Terrible Analogies

This is how I feel about my final days of work at my current place of employment:

Heh….

This past weekend the brother-in-law took me to a remote location near the Mexican border (is that a fence or an aqueduct?) for some target practice. He brought his .308 and I brought along my new 12 gauge 20″ shotgun.

Having never fired a shotgun before I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Cautiously I loaded in a few rounds of .00 buckshot, donned my eye/ear protection, racked a round and squeezed the trigger.

The shotgun jerked back with a tremendous roar and hacked a hugh swath trough the targets that I had been aiming at, sweeping them away with a terrible force.

And the primitive side of me let loose with a sly, satisfying smile.

It was only after shooting this weapon did I realize that I had no idea how powerful a shotgun with the appropriate ammunition could be, and I now fully understand why skulking thieves run as soon as they hear the sound of a round being racked from the upstairs bedroom in the middle of the night.

Sure, we’ve all seen gunplay in the movies, but it’s impossible to appreciate the brutality of such weapons until you fire one for yourself. There’s simply no getting up after taking a round to the chest from a shotgun. There is no heroic gunplay. No staggering before returning fire, killing the baddie and saving the day. There is simply the target crumbling to the floor in a lifeless heap.

And to tell you the truth, it’s all a bit frightening. But I’d rather have the upper hand and the ability to protect my family if and when there came a time to do so.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been giving some serious thought about home protection. I’ve often thought about what would happen if somebody broke into my house in the middle of the night. Up to this point I’ve kept a Marine combat knife, a machete and a taser gun next to my bed, but really don’t relish the thought of hand-to-hand combat with an intruder at three in the morning.

And so, with much thought and deliberation, the wife and I have decided to purchase a gun for home protection. The gun we chose is a Mossberg 500 “Persuader” pump-action shotgun with pistol grip.

The way I figure it, any intruder will know the distinctive sound of a round being racked, and with a shout of “I’m armed!” the unwanted bastard will scurry out of the hole he crawled in through as fast as possible.

Purchasing a gun wasn’t the easiest decision for Karin to make, and I truly understand her hesitation, but my mindset is if the worst were ever to happen, that I’d have the proper tools to protect my family. I’ve seen enough disaster (and zombie) movies to understand the need for defensive firepower.

I’ve heard talk about using a nuclear explosion to seal the oil leak that’s currently raging out of control in the Gulf Coast. For whatever reason I envisioned the military dropping some sort of guided nuclear warhead straight down on top of the well with Slim Pickins glued on top like he’s bucking a bronco, initiating the detonation upon contact with the ocean floor.

Little did I know that such an operation would be much more tactical and precise that my overactive imagination gave it credit for.

Very interesting, and it looks so darn simple to accomplish.  I’m hoping that it doesn’t come down to this, but from this side of the world it’s looking more and more like a feasible solution to a problem that’s getting worse by the day.  I’m sure we have a spare nuclear warhead somewhere in our vast arsenal that we could spare to put a halt the ecological disaster of our lifetime.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll be throwing Dr. Strangelove into the DVD player right about now…

Meandering the long, dimly lit hallways of the Mayville museum on a private tour, pondering the rusting mining equipment, the dusty tomes slowing aging on sagging bookshelves, and archaic medical devices lying forever frozen under gentle florescent lighting on chipped glass shelving, I found myself impressed by the history of these amazing artifacts lovingly gathered together in this one location.  The tools of trades long since past, replaced by modern equipment and techniques was standard fare for museums such as this.  I was captivated but emotionally unmoved…until I noticed this photograph:

This photograph, when taken in as a whole, is not that remarkable.  What made it stand out in my mind was the face of one young soldier in particular.  Inching forward, hands clasped behind my back to give the observing docent the reassuring feeling that I wasn’t going to touch anything, I stared intently for several minutes at the forlorn face of this young man:

As his comrades seethed in anger, anxious to pounce on the enemy with conditioned hatred and well-practiced war cries, this was the one soldier who was not looking at the camera, but rather at a distant point well beyond the camera and our understanding.  It’s as if he’s had a long talk with himself in recent days, and he was deeply disturbed by what he heard; I can imagine him numbly accepting the terrible truth that, odds are, this was to be the final picture that he was ever going to pose for, and in the next few days he’ll be on the chaotic front lines, his unavoidable fate sealed with the dull impact of a predestined bullet, a slow choking invisible death deep in a rolling cloud of mustard gas, or in a quick blinding concussive blast of an exploding shrapnel-spitting shell.  Bound by duty and contract, heavy with the acceptance that he most probably will not be coming back this way again, his solemn expression tells me everything I need to know about the horrors of war, and how brave the World War I generation truly was.