Albanian Camping

I went to school with a myriad of ethic identities. There was African, Saudi Arabian and Iraqi to name a few. The person I remember most was the Albanian lady. I was fascinated by her tales of life in Albania, it's such a little known place that I couldn't help but be.

One of her best tales was the one about her camping. It seems all Albanian kids went to summer camps. There, they fished and swam, hiked and boated. They also learned how to use assault weapons.

She told me how they'd get up each morning and put their assault weapons together, then have breakfast and go for a morning hike. When they came back, it was off to the shooting range where they practiced killing Capitalists. Then lunch. Swimming. More shooting.

Supper followed by camp songs. Communist camp songs and before they went to bed, they'd take apart their weapons and clean them.

When I told my brother about this, he had a laughing fit. The image of children shooting at Capitalist was amusing to him. But it occurred to me that such a camp wouldn't be out of place in modern America.

Now I know that us Canadians don't really like handguns. But we do have a lot of rifles in the rural communities. But America is running a risk of being invaded. There's the terror threat from outside people plus the threat from home grown terrorists.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to teach young Americans, well, what the hell, Canadians, too, how to handle weapons safely, how to fire them, how to clean them. Mostly, how to be responsible. Because isn't the main problem with guns the people who aren't responsible and just use them as an inappropriate acting out prop.

We've just had a guy in Vancouver gunning a couple. Irresponsible.

Anyway, it's just a thought that maybe a fun way to learn responsible fire-arm handling wouldn't be amiss in a Capitalist country.