I was introduced to shooting sports back in the middle 1960s by one of my guitar students. He was an ex-marine, and he had become interested in target shooting in the marines. He and I and a couple of other friends would go to the Seattle Police Department pistol range on Sunday afternoons (Loren wasn't a policeman, but he had a membership in the SPD Athletic Association). We spent most of our time poking holes in paper targets at the regulation 25 yards, but Loren gave us some training in combat shooting.

A situation I would avoid like the plague!!

We were all members of the NRA. But it was not long before I noticed that all the gun safety programs they advertised as part of their "mission" simply didn't exist. Or if they ever did, certainly not in my area. And when gun laws were proposed that seemed quite reasonable to me, the mailings I got from the NRA urging me to oppose such laws seemed highly inconsistent with such things as firearms safety.

Although the laws in each state differ, one is required by law to be tested and receive a license before one is allowed to drive an automobile. This is primarily to assure public safety. After all, one is directing at least a ton of metal at considerable speeds, so reasonable precautions are taken to see that you can't legally take the wheel of an automobile without demonstrating that you know how to drive safely.

And yet, I know of no state or municipality that requires that one know how to safely handle a firearm, despite the fact that one can kill one or more people quite easily with the twitch of one's trigger finger. Or simply by handling a firearm carelessly.

And yet, the supposed safety conscious NRA musters all their forces to oppose any attempts to pass laws requiring one to take a gun safety course before acquiring and carrying a firearm.

I am no longer a supporter of the NRA and haven't been for a long time.

Don Firth