Letters.

On Target

I wanted to thank Abigail Kohn for her delightfully refreshing expose of the "gun culture" ("Their Aim Is True," May). Though I was not technically raised in the gun culture, I was exposed to shooting and hunting by my grandfather. I'm fascinated by the clever mechanical engineering of today's firearms, and also with the wisdom of our founding fathers in crafting the Second Amendment.

I'm not really a hunter--I feed the deer in my backyard about 150 pounds of corn a week--but I take considerable pleasure in developing the skills involved in shooting accurately. Though I've yet to explore Cowboy Action Shooting, I have been dabbling in International Defensive Pistol Association activities, which provide definite skill-building and camaraderie.

In my experience, those involved in shooting sports are as heterogeneous a group as can be imagined. I've tried to explain my interests to my more liberal friends. But they've managed to so thoroughly demonize lumps of metal and wood that they just can't begin to understand. I intend to share your piece with those skeptics, and see if your eloquent and--forgive me--disarming approach might work where mine failed.

Peter P. Henry

Spearfish, SD

Abigail Kohn's article is the most well-written discussion of the "gun culture" that I have ever read. I am a second-year student at the University of Virginia School of Law, and I wish I could get my classmates to read it. I was in the military for almost eight years and attended an undergraduate institution in Kansas, so I was quite surprised at the open hostility I faced in law school once it was discovered that I owned guns.

To make matters worse, my fellow students seemed disgusted that I was a National Rifle Association member and taught firearms instruction at the local range. I had a very difficult time going from an environment where all of my closest friends were fellow gun enthusiasts to one where guns were thought to be inherently evil. Kohn's article confirmed that my friends and I aren't as abnormal as the up-and-coming lawyers at my school believe. I look forward to reading her book on American gun enthusiasts.

Bill Zawrotny

Charlottesville, VA

I read Abigail Kohn's article with interest, surprise, and enjoyment. I got out of a highly specialized Navy unit in 1971, convinced that, having survived the Vietnam war, I wasn't ever going to need a weapon again. Unfortunately, the United States was a more dangerous place for me than Vietnam. It...