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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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TIME MAGAZINE GOES TO THE SHOOTING RANGE…..

At least, a reporter does…..and for a Time (Pacific edition) reporter to write the following seems out of the ordinary to me:

Guns for me equaled danger and crime. Even after I started shooting, I had a lingering sense that the rifle or pistol, even the brass rounds I was pressing into its magazine, might explode at any moment. I still handle guns with caution—the first rule of firearms safety is to treat every gun as if it’s loaded. But I now know that to call them evil, as Australian Prime Minister John Howard recently did, is a statement of good-hearted ignorance.

Guns aren’t moral agents, they’re machines—elegant, superbly efficient, made to fit the human hand.

Hey, wait a minute!! Isn’t that the NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION’S position on guns? In Time magazine!? You see why it caught my attention…...

Anyhow, here’s another quote:

My club, Sydney’s Royal Australian Naval Reserve Rifle Club, has its origins in the military. Most of the 170 members are civilians, but every Saturday, builders, bankers, surgeons, ex-servicemen, chiropractors, chefs and electricians—men and women, from teenagers to 80-year-olds—compete in honor of some milestone in military history: last week it was the German surrender in 1945. Among those waiting to shoot or scoring at the targets, you’ll hear talk about how 19th-century Zulus thought bullets flew like spears and so aimed their rifles too high, why creeping artillery barrages didn’t work in the First World War, whether it was Kokoda or the Battle of the Coral Sea that saved Australia from the Japanese. Not all the members think about this stuff. But it’s hard to shoot, even at a cartoon, and not be reminded of what you owe all the people who’ve served as targets on your behalf.

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/19 at 03:54 PM

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