I learned how to shoot and clean a gun/shotgun, and load shells when I lived in RI. I shot targets, trap (my favorite) and skeet with 22 and 357 handguns, 210, 10 and 20 gauge shotguns, and even got my shoulder smacked by a 30-06 rifle. Only once for that last one. Never shot a real live thing, though. This is all to say I am not an anti any gun screaming liberal who has never touched one in my life. I just choose to not have one. I don’t hunt but am happy to cook up whatever y’all want to kill. I don’t get joy of any kind by hitting a bullseye over a man shaped target, even though sometimes it might make me feel good. And I’m not a fan of video games of any kind.  Now that is out of the way, I need to tell you what yanked my chain yesterday.

We have a Facebook Group for Happenings in our little town in SW WA, a nice rural area population about 2500 including the general urban area. It’s a red county, as are all of them east of the Cascades. But our town is on the western edge, which I told you is somewhat purplish. Someone advertised a concealed weapons class. No big. They happen all the time and are usually good for multiple adjoining states (OR, WA, ID). They hold them at hotel meeting rooms and honestly, that doesn’t bother me a bit. Well, this guy wants to hold his class in the town park. You read it right, a concealed weapons class in the town park. I was disturbed by this but went about my day. Later, I revisited and found that people were wanting to sign up in droves. I commented that I felt the park was an inappropriate venue for such a class. Well, smack me silly, I stood alone. They were not amused when I suggested they ‘get a room’ or hold it at the gun club. I reached out to a longtime resident of a friendly political persuasion for support, and the response was, it’s just a class. This from a Berner, no less, with peace stickers all over their hybrid. I can’t help but think if this is going on in my little neck of the woods, what’s going on everywhere else? Reality check time, WMDBS customers, am I over-reacting?