Gun-toting shopping is sheer lunacy

Recently, Target stores released a memorandum asking folks not to shop at Target whilst totin’ guns. This trend, demonstrating one’s right to bear arms in shopping malls and fast-food restaurants, is utterly absurd.

Our country struggles to extricate our weary warriors from the violence of perpetual war in the Middle East, where we’ve haplessly refereed continuing stone-age religious squabbles. Now, here at home, we have to endure “patriotic” pistol-packers at Target and elsewhere?

This isn’t the “freedom” Americans fought for. It’s nonsense Americans put up with.

I’m a gun owner, as many a departed feral pig and a few late quail would attest. Our wedding gala in 1999 offered golf, cranberry picking, historical house tours and skeet shooting — only after hiring a qualified L.L. Bean instructor to assist. It was at a proper range in Richmond — not in our backyard. Many partook of their first shooting experience — and had great fun. Henceforth, it was known as our “shotgun wedding.”

I respect the right to purchase and own a gun — after a thorough background check. Last winter, I gave my grandson a .410 shotgun for his 12th birthday, as his fifth seemed a tad premature. I respect the rights of the NRA, although I might vehemently disagree with their views and tactics.

But there comes a time when sane people recognize and differentiate intelligent behavior from sheer lunacy.

Or perhaps I should say “once upon a time” sane people recognized and differentiated intelligent behavior from sheer lunacy.

But not anymore, it seems.

Buddy Doyle

Gardiner