Dr. Memnus Lagbane Soultooth the Mad

I shot my first full FITA, today, in preparation for shooting my second full FITA at the tournament this weekend. It turns out that 144 arrows in a day is a lot, and the fingers of my left hand are not happy about it. Things I learned:

- The secret to shooting well at close distances is to first shoot at farther distances. Every time I moved the target closer, it just looked so big!
- Keep your anchor in the same place, goddammit, and you can in fact be competetive. But not if it keeps drifting to the side.
- There is no forgiveness for bad sighting at 90 meters. There is only looking for arrows.

So. My goal for the tournament this weekend is 1000, even if the score needed to really be competetive is more like 1200. My goal for the next month is to shoot better at USIACs than this weekend.

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I've always been in favor of gun control, and fairly strict gun control at that. I grew up in an area where hunters would drive by on the way to national forest land and shoot at our "No Tresspassing" signs for practice; deer were ambivalent neighbors that were to be acknowledged and driven past, not shot. I feel a small-caliber handgun is the most firepower necessary for self-defense; even that is powerful enough to give an attacker a brain injury or sucking chest wound, with less chance of collateral damage or losing control from the kick. The idea of citizens having military-grade weapons for a "well-prepared militia" strikes me as nothing more than archaic with modern warfare. So I'd support any law that would usefully¹ reduce the number of firearms in circulation.

Yet I've taken up a sport that involves shooting things with a deadly weapon. How do I reconcile this?

First. The hunting matter. Hunting with a gun is hardly fair. Neither is bow hunting, but at least all the kinetic energy in an arrow came from the shooter - through rather a lot of mechanical advantage, on a compound bow, but from the shooter nevertheless. (Someone who hunted strictly with spears would be a hunter I'd truly respect.) Also, arrows need as much or more care and attention as a bow, and last for hundreds of uses; bullets come in a box and are gone after the shot.

Second. Street violence. This seems to be the primary focus of gun control, or at least its publicity campaigns. Heh - good luck concealing a bow and quiver, no matter how baggy your pants are. Enforcing a drug deal with a bow would be, while amusing, useless.

Third. Child safety. This is the other big attack angle for gun control activists, with horror stories of children finding loaded guns. I think gun safes and/or locks are an acceptable resolution to this, but my weapon of choice has no such danger. It takes a considerable amount of strength and leverage to string my bow, and an unstrung bow is no more dangerous than a table leg. (Broadheads are another matter, and should be treated with at least as much child security as kitchen knives.) It's not difficult to injure oneself with a bow, either stringing or strung, but it is difficult to make that injury life-threatening. Loose strings pose a choking hazard, I suppose, but really, what doesn't?

So. Those are my current justifications for the slightly-conflicting viewpoints I find myself in. They've been bouncing around a bit, and I think writing them out has settled them for the most part.

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¹ I'm vaguely aware with the idea that making guns illegal or licensed on paper does very little to get them off the streets. But I'm not aware of any attempt to control guns at the point of production.

I think my string needs replacing.

(Background: A bowstring actually consists of four strings. The main one that goes from end to end has three little strings wrapped around it called servings: one on each end to protect the loops over the bow tips, and one in the middle that the arrow clicks onto. There's also a bead on the middlie serving to mark where exactly the string goes; location of this nocking point is one of the more subtle and annoying parts of bow tuning.)

I noticed on Monday that the center serving was coming vaguely unwound, but didn't think anything much of it and shot anyway - horribly wildly, nowhere near as consistently as I should be shooting. Today, I pulled the point off and massaged the serving until it was even again, then went back to shooting, and immediately saw the difference. What worries me is that it will do this again - start coming apart during or immediately before a competition, when I can't take five minutes to fiddle with it.

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Not apropos of anything, State Indoor full results came out. I was sixth, but a full 40 points behind fifth.

Been doing nothing of (public) note for the last week or so. Just bumming around. Starting Thursday or so though, I started getting sinus headaches. Nothing serious, but the usual "sudden movement ow" sort of headache. Today, it had migrated out of sinus-pressure land and solidly into my nose, with a little in my throat too. So I'm breathing through about a quarter of the usual space allocated for the task, and occasionally coughing. Meanwhile, I have to move back onto campus tomorrow, and start classes on Tuesday. If this doesn't go away FAST it's going to make my life hellish.

Ugh. Sleep.

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Well, here goes nothing.

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