About four miles southeast of Shepherd, Michigan sits a stretch of public hunting ground owned by the State of Michigan. A talkative, 69-year-old man parks his truck just off an access road, and sets up a paper target, with a small bucket of cans and plastic bottles in the backseat. He sets up the target — a simple cardboard sign with clean white paper plates used for bull’s eyes, and one plastic bottle. He removes a small, concealable pistol and an old, well-maintained revolver from two cloth cases, and loads both with ammunition.
He takes the revolver, lines it up to the target, and five burnt holes show up within millimeters of each other on a plate. Another shot rings out, and the plastic bottle is launched off the ground about two feet.
For Frederick Bentley, this is a regular activity he does to improve his shooting skill through practice, and have some fun while doing it.
“Shooting is good entertainment,” Bentley said. “If anything else, its a good way to just waste time and kill a few pop cans.”
This sport of shooting at makeshift targets for practice and entertainment is sometimes called plinking, and Bentley does it between hunting seasons with various firearms.
For many residents of Michigan, plinking and hunting are a popular pastime, especially in rural areas of Central and Northern Michigan. According to MLive, 29 percent of Michigan residents own firearms, many are pistols and small arms. Some of these gun enthusiasts, hunters, and gun owners have concern related to a recent spike in activism for gun control.
After multiple schools shootings in the last few years, like the one in Parkland, Florida in February, an increase of gun violence protests throughout the country was seen.
According to the New York Times, many gun rights activists groups, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), oppose the support for stricter gun control. Many members of these groups and other gun owners are concerned about the negative impact increased gun control may affect them.
However, according to opinion writer and anchor Carol Costello, many gun owners support stricter gun control to limit ownership and accessibility of assault weapons.
According to the Washington Post, 67 percent of Americans support stricter gun control, and 66 percent support a ban on assault weapons. Many gun owners would like stricter measures to prevent access to guns for people unable to handle firearms properly.
“In the right hands, [firearms] are not bad,” Roe said. “I think they need to make it a bit stricter to buy guns. When I turned 21, I went and bought my first pistol; I was in and out of there in two hours. If you had to go through two weeks or four weeks of background checks… maybe then we won’t have so many problems with the way people are treating guns nowadays.”
Bentley, who has been an NRA member nearly his entire life, actually supports strict gun control measurements.
“If they took all the guns off the street and gone out to collect every one of them, I’m for it… as long they let me check mine out to go hunting.”
The Working Title Blog 