Grappling with Guns

Thank you to those who have recently left posts. I appreciate your feedback. It’s pushing me to think harder about these issues.

One of my friend’s professors at the local community college recently said he likes to think about rights in a hierarchy. He said, “I like to ask myself, ‘is my right to carry a gun greater than someone else’s right to life?” Of course, his answer is “no,” but this question is a logical fallacy, and it points out one of the key problems with today’s debate over gun rights. To show the logical fallacy one must simply ask the question of automobiles. “Is my right to move freely about the country greater than my potential vehicular- accident victim’s right to life?” Statistically many more people in the United States die by car accident than by any other means, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics http://www.bts.gov/publications/pocket_guide_to_transportation/2007/pdf/entire.pdf
in 2004 there were 40,342 deaths in passenger cars, light trucks, pedestrians struck by vehicles, and motorcyclists. This is excluding large trucks and bicyclists struck by vehicles. Also in 2004, according to statistics from the Brady Campaign website http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/factsheets/pdf/firearm_facts.pdf
29,569 deaths were caused by firearms. According to the FBI website http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/murder.html there were 16,137 murders investigated by police in 2004. The Brady statistics state that 16,750 of the 2004 shooting deaths were due to murder.

Of course, these statistics don’t add up. We can assume that FBI figures are underreporting, as they only draw from police investigations rather than including information from coroner’s reports or court proceedings and that Brady Bill supporters are over reporting. However, we can clearly see that the greatest danger: 40,342 accidental deaths due to driver error is the greatest problem we face today! We must act now to limit the use of, or outright illegalize, automobiles in order to maintain a safe and just nation!

It’s a nice joke, but that’s not actually my point. When we look at the “Is my right to drive an automobile greater than someone else’s right to life” question, we can see it is just as false a statement as the question posed about guns. There isn’t a right to drive. There is only license to drive. Nowhere in the constitution is there a “right to own or operate a motor vehicle.” There is a right to keep and bear arms recorded in the constitution. There is no recorded right to self-defense in the constitution, although there is a history of laws that imply this right in all countries. Just like we apply for license to drive we also apply for license to carry a concealed firearm (the keep and ‘bear arms’ part of the second amendment). This may also be in keeping with the ‘well regulated’ part of the second amendment.

My feeling is that rights are in some ways scalable dependent upon the context. If someone has another pinned to the ground and is stabbing the person with a knife, I believe the victim’s right to defend him or herself during the attack with the best tools possible absolutely trumps any rights the attacker might have. I wish I were in my friend’s class because, if we are going to trade in logical fallacies the question I might ask, “is an attacker’s right to take my life greater than my right to defend it with the best tools available?” seems to me to be much more to the point, than the question “is my right to carry a gun greater than another’s right to life?”

Maintaining our rights, whether to freely move about the country using modern technology or to defend ourselves with the best tools possible, requires that we allow for some risk in our society. Clearly, from my perspective, our right to life is greater than an attacker’s right to take it from us, but what is our right to protect ourselves?

CNN published an interesting article on Virginia's reporting guidelines to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for mental illness: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/25/guns.mentallyill/index.html

One of the tenants of liberalism is that all things are debatable. There are always shades of grey that help to complicate issues, creating innumerable arguments and counter-arguments. I want to indulge in an exploration of one of these complicated issues relating to gun rights.

An interesting issue that I've been grappling with over the past several weeks and months is the relationship of the right to self-defense (I'm going to write based on the assumption that we have the right to self defense, regardless of what the UN says) and mental illness. Mental illness is one instance (is it the only instance?) where we can block a person from buying a firearm through federally licensed firearms dealers in the United States prior to the person perpetrating harm.

According to the World Health Organization, mental illness attacks men and women equally, but women are more likely to seek treatment than men, and are therefore more likely to be added to the national database blocking them from purchasing a firearm.

World Health Organization copywriters state:

"Depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms and high rates of comorbidity are significantly related to interconnected and co occurrent risk factors such as gender based roles, stressors and negative life experiences and events.

