I love watching the Winter Olympics, and I love it even more in the era of multiple channels and internet streaming because it gives me a chance to watch some biathlon.
The sport, which rarely makes an appearance on flagship NBC, combines two skills I grew up with: cross country skiing and shooting. Its roots are traced back to the Scandinavian tradition of hunting on skis, with the Norwegians developing skiskyting (ski shooting) clubs to promote national defense in the latter 1800s.
Today’s competitors use specialized .22 target rifles — their greatest skill being the ability to overcome a pounding heart after the exertions of fast skiing and hitting a row of five small targets. Each miss means an extra penalty lap before getting back on the main course, and that means lost time.
The .22s used in Olympic biathlon today are far different than the rifles those past Norwegians and Swedes slung across their backs while hunting for wolves or moose — or training for possibly heading off to, say, Russians or Germans in the winter forest.
Just as the biathlon rifle is several variations away — not least in ballistic capability — from what most of the world calls an assault rifle.
Yet I’ve read about some discussion, after the latest shooting massacre in the United States occurred in Florida, on whether shooting sports belong in the Olympics. The suggestion seemed to be that shooting of any kind is no longer acceptable at the Games, that it has roots in militarism and merely is another projection of the “gun culture.”
Such are the times — that a specialized competition firearm, of the small caliber that generations have used to plink bottles and cans, can be pulled into the conversation about gun violence and accessibility of military-style semiautomatic rifles in the U.S.
As a lifetime hunter and shooter, I know and have shared the defensiveness that arises in the emotional aftermath of senseless outrages like the Florida high school massacre last week. The incredible failures that occurred on so many levels to stop it are difficult to even comprehend, and they are easy arguments to grab at when one’s own sporting heritage — or for some, the ability to protect one’s property and family — are perceived to be under attack.
But while I think it’s ludicrous for an Olympic sport involving a .22 rifle to be questioned because of a general fear of guns, I also can’t dogmatically oppose some measures that might keep AR-15-style weapons out of the hands of someone with murderous intent.
For me, it’s gone too far.
There are too many genies out of the bottle in regard to the overall causes of mass shootings — mental illness, drugs, seething anger, broken families and chaotic lives, social isolation, numbness to the effects of violence and, yes, the oftentimes absurd glorification of weaponry and firepower — for gun-rights absolutists to still utterly reject any contribution to possible solutions.
To put it another way: Like it or not, we’re all in this together.
The SAFE Act, which was too extreme itself, took away my right to choose regarding AR-style rifles — New York gun owners in many ways are bystanders in the debate. But if given a say, I would be OK with measures such as a longer, more thorough background check, possibly even a permit system to buy a new AR.
I could live with that — particularly if I knew that someone, somewhere could live because the law helped keep one out of the hands of a Nikolas Cruz.
(Jim Eckstrom is executive group editor of Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)
