As a kid, I loved shooting a rifle with my uncle, out back at my grandmother’s farmhouse. My dad and I would go out with Uncle Bill, in his ubiquitous plaid flannel and hunting cap, and my cousin. We’d set a tin can on a stump. Uncle Bill would show me, holding the rifle firm into the crook of his shoulder and aiming at the can. He mumbled a bit around the cigarette that hung out of the corner of his mouth in those years, before he got scared enough to quit. He explained the