"Gender specific risk factors for common mental disorders that disproportionately affect women include gender based violence, socioeconomic disadvantage, low income and income inequality, low or subordinate social status and rank and unremitting responsibility for the care of others.

"The high prevalence of sexual violence to which women are exposed and the correspondingly high rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following such violence, renders women the largest single group of people affected by this disorder."
http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/genderwomen/en/

In essence, women are more likely to be abused physically, resulting in PTSD, depression and other mental disorders. When these women seek treatment by mental health professionals for their reaction to harm from abuse they may be blocked from purchasing firearms that could be used to defend themselves against future attacks, resulting in further abuse.

I must preface this by saying I am not a lawyer, and the following analysis is from my basic understanding of the laws in my state and should not be taken as legal advice. In my understanding, our laws allow for the use of deadly force against greater force or deadly force- this could be a man defending himself with a gun against an assailant with a pipe, a knife, a gun or another type of deadly weapon, a man defending himself against an attack by a group of people who can easily overpower him, or a woman defending herself against a male attacker (here we assume that men have greater strength than women).

If acts of violence often result in psychological trauma that can cause a person to lose their right to bear arms, are our laws creating a sub-class of disarmed victims ready for revictimization? Isn’t empowerment a means to healing? Maybe a liberal response to victimization could include training in self-defense and responsible use of force as a means to head off disempowerment related mental illness.

Do Less Lethal options fill the gap in the right to bear arms?

As a person who works close to the design field, I'm always interested in innovation, broad thinking and good design. I'm interested in the products linked at the end of this post.

The other day I wrote about people with mental illness. I believe that we have to be careful in limiting the right to bear arms to only limit those who pose a danger to others or who have caused harm (felonious assault, stalking, etc.), but I believe everyone has the right to defend themselves in some way against deadly attack. The questions for me are, "will innovation provide products that people can use skillfully and successfully to defend themselves against attack?" and "how do we regulate these products?" and "where does de-escalation fit into the mix in terms of use of less-lethal defense?"

I'll let y'all think about that. For now I'll provide the links:

Civilian version

Slightly cooler-looking police version

URL for more info
http://www.life-act.com/

No fancy photo for this link - just an article about a shotgun deployed Taser round that thumps like a beanbag round and stuns like a Taser
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002174.html

Taser has two cool new designs

"The Epilady" - it's stunning! And it leaves your legs silky and smooth.

Order yours today!

http://www.jmcostumers.com/html/epilady.html

"The Bulldog" - is that a roll of quarters in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
http://www2.taser.com/Pages/default.aspx

And for the thinkers out there - here's another blog to ponder
http://blog.jameshom.com/archives/000211.html

I read this interesting article in the Portland Tribune. It has some interesting statistics and, interestingly notices the trend that women, though fewer women than men apply, seek out CCL's at a younger age than men.

I've been looking into liberal gun-rights websites, and I've found several. Here are three that really interest me.

http://www.pinkpistols.org/

This is a group of gay gun-owners who apply for concealed-carry permits due to the ongoing threat of gay bashing.

http://www.progunprogressive.com/

Check out the pro gun progressive - good ideas and smart analysis of the issues.

http://www.armedliberal.com/

Very smart, thoughtful and insightful posts make the armed liberal one to watch!

Dad, my brother, and I were in Dad’s Duster driving out to the marsh in the middle of the Iowa farmland. The marsh had been preserved through the effort of groups like Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy, groups that were willing to negotiate with government and farmers to provide sanctuary for animals.

Dad had picked my brother and I up at the regular time on Sunday afternoon, and on this particular week he chose where we would go.

Farmers don't like wet depressions in the land. It provides a place for water to run, and that means erosion. It can also act as a filter, showing the kind of damage farm chemicals can do to the earth and the plants, animals, and ultimately, people.
My father loved the marsh - loved listening to the crickets and the sound of the wind sweeping through the grasses. My brother and I preferred going to the air-conditioned mall rather than walking the barbed wire perimeter of the marsh with the sun beating down on our straw hats in the muggy Iowa heat, but on this day I was skimming a hunting magazine I had purchased at the Waldenbooks in the aforementioned mall and debating the merits of hunting as a sport with my father.

