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On the way to work, I heard a story on NPR's Morning Edition: Zoot Shooters Bring Gangster Style To The Gun Range. It's a lighthearted human interest story about practical shooting. (i.e., shooting matches based on scenarios a shooter must work through as opposed more conventional target matches.) The twist here is that everyone is replication a certain '30s Chicago aesthetic.
Now, this isn't a "OMG, guns are serious business. How *dare* they make light of deadly weapons" post. AFAICT, they take great care to make their competition as safe as possible. As long as they know what they're doing and aren't engaged in anything illegal, I don't see anything wrong enjoying target shooting. Have at it.
The reason I'm blogging this, however, are these two sentence in the report:
"The Tommy gun is often called a Chicago Typewriter — when shot at the paper human-form targets, it sounds just like an old manual typewriter. There are brown paper targets for the bad guys and white ones for the innocents or hostages — hit one of those, and it's a 5-second penalty."
Yes, the goal of the competition is to shoot all the brown people while avoiding all the white people. No, there are no subconscious racial overtones here. None whatsoever. *headdesk*
My point is *not* "OMGOMGOMG, they're racistracistracist." That lacks a certain nuance that we need here. My point is that it never occurred to them that not only are they training their competitors to shoot at human form targets based solely on color, but they have picked a target color that has unfortunate resonances relative to the rest of the world. (Yes, consciously, they can tell the difference between a human form and a human being, but the targets are human form in the first place for a reason, right?)
Now, this isn't a "OMG, guns are serious business. How *dare* they make light of deadly weapons" post. AFAICT, they take great care to make their competition as safe as possible. As long as they know what they're doing and aren't engaged in anything illegal, I don't see anything wrong enjoying target shooting. Have at it.
The reason I'm blogging this, however, are these two sentence in the report:
"The Tommy gun is often called a Chicago Typewriter — when shot at the paper human-form targets, it sounds just like an old manual typewriter. There are brown paper targets for the bad guys and white ones for the innocents or hostages — hit one of those, and it's a 5-second penalty."
Yes, the goal of the competition is to shoot all the brown people while avoiding all the white people. No, there are no subconscious racial overtones here. None whatsoever. *headdesk*
My point is *not* "OMGOMGOMG, they're racistracistracist." That lacks a certain nuance that we need here. My point is that it never occurred to them that not only are they training their competitors to shoot at human form targets based solely on color, but they have picked a target color that has unfortunate resonances relative to the rest of the world. (Yes, consciously, they can tell the difference between a human form and a human being, but the targets are human form in the first place for a reason, right?)
