Guns Are Powerful

Maybe the above observation won't surprise many people, but it's true. I'd never fired a gun until tonight when I went to a shooting range with a few friends, and I have to say it's tough for me to imagine doing that to another person's body. The only way I could ever imagine shooting someone, especially shooting to kill, is if that person was endangering myself or my loved ones. I suppose in some roundabout way our soldiers are protecting their families, and ours, at least in the minds of their civilian commanders, but even in a "him or me" situation I don't think it would be something I could very easily just put behind me. All this is to say that apparently I'm not a trained soldier, but it's also important to point out the stunningly simple fact that putting our soldiers in a place where they have guns shot at them very often and are forced to shoot their guns at other people is about as far from supporting them as you can get.