My choice

Lissa posted a new shooter report, from the new shooter's perspective. It's well worth a read, but what really struck me was this, about how a Super Size Cranium Liberal views someone who actually wants to shoot:

To those who grew up in a liberal family, guns are dangerous weapons that cause untold injuries and death every year, that bring blood and destruction, and that are only loved by odd folk at best, and ignorant rednecks at worst.

JD comments on the typical Super Size Cranium Liberal reaction to someone wanting to go shooting:

They will ask “ Why would you want to learn that?” and “What good is it? You want to hurt someone?”

Man, oh man, how to answer? The snarky reply is "Hurt who?" The more thoughtful reply is to echo Col. Jeff Cooper, who when told that violence only begets violence replied "I certainly hope so. Anyone who would try to inflict violence on me or my family will receive quite a lot more violence than he will have stomach for."

That's my Y chromosome talking there. And the blogshoot was admittedly over-represented by the Y-chromosome crowd.

Women have more reason to learn to shoot. Not only are they often targets for scumbag predators, but they tend to be at a physical disadvantage. Lissa continues about shooter's attitudes:

In their minds, Sarah Brady has made it a life crusade to deprive them and others of their Constitutional rights — a right that, for a young woman like myself, could quite possibly make the difference between life and death during an assault by a large man — and freely distorts facts to do so.

She's not the only one. Breda writes of a woman who died after a particularly savage attack:

Now for the rest of my days, in moments of self-doubt, moments where I say to myself, "You're being paranoid" I will remember that bright smile, stolen forever - and I will go to the range and practice until the calm finds me.

Teach the women you love how to shoot. Today.

Zendo Deb has a whole library of stories about people who choose to fight, and perhaps live:

How is a petite woman supposed to defend herself against 2 armed home invaders?

OCALA - A petite woman, firing a .357-caliber Magnum handgun until it was empty, chased two intruders from her home ... on Wednesday morning.

Oh, and her 11-year-old daughter was home at the time.

The goblins attacked her boyfriend; she ran for a handgun.

I think that there's a common thread, even for the men-folk shooters. Back to JD's hypothetical question: Do you want to hurt someone?

Of course not. But you don't always get a choice that you like. Until, as Col. Cooper puts it, you "see the elephant", you don't know how you will react, but it's my choice. Mine. Not Sarah Brady's, not Gov. Patrick's. My choice.

I'd like to think that if it ever were to happen, I'd react like Tam describes:

I ain't goin' out like that. Whether it's some Columbine wannabe who's heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won't arrive in time.

My choice.

There's the common thread among shooters, liberal and conservative. I ain't goin' out like that. Of course we hope it never happens, but my choice.

That's why we take new folks to the range, to learn how to shoot. Because then it's their choice. And that's why this is why we resent the Brady campaign, and others cut from the same cloth, who want to take away that choice. Lissa continues:

Yet if the folks from yesterday met her, I bet they would be polite and courteous, even as they informed her of her numerous mistakes and incorrect information. And then they would offer to take her shooting.

Sure would. And #2 son would teach her the 4 rules. He's an expert now.