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Americans actually do shoot quite well, but the rules around gun handling are incredibly strict for Olympic shooting.
Things like minor celebrations, emotion, or even the cadence of your walk while leaving the range can cause disqualification.
Since American shooters can't hit a bullseye without shotgunning a beer and magdumping into the sky as eagles carry exploding fireworks in celebration, they often do not place in Olympic shooting
"I can tolerate precision shooting, but I draw the line at emotional regulation!"
Or in other words, what's missing from our country's gun use is respect.
The vast majority of our issues with gun violence is the fact that we disrespect guns almost as much as each other, they're just another crass tool for achieving a feeling, like power, masculinity, reassurance and comfort. So then guess what happens when you flood the streets with more guns than every other developed nation combined?
We are a nation of undisciplined shooters, they may shoot "quite well" in some cases, but for every shooter who does quite well at hitting a target you have several thousand who have no idea how to shoot, AND have no clue about gun safety, respect and responsible ownership.
Well, sure, but you don't send a random selection of citizens to the Olympics. You send the best.
The nation with the most gun owners per capita and a huge population should have many pinnacle-tier shooters, even if it also has many bad ones. So the question is, why aren't they at the Olympics?
Honestly? Opportunity. It starts with money, or willingness for you or your parents to give up everything that isn't training.
I was in the service with some incredible shots. I've been on the range with some pretty incredible shots. Most of them would never have the opportunity for any number of reasons.
Some of that comes down to simply money. Flavor Flav is sponsoring our women's water polo team because some of them were working three jobs while training to stay afloat. Not everyone wants to or even can do that.
That is really fucking cool that Flavor Flav is doing that.
.22's are too small for them
A lot of the people who would be excellent at shooting have no interest in specifically Olympic shooting or training for the type of shooting required, unfortunately. That, and the military has probably poached the best of the best, and don't want to show what "best of the best" shooting looks like for strategic reasons.
(side note, happy cake day!)
So the question is, why aren’t they at the Olympics?
I think I did answer this, just because there's a larger pool doesn't make the pool deeper necessarily.
(But also, there is military poaching)
smells like the gymnastics problem to me, incredibly strict ruling and doing things "too dangerous" will get points knocked off to me.
You certainly don't need to a fucking psychopath to shoot guns respectfully, but you also shouldn't be deranged either.
Those ones probably aren't trying to compete in the Olympics.
Respect is a big part of it. Another problem is that they aren't seen as actual tools. They're probably more often a male enhancement device than a tool.
They should be viewed as a tool for the production of meat, for the efficient removal of varmints. In the worst case they are a tool for the defense of self or others. That worst case scenario is actually very rare.
Tools and toys can be interchangeable. However: some pretty strict laws govern the use of toys like sports cars.
My shooting tools are mostly polymer stocked or gripped. Plain, cheapest base model I can get. Then I take them apart and work on the mechanisms to make them mine. I don't have a lot of them, just have a few for my particular use cases.
I really like them. I get pleasure from using my tools. I also really like my lathe and my daily driver small truck. I've also taken them apart and worked on them.
I think this attitude should be required if one is going to own and be responsible for such a dangerous tool. There should be an interview process or something to weed out dumb fucks and the mentally unstable. After all, the militia was supposed to be well regulated. It's not particularly complicated.
They’re probably more often a male enhancement device than a tool.
Exactly what I'm saying, and people hate hearing it, because guns are fun and if you tell people to have less fun with something they fucking want to rip your head off, especially as we enter an age of desocialization.
Desocialization is gonna be our really big problem, because while unstable backwoods hicks and suburban commando-wannabes are thoroughly worrying when they go out in the open, but they're mostly harmless, they have social groups, they talk to others, they have range clubs, even "militia" groups that I've known are just chubby dads who want an excuse to camp in the desert and bring a cooler of beer.
Nah, where we really need to be concerned is the growing mass of people who cling to guns like pacifiers AND live in social isolation bubbles, spending all their time on social media and chat groups that only reinforce their beliefs, getting locked into weirder and weirder interpretations of reality, losing the line between reality and fantasy.
