Here's what I've always wondered:
Guns, like other precision hardware (e.g. keyboards), can be things of beauty, and there's obviously a lot of interesting history and esoterica involved in 'em.
But the attraction to "shooting sports"—where does it stop and start? Is it just the appeal of good machinery, competition, comraderie, improving strength and skills, and of course getting to wear ear protection?
Or does it have its basis in our primal desire to kill and destroy stuff, to reassure the pre-cooperative, pre-civilization parts of our brains that we have the power, if need be, to forcefully assert our own interests over those of others and survive no matter what?
I'm just wondering, you know, where it lands on the evolutionary scale, generally speaking.