"I think a lot of men take up hunting or fishing because they like to be out in nature, but they can't justify being there. They feel like they have to be doing something," my dad said.

I was in the middle of a tirade of questions. Before, when I was obsessed with motorcycles, the questions had been on the order of:

"Dad, would you ever buy a motorcycle?"

"Well, if I lived alone and wanted to travel and a motorcycle burned less fuel than a car."
"What kind would you get?"

"Probably one of the smaller road bikes."

"Like a Harley?"

"Probably not a Harley."

"What kind?"

"Maybe a Honda."

"A stunt motorcycle?"

"Probably not a stunt motorcycle or racing motorcycle."

"Why not?"

"I would want something that would be safe. Something that would get me to where I want to go. Something that’s environmentally sound."

We were talking around two different issues. My father was talking about wishing he were free. Wishing he could reject God and Family for the open road. He was already lonely. I, on the other hand, was talking about my grand child-like Obsession with whatever interested me the most at the time. Like I said, that day we were in the Duster and I was obsessing about hunting.

The magazine straddled my lap, an article about hunting pistols framed a photo of a .357 magnum with a scope mounted on top.

As a kid I had mixed feelings about scopes. I had mixed feelings about anything that might potentially impede proof of one's actual skill.

"A hit should be a hit with the naked eye," I thought, "That was the sportsman's way."
My dad was into birding and photography. He liked stalking things as much as the next guy, but his shot took only a moment of an animal's life, not the whole thing.

"But you eat meat," I said, flipping the pages of my magazine.

"Yes, but society is set up so I don't need to kill it myself," he said.

"But if you had to, would you hunt with a bow or a gun?"

"I would hunt with whichever allowed the animal to suffer the least."

Thinking and diversity of thought make the liberal mindset what it is. This is different than the conservative perspective wherein things are right because "it's what is right," or because it's what is traditional or what has always been done. Liberals allow for change, so today's ideas may or may not relate to yesterday's. This is why many liberals will say that the second amendment doesn't mean citizens have the inherent right to own firearms "because militias no longer make sense" while many conservatives indicate, "It's a right, it's always been a right, so it is my right." It's also why liberals often will look to international trends rather than the constitution alone.

So, what makes a gun-rights liberal? The same components that make an anti-gun liberal can make a pro-gun liberal. Those components include: critical thinking, knowledge, and careful thought.

For me, this critical thought appeared at several times in several capacities. As a teen I was in the Police Explorers and I wanted to be a cop to help others and to stop crimes. When I was sixteen a friend of mine was coerced by a parent into shooting someone they lived with. Thankfully, the victim lived, but I was left in confusion. How could someone who seemed more mature than the other students be coerced into that? If this person was coerced, could I not be coerced?

As a teen I walked away from shooting, a sport that I loved, locked up the .22 and shotgun my mother bought to teach me to shoot, and didn't think about guns again until I was in my 30's.

In 2002 I decided I needed to address that question in more detail. Could I be coerced into harming another person? I went to an indoor rental range to shoot so I could experience what I grew up loving once again.

I walked away from that experience with a few observations.

1. I'm very different than a person who would use a weapon to attack another
2. My friend was set up to be manipulated by others through bad parenting
3. I can see crime as a social response to social harms that can be treated on the larger level through social programs
4. In the moment of an actual conflict, when someone is attacking my family, or me social programs won't help
5. The realities of physical conflict are harsh
6. Clear self-defense laws must be maintained to allow citizens to use a legitimate escalation of force guideline and the best defense weapons to protect themselves
7. Firearms, specifically handguns, are the best defensive choice for many people against attackers with greater numbers, greater mass, force, or training

Furthermore, these guidelines extend to international human rights issues that I am deeply concerned about as a liberal. In countries like Darfur gun "control" laws have been used to disarm a population so that those in power can kill them without risk of harm to themselves. A liberal response should include arming and training victim populations in defensive techniques.

