Vandal With a Handle

It is amazing how much we can learn about religion from nonadherents. Nonadherents? Listen to me. The mere use of such a word indicates how far we have come. Or descended. Once they were heretics, unbelievers, infidels, the worldly and unbelieving masses. Now we speak of nonadherents. What once was an actual stance in the world is now a simple negation. Maybe unbelief means nothing because belief does too. Fred has his commonly unsettling and enlightening thoughts here. On a somewhat related topic, he speaks of science and religion here with his thoughts made more interesting because he has no vested interest in religion and some in science.

I didn't know much about Sandy Froman, the Arizona lawyer who is currently serving as president of the NRA. Via The Geek, I learned of this article about her life and perspective on several things, among them firearms and personal defense. He also has a good gun show story that tells more than you might think at first about the empowerment factor and personal confidence that accompanies firearms. I say it accompanies firearms because it does not come from them. It belongs commonly to the people who own firearms but does not come from them. As Jeff Cooper is well known to have observed, you are no more armed because you have a firearm than you are a musician because you have a piano. If you read both selections, you can contrast the helpless distress of Sandy Froman in the description of her experience with a home invader, with the quiet, let's-go-to-work confidence of the people at the gun show. One of the most memorable parts of my Gunsite training was not directly about firearms at all. It was the instruction that when evil does rear its head in a person's experience, there are two possible responses. One is surprise and denial--they say, "I can't believe this is happening to me. What can I do?" The other is confidence and awareness of empowerment--"I thought this might happen and I can do what needs to be done. "