…makes me an Active American.
No, seriously. I saw it in Forbes, so it must be true.
So it appears that Americans are getting a little more active. A report released May 23 by the Physical Activity Council, made up of eight sports industry associations, found the number of inactive Americans dropped to 81.6 million in 2015, down from 82.7 million in 2014, which was the highest number the survey had found. “Inactive” means someone participate in zero out of 104 designated activities over the course of a year, which means if you do one of them once, you’re active for the purpose of this survey, though not for the purpose of a healthy life.
While it’s good news that more people are getting active, those in the sports industry are not celebrating, and not just because celebrating would undermine their causes of putting more physical education in schools and getting a law passed that would allow people to use pre-tax medical accounts to cover their own and their children’s fitness and sports-related fees, and their cause of getting more people to spend more money on athletic gear (an urgent cause, as the coming demise of Sports Authority makes clear).
PHIT America, another sports industry group, put out its own release on the Physical Activity Council’s research and noted that a lot of the increase in activity was due to one thing: guns.
From PHIT America:
* 46% of all the growth came from people using firearms — shooting (sport clays), shooting (trap/skeet), hunting (hand gun), and target shooting (handgun)
* Four of the top eight growth activities for 1+ time participants were with people using firearms
There’s more at the link, of course.
So! I learned something new today. If you pick up that gun you bought because Obama wants to ban them, dust it off, take it out and use it, you can do more than just make Obama and Hillary cry – worthy as that cause certainly is. For some reason you can also make executives in the sporting goods industry shed a frustrated tear as well, by doing just what they say they want you to do.
And here I thought you were going to write how shooting a squirrel with a .44 magnum would technically result in little bits of flesh and fur none of which would be usable. :^) One thing I like about this post is the ability to make the gang that couldn’t shoot straight in Washington weep in frustration seeing their edicts go down the drain.
Okay, I’ve a Magnum Rodent story to tell.
My father (aka “Pop”) and I went ground-hog shooting several years back. He was using a .223, I use using a Rugar Blackhawk .41 magnum; original iron sights..
Pop took everything over 100 yards; I got the targets this side of the barb-wire fence. (100 yds)
When Pop hit a hog with the .223, it would fly up in the air about 3 feet, spin around 3 times, and open up like a frisbie (significant Red Cloud Of Fury moment).
When I hit one with the magnum pistol, it would fly up in the air about 2 feet … and there was a little bit of skin on each side of the torso with a 3″-4″ hole in the middle. No spin, just head/limbs/ excavated fur and a red plume in the background.
Not sure which was the more humane, but at least the farmer on whose land we were hunting didn’t have to use poison. The hawks and eagles thanked us.
The coyotes liked us, too. Until our next visit. But that’s another story.
But at the same time elevates you up a few notches on the terrorist watchlist.