When I do good nobody remembers. When I screw up, nobody forgets…
Roscoe Rules, “The Choirboys”
I believe in consistency. In the past, I have been accused of being rude and insensitive. Friends, family, coworkers and suspects have referred to me as an asshole. In my defense, I will point out that I am self made, rather than an accidental one.
I was over my sister’s house the other day. I saw that she had a stack of cardboard targets. She and her husband are not shooters. I couldn’t imagine why she had pistol targets. I offered to take them off her hands. Apparently I committed a faux pas.
I’ve been shooting for over fifty years. I will admit that in my younger days target selection was a bit more casual. A STOP sign and a BB gun. They were made for each other. The BB wouldn’t make a hole, but there was a satisfying ping with a hit.
The problem with stop signs is that it didn’t take any great skill to hit one. Beer cans, on the other hand, presented a more challenging target. There was also the added incentive of seeing the destruction caused by a high powered BB.
In the late sixties early seventies I graduated to handguns and combat shooting. The standard target of the day was the NRA B-27 target.
The problem with the B-27 is that it was black on white. People who never handled a gun decided that shooting at a black target instilled racist behavior. The target encouraged police officers to automatically target black suspects. This led to:
The IPSC target eliminated the black/white thing. In fact the target presented a target that was not identifiable as human. This removed the moral consideration from combat shooting. Has anybody ever interjected morality into a baseball swing? This led to:
The next innovation were actual depictions of people. Typically, these targets included inserts so the gun could be removed from the picture. Critics had no problems with cops shooting women and children. But the black guy…..RACIST.
Admit it, in light of my experience, it was a reasonable inference that cutouts (above) represented the latest and greatest in targets. The size was smaller, requiring a higher level of skill. They could be presented as dark or pale, thus eliminating the racial factor. How was I to know?
With an eye roll and a sigh of disgust my sister informed me that these were “Cardboard Kids.” They were part of a promotion by “Child Safe” a San Antonio organization formed to provide services to abused children. From her reaction, I guess it is possible to abuse a cardboard kid.
https://www.childsafe-sa.org/cardboard-kids/
Fifty years, I’ve been shooting. Looks like I’ve come full circle. It’s back to beer cans and watermelons.
