Just for Fun: Talk and Tactical Shooting in Southern Saskatchewan

Abstract

This article gives an ethnographic account of a group of Canadians who feel invested in recreational gun use, by examining their narratives and social relations created through the practice of shooting “just for fun.” This is the result of fieldwork with a group of men who practice a specialized form of marksmanship called tactical shooting in southern Saskatchewan. In this research, narrative “talk” emerges as a social glue for tactical shooters, which I analyze using Michael Herzfeld’s concepts of poetics and performance. These men’s storytelling is discussed as a means of collaboratively creating and enacting a worldview and a sense of shared identity. I argue that stories enable shooters to build a sense of togetherness in a context where they often feel misunderstood, both by more conventional shooters and by broader society. In this group, tactical shooting is not merely a leisurely pursuit – something done “just for fun” – it is a social occasion for dramatic storytelling which produces distinctive selves, relations, and comradeship.