(quote)
"...as I have pointed out before, I am a *reponsible* gun owner having grown up with guns and in the NRA. One of the first things I learned in the NRA *safety classes* was never point a gun, loaded or unloaded at another person."

Rev.Bobert ,y'all just tripped a memory tripwire with that statement in regards to the friend whose townhouse I rent half of for my digital studio/homebase.
It has to do with his upbringing in Oklahoma with a father who later became , and is presently , in the F.B.I . as part of anti-terror security and presently serving. I've met him and he's as honest and no-nonsense direct yet not at all humorless nor lacking in his genuine friendliness as I'd ever want to meet. However ,according to his son and backed up by his kinder,gentler mother ,he was far more strict and could be sternly disciplinarian during formative years up through my friend's multi-year duty in the Navy aboard a nuke sub.
The point : Something different in the way "westerners" have passed along that quote of "Never point a point a firearm at someone ever". The way my friend , a peaceful yet devote "liberatrian" computer-geeker , described how his father raised him and his brother about responsible gun-ownership with the alteration of that phrase caught my ear: QUOTE
" Never point a firearm at someone unless you intend to take a life ".

Now I can appreciate the sort of frontier pychology/culture involved here and could see ol' Sherrif Andy Taylor of Mayberry sayin' this to Opie as to mean that you shouldn't point a gun at all at a person at all becuase you take on the power of life and death over another the moment you do.
BUT , in these violent times where there are more murders comitted in passion amongst neighbors/lovers/relatives than in the act of a crime ( not counting the always tragic accidents ) one can understand how I was chilled to the bone to hear the uprasing of generations of gun-totin' kids, perhaps not so West of the Mississippi , hearing " Never point a firearm at someone unless you means to take a life " instead of "Never point a gun , PERIOD, at another person." being reinforced .

To my ear *nothing* is lost in the translation and this *wild west* frontier culture promoting too easily being able to take the life of another human just doesn't ring right with me. That's the type of advice you give a fellow *law enforcement* or *military* recruit and *not* a civilian minor.

And the N.R.A. has a proen track record of acting as a central clearing house of just such *militia-sympathizer* libertarian wingnuts whom we ocasionally hear of declaring themselves as sovereign "Freemen" obsolvoing themselves of owing any taxes to the Fed and all of the Arian Nation "wrong crowd" that undeniably intermingles.
I guess if one *not* obsolve the Saudi's for tolerating ,when not outright supporting ,terrorist networks from within their own then one can *not* obsolve the N.R.A. for whom they tolerate in their ranks just to maintain politically effective membership numbers.

what's buckshot for the goose is certainly buckshot for the gander.
Case closed ;-)

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