Queen Elizabeth Knows Her Way Around A Rifle

Okay, I know the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Weekend will include a Derby - I mean, a Darby - a Piccadilly Big Jubilee Lunch, a pageant of fancy carriages, a thousand-boat flotilla in which the Queen will ride in a barge fitted with two tons of gold leaf, and lots more stuff along those lines.

My wife is enthralled by it all. I, however, am a more flinty republican who doesn't enjoy that sort of royal display.

But the Queen has got me by the way she handled that SA-80 service rifle during a visit to a UK military base the other day. She wasn't just posing. That's a good natural grasp she has on the rifle's foregrip. I'll bet she has fired many a fine side-by-side shotgun on country holidays in Scotland, and the familiarity shows. She is really working that optical sight, too, not just looking over it. Of course, the Queen is a World War II Territorial Army veteran, after all.

Good for her. There are other Heads of State who are less than half her age but couldn't handle the politician's obligatory manly photo-op nearly so well. Seriously. I am not kidding. Some of them are more metrosexual than the Queen, and that's even allowing for her white gloves and elegant hat.