WAY off the usual topic post!

 I don't talk about firearms (guns) much online, for an assortment of reasons.

For a long time, I ascribed to what I'll call the "liberal" point of view, over-simplified to be "firearms bad PERIOD." This in spite of the fact that I had a rifle I received as a birthday gift when I was fourteen.

I hadn't fired that rifle since I was fifteen or sixteen, because I didn't have a place to shoot and didn't have a social circle in which shooting was a thing to do. Indeed, I considered using the stock from that rifle as a platform for using my film cameras with long lenses to help steady the camera, but never did so. That rifle got misplaced in one or another of the several address changes, sadly. The rifle didn't deserve such an unnoble fate.

Over the last several years, I've watched as the Overton Window has moved away from what I could consider reasonable. A few years ago, I started thinking that there was reason to think that self-defense was going to be necessary--the radical followers of that detested occupier of the People's White House were on my mind.

Until that time, I had been semi-aware of my personal privilege--of not feeling any need or even desire to have guns. My financial situation was such that I didn't have the money to develop yet another expensive hobby (I have a pile of now-obsolete camera gear, a pile of barely-used rock-climbing gear, several bicycles, and a canoe and a couple of kayaks that absorbed any money I might have spent on firearms).

But, yes, a few years ago, I bought a pistol, to relearn the lessons I had had when in high school ROTC, for target practice, and (hopefully never) for home defense.

To my surprise, I realized that I enjoyed the challenge of shooting, whether it be target shooting, target-acquisition drills, or just plinking.

In the course of learning about firearms (because I'm very much about education), I encountered a number of quite illuminating video channels. One of those channels is a series called "Light over Heat," by David Yamane.

His most recent video (as I type this) discusses how shooting is fun. And, yes, I hesitate to use the word "fun" when talking about a device that is the center of a lot of highly-politicized arguing these days, and I have even more reluctance to use the expression "range toy" when referring to a particular gun. I was not raised to think of guns as toys. I was not allowed to have "toy guns" when I was a kid, because guns are not toys.

But this video from David Yamane points to one reason I have a gun or two.