Disaster Skills #1: Firearm safety
Some colleagues and I have been reading up on disaster preparedness. Modern day society is a very complex and fragile system that could collapse at any time. Someone once said that man is only 3 meals from barbarism, and it only takes the loss of power, an epidemic, or food and water shortages to cause a partial or complete breakdown in so-called civilized society. As more of our resources get scarcer and natural disasters get more prevalent, which some believe will happen as climate change accelerates, the possibilities of a breakdown of society increase. The media often grapples with this issue, usually in a sensationalist way, but if you wade through the hype you can find some informative TV shows on disaster preparedness.
OK, so this all sounds very grim and depressing. Actually I have a lot of faith in humanity over the long term, I really do, but I think that we will face some severe challenges as a species before we ascend to the next level, hopefully one in which we bring our societies back more in line with the needs of nature and the planet. We can’t rape its resources forever. Like insurance policies, I believe it is only prudent for each of us to recognize the possibility of a social disaster and prepare for it. What have you got to lose?
So, this year, we all decided that each month we were going to engage in learning a skill that might help us in dire times, and just might broaden our minds and allow us to have fun too. 
Working on the basis that the USA is a gun-mad culture and that given a social breakdown or lack of food and water or other resources, the crazies with the guns are going to seize control, or at least wreak havoc; it made sense to us to learn basic firearm safety and proficiency. Now I’m not a proponent of guns at all. I would be totally happy if they didn’t exist in modern society. I would love not to have to think that my future safety, or that of those I love, depends on understanding firearms. But that is a little naive in my view. The USA has guns and there are a lot of people, good and bad, that own them.
So, we recently went to a local gun range and received excellent training in the safe handling, loading, disarming and firing of handguns. We fire various types of automatics, from 9mm to .45’s. It was an education and a skill set that I now have, but hope never to have to use. At the risk of destroying all the disclaimers in this article, I must admit we had a lot of fun.
