30/40 Krag
Above: Park City Gun Club, Park City, UT. 17 March 2023.
30/40 Krag. My Dad's deer rifle. I don't know where Dad got this gun. The 30/40 Krag was used by the US Army in the Spanish American war, 1898.
I'm so glad to be able to shoot this firearm. In the image, a companion shoots the gun at a target 70 feet distant. I sat on the 30/40 Krag for years with good intent to fire it but succumbed to inertia and avoided shooting it. About five years ago while at a shooting event at Echo with friends, I took the 30/40 Krag out of its case and prepared to shoot it. My "shooting advisor," F16, noted a crack in the gun's stalk and advised against firing it. A Salt Lake City gunsmith repaired the crack with epoxy and did a nice job of refinishing the stalk. But it was another three years until I finally shot the gun for the first time in late 2022. Interestingly, 30/40 Krag ammo is not hard to get, so there must be a few of these firearms lingering around.
As a teenager I once asked Dad why he stopped deer hunting. He said he felt bad killing living things. Feeling about hunting as I do today, I might have responded to Dad, "it's food isn't it, Dad?" It's too late for me to start hunting, but I have no philosophical objections to it. Man is just another of the deer predators, and like other predators uses the deer for life sustenance. The deer herd is in no danger of extinction. The state wildlife people do a good job of keeping the herd intact with their hunt permitting process.
Why do I shoot? The original impetus for me to shoot derives from a sense of responsibility I have to exercise the freedoms extant in the US Constitution. The US form of constitutional government is the only governance philosophy in history to limit the central government's power to protecting the inalienable (God given) rights of its citizens. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment. In addition to the right to bear arms, the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and religious freedom. All three of these rights... arms, free speech and religion... are under assault by a growing citizen and US government movement to undermine those freedoms. So, it just seems right to engage in actions to reaffirm a philosophy where a guarantee of individual liberty stands as the government's supreme aim.
Apart from any philosophical rationale for shooting guns, I have enjoyed the actual shooting experiences. Confession: I haven't learned to field strip and clean my firearms. I can assemble and disassemble stuff if I take the time. I just find that, say, reading a good book is more interesting. I've engaged the gun club people to do the gun cleaning work for me for a fee. Perhaps I can get a family member to help out in this endeavor. Perhaps, I'll give it a try myself, starting with the easiest guns first... the revolvers.
Other reasons to be proficient in shooting loom in the background. For one, America's waning support for law and order has given rise to increases in crime, particularly in US major cities. The rising crime wave hasn't reached us here in flyover country yet, but the possibility threatens as flyover nation, following the practices of its large cities, trends towards ubiquitous lawlessness. For another, America's government institutions are increasingly used to target Americans for exercising freedoms long held sacrosanct. The probability of having to confront crime or government overreach directly might be low where I live. Still, being prepared to confront violence and institutional wrongdoing by exercising 2nd amendment rights is a form of insurance. At the basest level protecting one's family is a man's most important responsibility.