As I’ve started to get more involved in shooting sports over the last couple years, I’ve been thinking about why people view it any differently than golf. Whether you go to a gun range or a country club, you’ll be surrounded by retirees joking around and having fun. It’s a very similar environment. Somebody could use either a golf club or a gun to kill you, but most people don’t have an irrational fear of golf clubs. Why?
One theory is that people generally only see guns in the news or a movie. That image is usually showing something that is illegal. Unfortunately, that represents the vast minority of gun use in the world. Just about every round fired through a gun has a happy sport shooter behind it. While it’s always good to have a healthy respect for any device that can injure you if used improperly, there’s no reason why a gun should be immediately correlated with violence.
I don’t know if that will ever change, but if you’re interested in seeing the most common use of guns, I’d be more than happy to take you along to a range where you will see normal humans enjoying a fun sport. Even if you decide it’s not a sport you enjoy, at least you’ll have one other picture that might pop into your head when you hear about a gun.