You saw this starting in earnest as far back as the Charlottesville "Unite The Right" white nationalist rally where one protester was murdered. There were, along the "hardened" white supremacists were no small number of kids. White, pasty, tubby kids who spend all their time on 4chan or in deeply unhinged areas of the internet. There are some famous clips of these kids, some crying on the curb after being pepper-sprayed, saying "This was supposed to be like a game!" as they sobbed.
If you notice, we've only had a dramatic uptick in mass-shootings since, and I firmly believe social isolation is breaking people. Most of the shooters we see now fit that bill, everyone is looking for patterns, but the only one I see is these are people with no friends, no social lives, infatuations with guns, and read fucked up nonsense on the internet until they believe it.
Yup. You get it. The solution is simple, with one exception. Simple doesn't mean easy.
We need socialized healthcare including mental healthcare. That would do a lot, there are almost always signs that a non-gang mass shooter is mentally unwell.
Gang and crime based mass shootings would fall through the floor if we removed the incentive for them, prohibition of drugs. Addiction should be treated as a health problem.
We need to identify these sources of hateful propaganda, the nests of poisonous ideology and root them out through education. We aren't teaching critical thinking, I think that also has a lot to do with it.
You also have many young men that lack good role models for positive masculinity. This is a big thing I'm not sure how to fix. Toxic masculinity has become so pervasive and has infected almost every straight man that can be considered macho. I'm a very masculine man, and proud of it. My zippo says Daddy. My straw hat also has a pride/equality pin next to a Ruger pin. The number of men that I meet like myself is quite low. Met a very macho trans man once that I found had a similar worldview. Have met similar men in the gay leather communities but they tend to cluster in large cities and form insular communities for their own safety.
On that last point I think part of the issue is positive masculinity needs to be tied with self love/empowerment. The focus on toxic masculinity has overall been negative and easily spun as "men are toxic" (even though the people who'd benefit most from positive masculinity would be men themselves). Men are struggling because its hard to find a way forward that society accepts and supports
Yeah. I have no clue how the path out of it works.
Lots of disenfranchised young men full of anger and drives, piss and vinegar, see negative messaging for liking the stereotypical things that young straight men like on one side. On the other side they're welcomed with open arms and then drip fed poison while reinforcing their identity.
Here on Lemmy if you talk about hunting, meat eating, etc.; people get all riled up. Think I have at least one troll following me and down voting every post.
The left is failing young men and driving them into the open arms of fascism.
I have no clue what can be done about it.
Yeah, I agree with you on pretty much all points. All I can really do is see my peers or juniors who may be at risk of falling into the darker corners, and try and bring them into my circle before that happens, but I only have so much time and energy, and that only helps the ones who get seen before they fall
The number of men that I meet like myself is quite low
You've met at least one here, I was raised by nutcases out in the boonies, raised deeply conservative and religious, did a sharp 180 when I got out on my own/escaped, and have now settled into an ideology that's really all about harm reduction, personal freedom and kindness to one another, something that is completely at odds with how most men see masculinity right now.
I have walked in both worlds, I get it, I get how so many people can feel so afraid and so ready to withdraw from the system and fight anyone who would take away their comforts. I get how so many young men are so lonely, traumatized and insecure. I get how so many women can't trust men and end up making the problems worse as a result. I get how so many people are tuned-out from politics and social discourse and what this is doing to the world.
The causes of all this are many, but they all highlight a massive failing in the human experience, we are a cursed creature who are stuck on the rails of biology and evolution, we think we have far more free-will than we really do, we think we're somehow logical and rational, but we can't even see the actual universe around us, if there even is one. We are trying to fit a ridiculously complicated world into our brains that were formed over ice ages and only really knows how to predict dangerous predators.
And I don't know which is worse anymore. Having awareness of all this, or being naive, blissful and ignorant. Neither gives peace, neither offers solutions, neither makes our lives better.
We'd probably get along just fine.
Knowing is better. Knowing is always better. All we can do is try and tell others what we've learned and keep trying to grow ourselves. My purpose is loving my people, my little family. Care for them and treat other folks with respect and kindness. To err is human, and we forgive others when we can.
The Olympic venue is probably intimidating when you're used to using schools as shooting ranges.
yeah i was gonna ask, do we even have a team that runs for this? I feel like we would've heard about it otherwise, yknow, being american and all that.