Soddy, I know what you mean about target shooting being a meditative act. In my shooting days I experienced the same thing, and it was one of the main reasons I liked it so much. Target shooting is all about focusing, centering, calming yourself -- otherwise you jerk the trigger, or the end of the muzzle drifts, or your hands shake when you're zeroing in. Any slight imprecision at the end of the barrel is magnified enormously downrange, and can result in pretty poor accuracy. You really need to master your body, mind and emotions to shoot well.

Like I said earlier in this thread, I love shooting, principally for the reasons you mention. But I love my kids more, and I'm frightened by the proliferation of guns throughout our society, so the choice for me is an easy one -- no guns. I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to take them away from responsible hunters, but I think we need to raise the bar on what we consider "responsible," and I think we need to dramatically clamp down on guns in other contexts in our society. This wouldn't solve all of our problems with gun violence, but I'm confident that it would substantially reduce gun violence, and for me that's a good enough reason to do it.