[Magdalen] Applebee Project

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

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On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I just don't get this gun culture.


​As a member of the ​Army for many years, I took numerous trips the rifle
range. We needed to qualify at least annually with our weapon of choice,
the M-16.

It is really an enjoyable feeling to find that you can master a weapon to
the extent that you can hit a target at three or four hundred meters with
reasonable reliability.

However, some of the most fun I ever had was when we were permitted to put
our weapons on "rock-n-roll" (the rapid fire is fully enabled. You pull and
hold the trigger, and you empty the 20-round magazine in a couple of
seconds).  The feeling of power one gets from that is profoundly
seductive.  What made it especially fun was that it was at night and we had
tracer bullets, so there were all of these reddish streaks wisking
downrange into the targets. When you have a firing line of fifteen guys and
gals doing this at the same time, it's an amazing rush.

There is, of course, NO substitute for being there, but this clip gives a
taste of what it is like. This range is similar to the ones where I
qualified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCsnSr6lqKM

That is a large part of what is driving the firearm craze.  Once you've
fired a weapon, you really don't want to give it up. So why am I not out
there screaming for gun rights?  I have things that excite me more.

The gun rights folks say they want to defend their homes, but at the end of
the day, we all know they would have no chance at all, facing any kind of
intervention. I think they know that too.  But the thrill of firing that
weapon, if that's all they have -- all they know -- they will do almost
anything to avoid giving that up.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

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