Why I Shoot

Roberta asks:

Why do you shoot? Why do you carry, if you carry at all?

I shoot because I've always shot. I've been around a lot of guns all my life. They were never in a gun safe, they were in the closets of my dad/uncles/cousins and you didn't go close to them without permission. You also didn't get one out just to "fondle" it. You got it out to clean it, get a lesson on how it works, or, if you were lucky, get a story. Maybe the story of a hunt, maybe a story of how that P-38 came back with him from Germany or how the Arisaka came back from the Pacific theater (those were usually vague).

I shoot now to pass that legacy on to my son. I also shoot because it's fun. I'm not a huge tech-geek when it comes to guns. I care less about MOA, FPS and all those other terms out there. I don't think a small difference in the caliber of a weapon will make that much of a difference in real life. No bad guy is going to say "Oh, you're shooting a .38 revolver, I'm not scared of you. Now, if that were a .40 caliber Glock, I'd be scared."

Why do I carry? For protection of course. There are plenty of animals out there that can do harm to me & mine. Two and four legged varieties. I don't hope for a confrontation, but I know it can happen, and being prepared is better than being unprepared.

Finally, here's an answer to a question not asked: Why do I collect? I blame the WW II veterans in my family for that. Just the idea of them possessing a weapon used against them in a time of war fascinates me to no end.

I wish I could have brought something back form Desert Storm, but a SCUD was too big to hide in the tool truck. Besides, they were all in little pieces by the time they got to my end of things.

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