Memories of Preparing For the Collapse of Civilization With Marksmanship and Murder

We drove out to the gravel pit for a day of shooting. It was just me and my dad and a bunch of weapons for killing human beings.He stapled the target to a wooden frame he'd built against a wall of sand. Then he walked slowly back towards me. The stapler was silver. The extra targets fluttered in the wind.There wasn't any talking. The whole experience was somber like a religious ceremony. I knew that I shouldn't touch the guns until he said. If I touched them wrong, I could kill him. I could kill myself. This was drilled into me again and again.I heard stories of hunters who neglected to take the round out of the chamber before climbing over a fence. The trigger snagged on a piece of barbed wire. There were lots of versions of this story. Sometimes the father shot himself. Sometimes the kid was shot.No matter how many times I heard this story, my reaction had to be a mixture of sadness and awe. I had to prove with my facial expression that I was giving guns the respect they deserved. If I laughed at the absurdity of grown men killing themselves out of carelessness, he'd fly into a rage.Silence and explosions and rage.“If these guns are so dangerous, then why do we have them?”I've never seen him so disappointed in me as the day I asked that question.The guns were in long flat cases. The cases were black with silver latches. The interior was filled with foam cushioning. The foam cushioning protected the guns.We practiced shooting while laying down. We practiced shooting from a seated position. We practiced shooting while standing up.He taught me to wrap the strap around my arm and then to brace my arm against my hip. Standing like this looks awkward, but it creates a platform like a triangle shelf bracket. When you look through the scope, you can see either a dot or a cross. That indicates where the bullet's going. It doesn't take much movement of the rifle for the crosshairs to bounce wildly. Even breathing will move it. You can't hit anything unless you can “hold it steady.”“Hold it steady! Now... squeeze.”It doesn't take much pressure to pull a trigger. That's why getting snagged on a piece of barbed wire can cause an accidental discharge that kills either the father or the son, depending on the day the story is told.Even now, I'm still afraid of an accidental discharge. “The gun went off, I don't know why!”I've seen it happen. I've been around my rowdy cousins who were laughing and snorting like rutting beasts when all of a sudden a gun went off and my dad hit the deck. “What the hell is going on?”My cousins were too dim to recognize what happened. Then one of them started to guffaw with nervous energy. It shocked me. Hadn't he heard the story of the hunter who shot his son? Hadn't he heard that story over and over and over? Why did he think he could laugh? Where was his respect and reverence and awe?My dad got up furious and my cousins started to laugh at him. “What's the big deal?”“Somebody could have been killed!”“Oh, you're being silly, nobody was killed.”Then they started looking around not knowing where the bullet even went.Accidental discharges are deadly. Everybody will have one eventually. I've said that in gun forums only to have the other participants snort at me. “I am in control of my weapon at all times. I will never have an accidental discharge.”“But have you though?”“Well, yeah, but everybody has at least one.”“I haven't,” I replied. “Still, the thought of it scares me absolutely every time I pick up a firearm.”This is why you take the round out of the chamber if you crawl over a fence. This is why you never point the barrel at anything you don't intend to kill.“Well, you just don't know what you're talking about,” said the guy on the forum. Then he berated me for calling a magazine a clip, and for assuming the AR in AR-15 stood for “assault rifle” rather than Armalite. Gun people have a whole routine they do. I just waited for it passively like I used to do when I had to hear the story about the hunter crawling over the fence and shooting either himself or the kid.Sometimes he killed the kid and was so overcome by trauma that he killed himself.“Great story Dad, maybe we shouldn't go hunting.”We began drilling with the rifle. I shot at the target again and again and again. The recoil bruised my arm. Every time it was like getting punched in the shoulder. I couldn't tense up though, tensing up made the crosshairs jump. I couldn't anticipate the blow and try to protect myself. Instead, I had to exhale, gently pull the trigger, and get smashed in the arm.BANG!We didn't wear ear protection. I don't know why. Not only was shooting painful, it was also expensive. The bullets are expensive. After the gun was emptied and the barrel cleared, we'd set it on the table. You always set it so the barrel pointed off into the trees so you wouldn't have to cross the line of fire as you walked to check the targets.I kept thinking of the hunter and his son lying dead next to the fence.We walked to the target and dad marked the holes with a magic marker. If I missed the target completely, it was like squandering the money he'd spent on the bullets.“Decent grouping, but you're pulling up and to the right. You have to stop tensing up.”I couldn't tell him how much my shoulder hurt. Not tensing up wasn't possible so I resolved to aim down and to the left.I don't know how long these sessions of awe and reverence lasted, but they were exhausting. I went through them mechanically. I tried to ignore the imaginary bodies of the father and his son who were strewn all throughout the gravel pit.It wasn't until years later that I realized that not everybody has to go through this. These things that are drilled into you in your youth never go away. In my twenties, I went out shooting with a specialist in the military. I didn't want to go but he insisted. He handed me the weapon, and it was like I fell into a trance. I braced my arm against my hip, I looked through the scope, I exhaled.“Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!”Five targets down. With awe and reverence, I cleared the barrel and placed the weapon on the table. Only when the heavy, oily, piece of metal was out of my hands did I feel like myself again. Only then did I notice he was looking at me with an odd expression on his face.“That... you hit them all dead center.”“Isn't that the objective?”“Yeah, but...” he shook his head like something was weird.It wasn't until later on that I realized what had happened. He'd trained in the military, but I'd trained in childhood. I'd trained day after day in a gravel pit filled with the corpses of my imagination. He'd trained for war, I'd trained for the inevitable collapse of civilization.That was the last time I held a rifle.My kids have never held one.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe