Losing More Than My Sanity

advice from a professor on my first day of grad school  (via runningmandz)

i needed this

The projectile in most of those weapons is the 5.56 mm NATO round, based on the .223 Remington hunting round. It is inexpensive and useful for hunting a wide variety of game animals, from rabbits to woodchucks to gophers to deer to coyote and fox and even small to medium sized boar.

The weapons are designed to be easy to use and easy to strip and clean and maintain.

I am a left handed shot. The vast majority of these weapons are easily used by left handed people without modification, or with some slight and inexpensive additions to the weapon. Bolt action rifles and many other weapons have to be manufactured explicitly in left handed versions and those versions are quite often difficult or impossible to find.

The light weight and ease of use mean that older people and elderly people can use these rifles with ease where they might not be able to manipulate a bolt or other mechanism with reliability. My left wrist has nerve damage and I have a difficult time working my son’s left handed bolt action hunting rifle.

I know a pastor who lives down the street from my son. He keeps cattle on his farm. He has used his AR15 to shoot coyote that were harassing his calves. He has arthritis and would have a hard time using a heavier weapon or one that wasn’t as well designed.

I have used my rifle (similar in design to the ones in the picture) for hunting and for killing a sick coyote that was trying to chew its way through the screen door of one of my son’s neighbors. The weapons are easy to use and designed to be durable and accurate.

My mother is four feet eleven inches tall. She simply cannot hold a regular pump shotgun or bolt action hunting rifle and use it with any competence. She can use my son’s AR and manipulate it in all necessary ways in spite of her size and comparative weakness at the age of 73.

There are many logical reasons for people to own a ‘Modern Sporting Rifle’.

There are no valid reasons for someone like you to tell me or my son or my daughter or my mother that we cannot purchase or own a rifle that you know nothing about because of reasons you cannot articulate other than fear. No one in this country is beholden to your unreasoning fears of inanimate objects.

https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/armed-citizen/

The above link has 629 PAGES of documented events where an armed United States citizen stopped an armed criminal from hurting or killing someone. Six hundred twenty nine PAGES of evidence for why you should take stock of your life and figure out if you want to be one of the people forever cringing in fear or one of the people who is ready and capable of handling any situation that might arise.

Me