Why Golf?

The May 8th issue of Time Magazine has a great article from journalist Elizabeth Keenan who has been shooting for about 3 months. There is even a nice picture of her with her Lee Enfield. She makes two great statements in the thing. First, a statement from one of her shooting instructors:

It's got all the Zen you could want.

Good accurate shooting requires you to be in good shape and and to know yourself. You can't think too much or too little. It is just you, the target and the sights (or more importantly the front sight.) To drive this point home she mentions another zenlike sport.

Golf has targets just as small and distant—and makes people just as obsessive. The difference with shooting is that, well, you do it with guns. And bullets. Which were invented for one purpose: war.

I have also used the phrase "golf with explosions" to describe why I enjoy shooting so much. But that is equating shooting arts with sports. Granted they may be sports, but they are not just sports. While challenging and fun, most importantly shooting is a martial art in the truest sense. Unlike practicing swordplay (which I also dabble in) or Karate or most of other "martial" arts, shooting sports are still the arts of war. Not medieval warfare, but modern war. This makes them something especially useful to know.