Yo ho maties!

It’s been an unofficial, underground practice among students at MIT for at least 20 years: Any student who completes courses in pistol, archery, sailing, and fencing is considered a pirate.

But last fall MIT made it official, granting pirate status to six students, with many more expected to follow.

Setting aside for a moment just how incredibly awesome this is: wait a second. MIT, a school in Massachusetts (the cradle and grave of liberty), offers a class in pistol shooting? And:

The four classes are notoriously over-subscribed and online registration begins at 8 a.m. – “when absolutely no MIT students are awake,’’ said Hurwitz.

I did a quick Google search to see what kind of pistols were being used; I did find the course listing, but it didn’t help much. It looks like, from reading the range rules, that this is air guns and .22 rimfire target guns. I also found the MIT Pistol and Rifle Club, the MIT Sport Pistol Club (the competition team) and the MIT Varsity Rifle Club. I had no absolutely no idea MIT had such an active shooting culture: once again, my faith in humanity is restored for the next hour or so.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2012 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Clippings, Geek, Guns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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