It's time to retire the shotgun
If the terror and murders of innocent people in Paris have not shocked you, you are too callous to understand why I am writing this blog entry. Stop reading now - I don't wish to insult your (lack of) humanity.
I am an advocate for stronger gun laws in our country. We don't seem to be able to stem violence any other way than to try and prevent those with violent tendencies or misperceived reasons to commit violence, from easily obtaining their weapon of choice - military grade automatic and semi-automatic weapons. I'm pretty sure that our country's forefathers, who brilliantly drafted our Constitution, did not have this in mind when they wrote the second amendment. If people want to commit violence and terror with the 20-gauge, single shot shotgun I had when I was younger, go for it. By the time they shoot, open, eject, and reload a new shell, there would be nothing left in the area to shoot. Or nothing left of them.
It is that shotgun image that got me thinking as I was preparing an email and web page for a client that is holding a Thanksgiving Day golf event. The "shotgun" start is ubiquitous in the golf industry lingo. It implies a simultaneous start of golfers placed on tee boxes around the course. It infers that a shotgun blast will be used to signify the start of play, that the head pro will stand next to the first tee with a 12-gauge pump and blast off a shell into the air, so all can hear.
Does this really happen? Maybe, at some unenlightened golf facilities. But I highly doubt it.
So it is that I had trouble typing out "shotgun" in the email and on the web page. I think it is time to eliminate the term from golf. We could use "Simul-start." Or "In sync-start" (with apologies to the boy band). Or "concurrent start." Maybe something more high-minded, like "synchronal start." How about "simul-tee", or "tee-sync." And there is always the clearly explanatory, "You're all going to tee off at the same time, on different holes."
I'm likely to be accused of stepping over the political correctness line. Too bad. The 128 people who died in Paris could give a flying fuck about political correctness. We can keep our minds in the '50s and '60s, or we can wise up to the realities of the world we now live in. In the grand scheme of things, eliminating "shotgun" from the golf lexicon is like removing a pebble from a beach. But, we have to start somewhere.
This blog was written without flying any miles on United.