Why shooting must be driven by science
On a spring night in 1931, sheriff JH Blair and a team of coal mine security guards, appointed as sheriff’s deputies, broke down the door of Florence Reece’s home in Harlan County, Tennessee. After illegally ransacking her home in pursuit of her husband, who was a union leader and strike organiser, they left. That night she sat down and wrote one of the great American union songs. It begins: “They say in Harlan County there are no neutrals there” before going on to ask “Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on?” Throughout the song that refrain is repeated: “Which side are you on?”
Debates over shooting can seem like that: bitter, polarised and with no ‘neutrals’. Before we are even willing to listen to someone, we want to know ‘which side are you on?’ Of course, there are neutrals, and not
