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For the past several years, I’ve been tasked with taking pictures of the Desert Midwinter competition in Phoenix and I’ve learned a couple of things others might find helpful.

On the one hand there are those who, given the opportunity, would kill us without any thought of our individuality. “American” or “United States” or “Christian” is sufficient reason for them. I know. I’ve seen their stares and overheard their not-so-softly-spoken threats walking the streets of my world travels.

• It’s hard but can be done. The 7X target seen here was accomplished at the national championships in 2013. Looking at it two years later, I see only the 7Xs. I don’t see the 9, the 8 nor the 7. The person scoring this said, “Nice target!”
• Upper-body strength is helpful with grip and wrist even more so but anyone can shoot an X, sometimes a lot of them.
• For myself and many others, the attraction is more about the camaraderie with others than the targets, the guns or the shooting.
• While it doesn’t have to be expensive, for most, Bullseye is not a cheap sport. As with other sports, the more you do it, the better you get, but unlike baseball, tennis or golf where you can use the same ball all day, when the gun goes “Bang!”, you’ve spent the bullet.
• Bullseye shooters, if they stay with the sport, will reload their own ammunition, and do so for two reasons: first, each round is less expensive so they can shoot more, and secondly because they can tune the ammunition to a specific handgun for maximum accuracy.
• Safety is paramount. If you forget and then hear someone complaining about what you just did, you will probably survive. Hopefully so will all of those around you. There’s no kidding around in this regard. None. Zero.
• Most Bullseye shooters are politically conservative and, perhaps more so, libertarian in their overall leanings, but neither of those tendencies are universal.
• Most Bullseye shooters are smart and relatively successful in life. And again while this is not universal, it is much more so than the previous generalization.
• When taken as a whole, these observations may help explain why Bullseye or Conventional Pistol or Precision Pistol, depending on what you choose to call it, is a somewhat exclusive, some say elitist, sport.

For the past two weeks, he (or she) has eluded four traditional mouse traps while continuing the near-nightly harassment. We can hear it up in the attic gnawing away at something hard like a 2-4 or insulation or some of the house and telephone wiring.

This is a calm “No.” It is not given in an angry, hurt or rejecting voice. It is, instead, a simple “No” that suggests there is more to the answer, but that elaboration will be “not now.”

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Protesters are invariably in the first category. They demand action. So while, yes, they are out there “doing something”, what they are doing is demanding that someone else do.

While cleaning up my work-office-at-home, I found a few memories that challenge a neat and tidy filing.