I won’t make any assumptions about your background, TEK, but here are some facts to dispel your assumptions about mine.

I have fired guns in recreational settings including skeet shooting and am not in the habit of “filling in the blanks” with my own assumptions. I value logic and facts, and if I don’t know the facts, I do research and consult with experts — probably a hold-over from my days as a trial attorney, which is also where I picked up reasoning by analogy and deductive reasoning.

And as a trial attorney, I represented people in criminal and civil courts on both sides of shootings: the shooters and the victims. In most cases, ballistics issues arose, and I consulted with and hired gun experts. The experts were men who’d served in the military and as State Police officers. They also served as state police gun safety instructors and had engaged in their own training. I learned a lot about gun mechanics and about accidental and intentional shootings from these men.

I was good at skeet shooting because I have naturally good hand-eye coordination and because someone taught me how to aim. Learning how to aim one gun is not very different from learning how to aim another gun. You can shoot using the gun’s sights, or without using the sights. The NRA -funded class taught Cruz the fundamentals of taking aim and hitting a target, and he used those skills to kill 17 people.