To promote gun rights and gun ownership in the liberal population, our arguments must take on the critical thinking, research and informed debate that engages the liberal mind.

A trend in policing and in business, evidence-based decision making is a process whereby research is used to help people construct the best policies, best organizations and the best practices to solve the actual problem one has rather than making reactive decisions to the problem one thinks one has.

When it comes to gun issues, time and time again I see people who purport to be liberals rushing to legislate and restrict gun ownership without trying to find and assess what is going on. A big one is trying to oppose concealed carry licensing, when in fact those who have licenses are the least likely to commit gun crimes.
http://www.lesjones.com/posts/004329.shtml

Maybe someday we can make evidence-based decision making a part of politics and media as well.

We were waiting for the video of the Veishea riots to start, giddy with anticipation. It is a tableau worth remembering: twelve teens around a table in powder blue shirts with silver police badges, seven of them with flashlights strapped to their belts. All want to be heroes.

Officer Ling leaned against the wall casually aiming a remote control at the TV he had rolled into the room on a cart. Ling was in his early 40's. He was a presence in a room like a linebacker: quiet and slow, but ready and capable of pushing you down and cuffing you in one smooth, elegant gesture. For him the video wasn't something in the future to anticipate, but something from the past on which to reflect. He had been there next to squad car 401, the car now in the shop getting a new hood and window, the car with the three bricks in the front seat and the ten thousand shards glistening in the light from the street lamps and the light from flames two blocks away at the middle of the crowd.

I had seen Officer Ling in a lot of situations. I had seen him raid a warehouse with four other officers to apprehend a man who had broken in. The man had been spotted harvesting marijuana in the field behind the building and had forced his way into the building to hide. I had seen Ling at the ready, tailing two guys who had walked out of a whorehouse, watching for any reason to pull them over. I had also seen him as a support to myself after The Shooting. I had seen Ling doing construction work on the weekend because policing didn't bring in enough money to make ends meet. And I saw him on that day in jeans and a grey t-shirt, relaxing into the wall, aiming the remote at the TV, ready to reflect on the past while we, the Ames Police Explorers, waited in anticipation for our future.

The riot had started, not as a riot, but as a street party on frat row. Veishea, the annual celebration of Iowa State University's various schools and departments started with a parade and ended with several stomachs pumped at Mercy Medical.

That year the warmth of the evening and the number of partygoers drove keg stands from the third-floor fire escape to the sidewalk, and party goers from the yards and porches into the road.

At some point mob mentality took over. Partygoers broke into neighboring homes, stealing furniture and heaping it into a bonfire in the center of the four packed blocks.
A state of emergency was declared and the police and a fire engine pressed their way toward the flames under a hail of bricks, garbage and bottles.

I scooted another inch forward in my chair and Officer Ling pressed play.

I started reading Samuel Walker's Sense and Nonsense about Crime and Drugs last night. It's the kind of book that should be required reading. Walker is a proponent of evidence-based policy making (p. xxiii), a concept I've brought up on my blog before. The book points to a number of propositions about crime that is surprising to both liberals and conservatives alike.

The evidence-based approach requires the existence of significant evidence that a policy practice actually says it does what it says it does. Policies are tested with empirical evidence through identifying a treatment group that receives a 'new' response to their crime (therapy, community based models, boot camps, etc.) and a control group that goes through the in-place response to crime. The treatment group must show a significant change in recidivism or other measures to indicate that the policy is sound. If measurements indicate that the policy may be successful, the practice must be tested in other communities to verify that it is replicable. Only then would a practice be used as a replacement for current procedure. (See Standards of Evidence-Based Crime Policy p. 10-11).

Walker primarily addresses violent crime and comes to some conclusions that may be startling to liberals and conservatives alike when it comes to firearms and violent crime.

