Jeff Cooper on The Nanny State

January 2005 - "We happen upon two somewhat different conclusions from our friends down there in Iraq. On the one hand, our selected riflemen are scoring very well, sometimes at long range but mainly at inner-city distances. On the other, we are bedeviled by reports that the people we send over there are basically unfamiliar with rifle shooting. This may be so, and if so, it may be attributed to the increasing urbanization of our culture, in which there are large numbers of young men who have never touched a weapon of any kind (possibly excepting a baseball bat) prior to putting on a soldier suit.

This may be a reflection of the 'nanny state,' in which a large proportion of young men have no fathers at home. Even if there is a man around the house, he is usually not a father figure. If he does not know anything about firearms, he is unlikely to have anything useful to hand on to his sons. This need not always be the case, of course, since my own father, who was expert in many things from viticulture to epic poetry, never owned a gun of his own and had to be educated by his sons."