You bring up a point I have always found truly fascinating: the concept that our anthropological history as becoming the most successful killer, the most ingenious, the superpredator - bar none - is somehow to be viewed with horror and disavowed vehemently in today's society.
It has become unfashionable to celebrate that genetic fact in recent decades as blatently socialistic forces have encroached and are reaching for dominance in mass media. A simple sociological overview on your part will bear this out, as you compare even just television programs from the mid-50's to today. The result has been just as obvious: tell someone a lie often enough and it will eventually supplant the truth.
Beyond my study of firearms, I pursue martial arts, edged weapons, history, philosophy, art history and music as related fields. My reasoning is simple. An intelligent and diverse human is predisposed to curiosity to the surroundings, to the signs of other predators, to the achievements of culture, to the horrors of our shared past. Insight and depth gained from such studies yields an enhanced command of language and conceptual nuance - and that delivers the consciousness to new heights of perception.
Consider - without the evolved facilities to express one's self, anthropologists believe that the capacity for intelligence is inherently restricted in humans.
What has this to do with your subject? Simple. The suprepredator/human possesses the intellectual depth to secure a measure of safety from other superpredator/humans. The strong prey on the weak, both individually and as organized cultures when the stakes are survival and the accumulation of physical goods deemed either desirable or necessary to insure or accentuate some envisioned quality of life.
It is not wrong to be strong, to pursue the arts of war - it is the human birthright.
It has been my experience to discover the more I study and train, the more I value not only my life but the lives of others, both locally and far beyond. I have discovered real calm and peace to be in my heart, even when confronted by some consumed by pathological hatred - for I understand very well just how fragile their life is should the threat escalate to my being unable to escape without using the skills (with the tools - both material and mental) of war to secure my safety.
Contemporary media, in its' pursuit of advertizing and with its' cheerful disregard of reality delivers hyperbole and fantasy in popular entertainment. That you mention a concern for weapons fire in a pressurized aircraft highlights this. A study of physics wwould immediately dispel your concersn, as would converstaions with pilots who've operated aircraft that have sustained astonishing structural damage - and no lives were lost. Such images as you express concern over are more often found in science fiction/fantasy screenplays.
Personally, I find life far more interesting, sparking more curiosity and delight as I am able to live freely without the abject fear (or not - if one is in complete denial) bourn of the victim mentality. You see, James, humans are competitive. We strive to out do 'the Jone's' next door. We pursue excellence in every venture to standards of our conscious choosing, likely often compensating for failure in one area with less strenuous achievement in another.
I will never aquiesce and relegate any or all aspects and applications of everyday life that are even fractionally congruent to my safety and security and thus my natural and inherent liberty to another person, civil authority, or theologic dogma - even under duress to comply with a contemporary and popular fad that so deviously and methodically insitst I cherish helplessness, weakness, and thence devoiton to the patriarchial governance of the cattle-herder of the socialist.
There is a wonder to be embraced with relish and joy in achieving and pursuing the legitimacy to stand beside the ghosts of those bloodied patriots, men and women and children, ordinary people, who shook the bedrock of this planet and, for the first time saw simple ideas become the words:
"We, the People. . ."
That's derided today, in public education, in fashionable serialized plays of fiction, even with those who are elected to serve their constituents in our Republic's Capitol. When those firmply penned words are lost today, I hear another voice.
A voice that was also heard around the planet, speaking simple words that made Americans open their eyes and weep with joy, reclaiming their most unique history:
"Lets roll!"
Ask yourself this, James; a hypothetical question and one I pray never comes to pass: were you to see masked terrorists jump out of a van directly in front of you, savagely gunning down a uniformed police officer on patrol in front of a church for a wedding and hear gunfire within the church, with screams fo the wounded rising - would you take up the fallen officer's weapon and unhesitatingly advance to defy the murderers, even at the risk of your own life?
Would you know how to apply the arts of war as an American?
Admittedly, my hypothetical scenario could be argued many ways by many people - so write your own from a review of Angel Shamaya's KeepAndBearArms.com
Liberty is an individual reality, not a bandied concept droned past foggy minds and uncaring, easily distracted hearts during a civics class that involves old guys that've been dead a long time.
It is not bestowed benevolently by a totalitarian government, authorized by a theocratic dogma - it is what makes us completely unique in the entire history of man - and it has incredible, broad, persistent responsibilities.
I've shot a few handguns too: a Colt .357 revolver and a Sig P239 SAS. i've been shooting for about 6 months now, hes been shooting for 3 years, but I usually find that I outshoot him when we go down range 