Proposition 33. "Attempts to ban handguns, or certain kinds of guns, or bullets, are not likely to reduce serious crime."

Proposition 34. "Attempts to deny ownership of handguns to certain categories of "bad" people are not likely to reduce serious crime."

Proposition 35. "Focused, proactive enforcement strategies may be effective in reducing gun-related crime in targeted areas."

Proposition 36. "Right-to-carry laws will not reduce crime."

So, why are people still latching onto Brady-bill style programs to reduce gun ownership when such programs don't work to reduce crime, and if right-to-carry laws don't reduce crime what do they do for our society?

More to come...

Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means
William T. Vollmann
ISBN: 0060548193

In most circumstances, it would seem a pessimistic truism to say that no matter what the situation, abusers will find a way to abuse. However, William T. Vollmann, in his book, Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means, provides strong evidence that this may be the case. With deep doubt in all expressions of utopianism, and a keen eye for political and historical artifice, Vollmann points toward the idea that violence is, in most cases, only acceptable when it is used to stop imminent violence against oneself or another. Again and again Vollmann shows how the threat of “imminent violence” has been stretched by various groups around the world and across time to justify violence against others; workers against peasants in Communist Russia, Slaveholders against slaves in ancient Rome, Serbs and Croats against one another in Bosnia/Herzegovina, and cyclical gang and police violence in Jamaica, among others. The largest justification heard again and again throughout the book runs along the lines, “he threatened me, so I hit him back first.”

Vollmann’s book is an abridgement of seven volumes that make up the original edition. A key feature of the book is his moral calculus. Many philosophers have constructed a moral calculus to boil down to a simple set of phrases the moral meaning of the totality of actions and statements by a given person or culture. Almost all cultures and people never attune their lives to their ideals, or they have conflicting ideals, or they lie about their statements to make their behaviors look better, or they just don’t care. This is where Vollmann gets to have a particular form of horrific philosophical fun. Millions have died under the moral constructs of French revolutionaries, Stalinists, and the like, but at the same time, when the justifications for such behavior are boiled down into a calculus, they seem like the statements of a preschool child who wants to make a game and change the rules until he or she wins.

His theme is a powerful one, but there are some statements that may make the reader cringe. Vollmann tends to take on the role, not only of journalist, but also moral adjudicator in the book.

Early on, Vollman tackles the sensitive issue of rape. He describes hearing about a particular incident from both sides. “To the woman, at least, it was rape,” he writes, “He had grabbed her breasts. He had started to do other things, but her entreaties finally stopped him.” (37) Describing the perpetrator, Vollman writes, ‘A rough fellow from a rough town, he was accustomed to casually aggressive methods of courtship.” (37) The man, he says, would have been taken aback at the accusation. Vollmann then decides that, “given the norms of the area this was not attempted rape – merely insensitivity carried almost to brutality.” (38) To contrast this scenario, he juxtaposes it with a situation in a Muslim country where in a newspaper he read police were looking for a man who groped a woman’s breasts and kissed her mouth. “Call it rape,” he writes. (38) In the second scenario he understands, based again on “the norms of the area,” that the woman is justified in feeling violated. He points out that the second woman, because of the tradition of wearing a veil over her face, would have felt extremely violated from the kiss, much less the grope.

In the former he discredits the feeling of violation and in the second, he projects the feeling of violation onto the victim. What he misses is that rape is a legal definition. What he means when he says rape is, “this woman is legitimate in feeling violated.”

The behavior of both men is identical. The former man, the one readers may assume lives in the United States (since the author is from the US, and no location is specified), depending on what jurisdiction he is in, can be charged with assault, just as the man in the Muslim country can. Both are perpetrators of illegal activity. Vollmann is willing to justify the former act, performed by a man he calls a friend, and vilify the Muslim. Why not vilify both? If the woman feels violated, and the activity is illegal, the time is not right for moral jockeying. Mistreatment of this legal term tells us a lot about the author and casts doubt on his ability to asses difficult material.

