 (he entered in 1943 with the class of 1947, but his class was in a war-driven accelerated 3 year program) with an undesignated bachelor of science degree. Even if the Naval Academy had offered a majors program for his class, it is unlikely that it would have included Nuclear Engineering as a option – after all, the Manhattan Project was a dark secret for most of his time at Annapolis.
After graduation, Jimmy Carter served as a surface warfare officer for a two years and then volunteered for the submarine force. He served in a variety of billets, including engineer officer of diesel submarines and qualified to command submarines.
“You may ask, author, what has all this to do with your question? My answer is: Thank God for any opposition to the left! Why you ask?
There is no record of a culture entering abruptly into the period of contending states. It is always a slow development; and the first step is a merciless questioning of all that was once held sacred. Inner certainties cease to exist, are dissolved before the ruthless probings of scientific and analytic minds. The skeptic becomes the highest type of being.
“I say that this culture may end abruptly in its most flourishing age. The sociological effects of such a catastrophe would be a sudden vanishing of morals, a reversion to almost bestial criminality, unleavened by any sense of ideal, a callous indifference to death.
“ What kind of men women are we—fools, cynics, ghouls—or is it that our civilization is so steeped in reason that we can contemplate a murderer sympathetically?” Our open minds make us qualify for those titles. That be republicans, democrats, or any other political party!
“We literally have way more students interested than we can handle,” said Steve Goldstein, one of MIT’s pistol coaches.
Now that’s a real mensch. Somebody please email this to Bloomberg and/or Mommy Shannon. Times they are a changin’.
The Left doesn’t ‘Get It’. The times are indeed changing. Younger folks with brains capable of critical thinking are more politically aligned with a Libertarian philosophy.
Said it before, I’ll say it again:
The best friends we have are Hollywood and the first person shooter games.
Eric Holder was on to something when he said (to the effect of) needing to brainwash people to think guns aren’t cool the same way they did with cigarettes.
Notice how cigs are seen less and less in movies?
Try that with guns. No way, ain’t gonna happen.
The louder and more unbalanced they get on guns, the critical thinkers begin to see what’s up.
And ‘up’ isn’t a terrorizing fear of guns.
I love the way the Post tries to slant funding from MidwayUSA and NSSF as being some sinister plot. How is this any different than Nike funding NCAA football and putting that stupid swoosh on everything?
It’s different because Patriots don’t kill tyrants with footballs or running shoes.
True, but some fans do kill each other for the shoes.
“It’s the shoes!”, screams Moms Demand Sensible Shoes, er, Shoesense.
So the philosophy and poli-sci majors shout for gun control on campus streets while the science and engineering majors practice gun control on the range. Sounds about right.
I picked up my first gun around the year 1994, I would have been about 7 years old…
It was the Nintendo Zapper. The first time that pixellated dog held up a dead duck for me I was hooked.
It’s all the fault of video game makers, I swear! Ban the NES, ban the zapper, ban Duck Hunt! For the child I used to be!
Sarcasm aside, it’s not the NRA’s fault I love to shoot. Nor is it the fault of my family, or any other pro gun organization. I learned I love guns by myself, and I suspect that I’m not alone!
Ahem.
‘Shooting’* in context, has nothing in the least to do with Physics — matter, force, motion, action, interaction, reaction, ballistics, trajectory, & etc., and / or nearly-instantaneous cause / effect feedback.
Nothing at all to do with personal responsibility, personal accountability, discipline, safety or use of Mind to control aspects of one’s body.
Since there’s not a single element involved in acquiring unique experience and knowledge on an individual basis, there’s no relationship whatsoever with Philosophy.
No distinctions can possibly be made between actuality and reality, that is between what one has been previously indoctrinated to adamantly believe about GUNS and has naturally accepted as reality — and the actuality that the purpose and use of a GUN is dependent upon the person and the circumstances.
Additionally, there’s absolutely no relationship discernable between GUNS and applied intelligence, tools, engineering, mathematics or establishment and maintenance of ‘Civilization’, and therefore nothing to possibly be understood.
Furthermore, due to the simple fact that “Progress” requires eradicating every element of ’conservatism’;- the very idea of allowing people to individually utilize *devices designed to expel a projectile or projectiles by force of explosion* under circumstances in which no laws are broken, no injuries occur and no one’s ’Rights’ are violated, contributes nothing toward advancing equality, social justice, multiculturalism, multigenderism or any other like or similar critically-important social issue…and therefore cannot be regarded as any less than a non-“progressive” and wholly unconscionable activity.
Finally, such acts are unarguably contributing factors to climate change, which settled science has now determined will invariably result in an irreparable tear in the fabric of the Space/Time Continuum.
Thank you for your consideration in these timely and pressing matters,
( editor needed, inquire within )
Funny how times change – when I was in high school (’61- ’65), I was on the rifle team – indoor range, Winchester 52D rifles. In college, (65-69) it was the Army rifle team/same rifles. Now I look at the rifles they are using, and it is amazing how much they have evolved technically. You still have to control your breathing and trigger, though.
I bought my first Ruger 10/22 via mail order in 1967 – shipped to me at my dorm room. Used to carry it across campus on a sling to go plinking in the woods around the campus. No one ever fainted or screamed when I walked by, and I never killed anyone with it. Forty plus years of fighting the anti-gun laws (’68 GCA), propaganda and politicians, and stories like this are really heartening. Never give up, and never take your liberty for granted.
I would like to convince more people to support gun rights through logical argument than love of shooting, as we want people who don’t care much about shooting to support the right. That said, shooting can really attract a lot of people. Here is what happened to a Scottish girl who visited America. Watch at .45:
“At first, Ng’s parents asked: ‘Are you going to get shot? Is some crazy guy going to shoot you? Are you going to get in trouble with the state for shooting guns?’”
This is the type of household our best and brightest are growing up in? Seriously?
There’s a great divide in the world and within this country between smart people and stupid people. The stupid people always outnumbered us, but now their numerical advantage is growing. I read in a bulletin a few years ago that if a highly intelligent couple hasn’t had three children by the time they’re twenty-seven, then it’s over. They’ve already forfeited their opportunity to counterbalance the rise of the idiot hordes this century.
That’s disappointing enough in itself, more so in that I didn’t meet the deadline, but still more so in that I’m not even sure that intelligence is enough. But for the happenstance of these kids’ involvement in these tremendously valuable shooting sports, these high I.Q. kids would have been just as stupid and easily (mis)led about firearms as anyone else.
Call it street smarts, common sense, wisdom, or whatever, there’s something else out there, or rather something else in there, in their heads, that makes the difference. It has nothing to do with SATs or prestigious degrees, either. Maybe it’s as simple as exposure to firearms, whether through hunting, plinking, clubs, or organized competition at whatever level.
If you can, please do try to help out any of these organizations that get young people involved in shooting. Other options include 4H Shoooting and the U.S. Olympic Team. (The latter even gives you return address labels and a t-shirt, so cut ’em a check!)