I have been watching some of the Olympics. Not much on TV though. The TV never shows the sports I am interested in. So I hvae been watching a lot of the shooting events at NBCOlympics.com. It’s been really cool because I have long wondered how those events were run at the Olympic level. Also it turns out that some of the women shooters are very attractive. 🙂
The US does surprisingly well at shooting. I know we have a lot of guns but we really don’t support the shooting sports that much here. (I should say that I was truly amazed at the Japanese shooters because I think they all have to leave the country to practice their sport.) There was a time when there were a lot of high school and college shooting teams. Today not so much.
Personally I think that is a shame. We have many violent sports – football, hockey, lacrosse, wrestling and on and on. In many of these sports we encourage athletes to "get angry" and to "go get" the other players. In football so many players get hurt that an ambulance is required to be at every high school football game. We could use some non-violent sports and it seems like shooting and archery fit that need nicely.
I’m not sure what the objection could be. Clearly violence is not a problem because a) the shooting sports are completely non-violent (if a gun even accidentally points at someone the holder is disqualified on the spot) b) there are lots of violent sports in high schools. Weapons are not an issue because clubs are an important part of many sports including baseball, lacrosse and golf. And safety is not an issue because football for example sees more high school athletes killed every year than have been killed in organized shooting sports at all levels in well over 100 years combined. Cost? Also not much of a problem. Guns last a very long time and shooting ranges exist and most private ones would be happy to support local teams for the good of the sport. Ammo is the big thing and even that is not as expensive as a lot of sporting equipment. What are football helmets these days? $300 a piece? With annual expensive safety checks.
Shooting teaches patience. It teaches calm – you are trying to shoot between breaths and heart beats for goodness sake. You cannot do that while angry. It teaches self-control. It’s just about everything you want to teach high school students.
The world is a crazy place sometimes.
I think a big part of the problem is the senseless school shootings. (Columbine, VA Tech, and uncomfortably more.) People who seemed alright and had access to guns, and then went on deranged rampages. The knee-jerk opposition is kind of understandable.
That said, I’m not sure it’s nearly as bad an idea as that makes it seem. Especially as you can really stress safety, and the school hopefully wouldn’t leave 20 loaded rifles sitting around in the halls.
That said, I think shooting in the Olympics is weird. I fully recognize that it takes a lot of skill and concentration, but I really can’t see myself getting that excited about watching it. I actually don’t find the Olympics interesting that much, but happened to walk into the family room the other night just in time to see Michael Phelps break the world record: not just for the race he was in, but for the number of world records broken. And it was really kind of exciting to watch. Shooting, though? That’s kind of like golf. Lots of skill, lots of concentration, but not really something interesting to watch.