A question he might want to pursue is, “why will Americans write off behavior that leaves American women violated, when some cultures that many Americans feel oppress women won’t?” I don’t say this facetiously. I believe that Vollmann would be interested in this line of questioning. There are moments in the book where the author shows great concern for women and their losses in war.

It seems that in certain instances, though, Vollman doesn’t trust us to make our own decision based on the information at hand. I would have trusted him more had he said, “here’s the information, here are some of the ways other’s have thought about these issues, now you decide.” Readers will make our own decision based on the information whether the author invites us to or not. By imposing his moral judgment in this and other instances, he runs the risk that we the readers will disagree, and in disagreeing find fault, not in his research or his writing, but, more importantly, in his judgment. Unfortunately, it is unclear when the author intends for us to perceive his mistake for our own benefit, as a whacko author like Denis Johnson might, and when his own position gets in his way.

This being said, the book is invaluable in teaching, discussing, or thinking about social and cultural power structures. The assessment of historical applications of power based on definitions of self-preservation is powerful. The analysis of radical positions on violence, from Ghandhian nonviolence, to Anarchist random violence, to Stalanist distortion of class as justification for his own oppressive acts, are clear and give the reader a lot to chew on.

The information serves to support many disciplines. For example, art has struggled with its relationship to power for centuries. Artists have struggled as to whether their work should be purely aesthetic, or whether it should serve to promote an identity, a politic, or one of many conceptions of reality. Even when art seems to be free and representing only itself, it simultaneously fights vehemently for itself. Artists have been locked up, deported and killed for their artistic expressions from many totalitarian countries. Each artist has taken a position to defense similar to those explored in this book. All of the arguments in this book have been expressed through verbal, literary, and pictorial means.

Rising Up and Rising Down has similar application within all of the humanities. It gets at fundamental questions like, “are there foundational concepts underlying [this] position?” and, “what are the implications of holding a particular position – are the outcomes always the same?” It asks us to consider carefully before staking a claim or taking action, especially violent action, based upon a philosophical position.

Check this article about the current political debate. I think it expresses something powerful about what is happening today. Part of the article talks about opinions on gun ownership. I think it gives us a window into how we can communicate for change in perceptions of guns and gun ownership.

http://bostonreview.net/BR31.2/gastilkahanbraman.html

One of the things I keep returning to in this blog is the idea that liberals and conservatives have different ways of thinking about rights, and thus need different sets of arguments or processes to help them understand gun rights. Today I want to focus on deductive and inductive arguments in relation to gun rights.

In a deductive argument, should the premises be true the conclusion is guaranteed to be correct. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)This could be a statement such as, “If I have the right to life, and owning a gun protects my right, then I have the right to own a gun.” This is a more conservative approach to gun rights – we could insert the constitution, self-defense, tradition, or a host of other themes into this argument structure. The bottom line is that a more conservative approach to gun rights often begins with a deductive argument. These things are fixed and correct, and therefore they lead to this right. End of story.

In an inductive argument “the premises provide reasons supporting the probable truth of the conclusion.” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) The outcome of the process is one in which the outcome is likely to be true. “I am safe with firearms and my friends are safe with firearms, therefore it is likely that people similar to us will be safe with firearms.” Liberals often need to build from direct experience to build toward an argument that people should have a general right to ownership.

When it comes to violence, the argument structures may be reversed. Liberals will often begin with deductive arguments. “Violence is bad, guns are designed for violence, therefore guns are bad.”

In terms of violence, conservatives will build an argument based on what types of people are using force. “If people have the right to justifiable use of violence to defend their life against attack and I am under attack then I may use justifiable violence to defend my life.”

I am guessing that underlying these arguments are access to information. It may be true that to get to the point where we believe deductive arguments about gun rights we are basing it on years of informal inductive experience. Maybe when a gun owner was a child she or he experienced very positive inductive reinforcement. “My father taught me how to shoot and now I am teaching you to shoot, therefore it is likely you will want to pass this to your children.” The safety argument fits in with this as well. “If you can learn to respect this very clearly dangerous tool you can extrapolate this knowledge into general responsibility around dangerous things.”

