During Saturday’s festivities, Bill Brassard talked about what the National Shooting Sports Foundation does. Among its many functions, the NSSF is active in getting people into the shooting sports. This is crucially important, as the political power of the gun rights movement is dependent on a populace that is not ignorant of firearms. England’s gun control experience is a history of making gun ownership more and more rare by making legal acquisition and possession progressively more difficult and expensive until only a tiny percentage of the population there has actually seen a firearm “in the wild” as it were, much less fired one.
Familiarity is what we have to preserve. As Teresa Nielsen Hayden once put it so brilliantly:
Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.
Amen.
A lot of us in the gunblogging community are in on this idea. Shortly after I started TSM I put up the invitation at the top of the sidebar. I wasn’t the first, but I’m far from the last. A couple of years ago, Mulligan from Do Over set up a web page (also linked at the bottom of my offer) where he lists at present about sixty people around the country (and one in Canada) most of whom make essentially the same offer I do: we’ll provide the range fees, targets, protective gear, firearms, ammunition, and instruction. All you have to do is show up.
We need to add to this list. Will you help?