Our club just celebrated our annual Picnic Match which tends to be a working affair for the busy bees and fun more most everybody else. The highlight is the side Kid’s match where the parents are encouraged to bring the little ones to shoot a variety of .22 caliber weapons against targets that provide immediate feedback like spinners and such. It is grueling work for whomever gets stuck with running it, but it is satisfactory at the same tome to see youngins just rip round after round of ammunition and beat the lights out of those spinners.

My personal highlight was to see the face of absolute joy of a girl who had never fired a gun before, connecting with her target for the first time. The combination of surprise, joy and pride was just perfect. In fact the girls were scary in their their dedication and accomplishment. They took the “task” seriously spinning targets with an almost boring regularity but they never got bored themselves, they just had that fierce determination to bet the heck out of brothers, cousins, friends and acquaintances.

The club is not a “serious” club by any means. But the Picnic Match gives it a more relaxed tone once a year. With range space a premium in South Florida, to be able to just take it easy, shoot a couple of IDPA stages, have lunch, take a raffle, BS a while and then get back to shooting.

A Rainbow coalition (whites, blacks, hispanic, orientals and some undetermined breeds were present) of armed citizens enjoyed a day of shooting with family and friends. No crimes were committed, no fistfights, no stabbings, no rapes, no crimes even though 75% of those present had a gun affixed to their waist. Intelligentsia says this was not supposed to happen, that a concentration of guns like this mixed with kids is a recipe for disaster, that bodies must fall bleeding profusely by bullet holes specially since there was an <gasp> “assault rifle” in the mix.

I am guessing Intelligentsia is wrong and has been wrong for a long long time.