Ritual de lo Habitual.

Some years back, when we were deer hunting out on Byron's old family land, it was observed that MattG used his turn signals so habitually that he was signaling turns on rutted sandy single-tracks, on private property, with not another moving vehicle for over a mile in any given direction. We all agreed, however, that it was a good habit to have.

I was reminded of this when people commented on the video from our little Blackwater field trip last summer; a lot of folks described Todd Jarrett's gun-handling as borderline OCD, with his chamber checks every time he juiced up the gun, and they said it as though it was a bad thing.

When I juice up the gun administratively, I check the chamber. When I pick up a pistol that has been out of my control or observation, such as when I get dressed in the morning, I check the chamber. Now, does that mean that I think that gremlins have sneaked in and unloaded my heater overnight? No it means I check because I always check; this is the purpose behind things like safety checklists for everything from pistols to Piper Cubs to pebble-bed nuclear reactors, you are removing the question of "Do I or don't I?" from the loop. You do. Period.

This is tied in to another thing I often read on the internet "You carry a gun to the (grocery store/restaurant/nice neighborhood/sewing circle/whatever)?" No, I don't. As Kathy Jackson phrased it so well, I don't carry a gun "to" anyplace; I just carry a gun. I put the gun on in the morning with no more emotional freighting or special foresight than my shoes. In fact, probably less, because I may wear different shoes, but I always carry the same gun.

When I put my shoes on, I did not run though a complex internal calculus of "Well, there's a 'No shirt, No shoes, No service' sign at the bank, and I think I have to wear them at the grocery store, too. On the other hand, it's warm out, and I could put those errands off and not wear shoes today..." I just put my shoes on. It's the default state, just like putting the pistol in the holster on my belt. As I go through the day, I don't constantly think about my shoes, and whether I might "need" them at my next stop. Ditto, the gun.

What makes this hard for some people to understand is that, to them, a gun is an object of heavy totemic significance. They have not been exposed to firearms except via the entertainment industry or the six o'clock news, where they are constantly being used to deal death and mayhem, whereas I've been around them more or less constantly for my entire adult life and they've mostly just sat there. An object that to many people contains heavy emotional freighting is about as significant or shocking to me as an ashtray or a steak knife (to name a couple of other frequently-used murder weapons,) and I think this is the source of the massive disconnect between viewpoints. What to do about it? You got me, there; I haven't a clue.