December 16, 2013

• A Year After Sandy Hook

  We just marked the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook school mass shooting. This, of course, provides yet another opportunity for the press to excite the public about the evils of gun ownership and the ability of people to buy and keep large quantities of ammunition around their homes.

  I have to say that these press articles and newscasts almost always annoy me because the individuals putting them together usually don't know what they are talking about. I'm sure I could write quite a few posts on this, but today I will focus only on one aspect: the quantity of ammunition that has reporters writing headlines like these:

• * Man arrested for drunk and disorderly. He was found to have more than 100 rounds of ammunition in his home.
• * Mr. Jones, charged in a domestic dispute, was found to have 1000 rounds of ammunitions in his possession.
• * 4000 bullets were found in the basement of Mr. Smith, who was arrested on a DUI charge.

And on it goes. You would think that all these people were stockpiling ammunition for a new revolution, or when the zombies attack their neighborhoods, or they were getting ready to attack the local shopping mall. I can assure you that, while some of the radical nuts may indeed be doing that, they are few in number, and the average citizen is not doing that. Yet these nameless citizens, by implication, are lumped in with the entire group being roundly condemned for having ammunition in their homes.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I am one of those condemned. I've never been in any kind of trouble; I'm not waiting for a new civil war; and I'm not mentally off the tracks. But I do have several guns and -- dare I say it -- as I write this, I have 2000 rounds of ammunition at home. That's somewhat less that the 5000 rounds I used to keep. Why do I have all those bullets you ask?

Simple! I am a former competition shooter. And while I no longer shoot competitively, I still enjoy getting out on the range and sending some lead downrange from time to time, just to maintain my skill. A painter must paint, a violinist must play, a chess player must play, and a shooter must shoot. All of these activities require hand and eye coordination, and the ability to concentrate and focus. If practitioners of these activities do not practice, all will lose their skill.

In the case of a shooter, practice requires bullets -- lots of them. If I can buy them 1000 at a time, instead of 20 or 50 at a time, I may save anywhere from $20 to $100 with each purchase, depending on type of ammunition I'm using. When I was competing, I was shooting 30,000 rounds a year just for practice. Today's competition shooters may shoot 100,000 rounds a year in practice. So bulk buys add up to a significant dollar savings over a 12 month period. Even more over a five year period.

Today I shoot about 5000 rounds a year just going to the range once a week. So having 2000 rounds at home isn't a big deal. But I expect that when I die, some pseudo-reporter will find some way to get my neighbors all excited with a tale of how a whole cache of ammunition was found in my home, thereby making me out to be the monster next door. How lucky my neighbors are that I passed away before I ran amuck and killed them all.