Wednesday, July 17, 2024

...bad shot...

I want to offer some clarifications regarding Trump's shooter being kicked off his high school shooting team for being "a bad shot".

That might be how the kids who were interviewed interpreted the event, but that is probably not how it went down. I know of VERY few prep sports teams that are over-subscribed and who have tryouts and actually have to make "cuts". The entire point of "sports" is to train athletes to become better.

The shooter was almost-certainly not allowed on the team because he defied instruction.

The narrative in the media is that on the first day of practice the athletes were assigned a target to shoot at. Trump's shooter did not shoot at his assigned target but shot diagonally across the range at a target that was not his target.

If, for instance, he was on the extreme right lane and shot at the extreme left target (for whatever reason) there is a solid chance that the bullet-stopping berm did not extend far enough to back-stop the bullet. That degree of noncompliance to instruction is dangerous. The coach did the right thing and told the kid to not come back. It will also get you kicked out of any well-run rifle-range in the country.

Inability or unwillingness to follow direction was why Trump's shooter was not allowed on the team. Either that, or the other team members mocked him and he self-selected out.

Adjectives commonly used to describe that kind of behavior are "Defiant", "Oppositional", "Incorrigible", "Anti-social".  Or maybe a lack of ability to understand and process verbal instructions. Or perhaps he is impulsive and highly suggestible, perhaps one of his "buddies" suggested he do something really stupid and he did it.

2 comments:

  1. Agreed.

    The spin miesters are going to work now…

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had a junior rifle club (boys & girls over 10 years old) in past days. An occasional boy would think it funny to shoot at the target carrier of his adjacent shooter, which caused it to jerk aside and rip the target with bullet splatter. He got one warning only.
    It takes about 20 minutes to teach a new shooter rules for firearms handling, breathing, sight alignment and trigger squeeze, prone position, and then to start shooting. Girls were the easier ones to teach.
    BTW : hardest problem to diagnose first time I saw it - no bullets on paper at 50 ft. Caused by looking at rear sight with one eye and front sight with the other.

    ReplyDelete

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