Both of the above examples are inductive in nature, beginning with specific situations and leading to general principles, and both are likely to be a part of experiences from a more traditional or conservative worldview.

My guess is that most liberals who are wholly opposed to guns and gun ownership have had little or no experience with guns and have no access to inductive information that might lead to later deductive arguments.

I, for example, believe that individuals have the right to self defense against deadly threat, so I think the international community’s response is a bit backwards in disarming victim populations then pleading with perpetrators to stop their genocidal attacks. I would make the deductive argument, “Potential victims have the right to arm themselves for the purpose of defense against perpetrators, and we have the opportunity to arm genocide victims for the purpose of self-defense, therefore we should arm potential victims for the purpose of self-defense.” (See Dave Copel’s article at http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Foreign/genocide.pdf for a thorough discussion.)

When I see gun owners offering to take non-gun owners who meet the legal requirements of gun ownership to the range to learn to shoot, (as the Armed Canadian offered) I see a way forward. We are able to give people valid, safe inductive experiences that lead them toward an understanding of their rights. I propose that we soften the overall deductive rhetoric of gun rights and focus more on inductive arguments, showing how positive experiences with firearms lead to greater things and better understanding of our world.

A couple of bloggers have been posting images from the library of congress archives of women's high-school rifle teams from California schools of yesteryear. Too bad we can't bring this back - or can we?

1986

The Isaac Walton League on the outskirts of town was situated in a small valley on the Iowa landscape. Part of the Oregon Trail passed through the land and could still be seen where thousands of wagons had left ruts in the soil. The valley was small, maybe three hundred yards long and very steep on both sides. Hundreds of years ago Native Americans drove buffalo into the valley. The animals would charge down one side, then due to their weight be unable to use their velocity to propel themselves up the opposite embankment, allowing the Indians to shoot them from above.

When I was a freshman in high school, my science class went on a field trip to see the ruts left on the Oregon Trail and the archaeological dig the state university maintained for its students in the valley.

Had the land cooperated, the whole area would have been tilled under for farmland, but any tractor would have tipped over on the slope of the valley and it was far too large to be filled in.

To the South, the valley opened and flattened onto the plain of the South Skunk river basin. The hills on this end of the valley were too shallow to slow down the buffalo. There were no arrowheads, no stone knives lost while taking hides to be tanned for blankets or tee pees.

The land had no archaeological value, and the farmers had passed it over as well. In Iowa, a hill is too much hassle to deal with. Even disking the soil, a way of breaking the prairie with less erosion than tilling, leaves a bald fallow mound after a couple of years. This apologetic dip in the land made for a perfect shooting range.

On weekends my mother would take me out to shoot. She would sit on a bench in the shade and read books by John Michael Talbot and other Christian writers - histories of the Benedictines and books on faith, prayer and leading a religious life. Mom didn’t have the same aversion to guns that my dad had, and after the divorce, allowing me to maintain and shoot the rifle was one way of letting go of the marriage.

I would take a few paper targets, pin them to the wooden frames twenty-five yards out, load seven rounds into my clip, and slide the bolt into place. I would align the sights and steady my body for the shot.

Very quickly, I learned that shooting targets has nothing in common with the fast action shooting on TV. Shooting targets is meditative, calm and internally quiet. Shooting targets is about breath. Shooting targets is about patience. Shooting targets is about you, the shooter.

Smith and Wesson posted a new commercial on their website for their M&P line. They are maintaining a fairly conservative voice in the commercial focusing on rights, but interestingly they address both traditionally "liberal" rights such as the right to free assembly, and traditionally "conservative" rights such as the right to bear arms. Take a look and see what you think.

http://www.smith-wesson.com/wcsstore/SmWesson/upload/popups/mp/commercial.html