Non ci sono abbastanza proiettili per tutti i bersagli che li meriterebbero

Non ci sono abbastanza proiettili per tutti i bersagli che li meriterebbero is a hard-edged family maxim that links the narrator’s father’s convictions to the narrator’s own inheritance. Set against a precarious life on a small sheep farm, the saying gives violent force to a worldview passed down alongside patriotic pride.

The remembered maxim

The narrator recalls the sentence as one of the father’s firm convictions: there were more targets deserving bullets than bullets to shoot them. Its absolute phrasing turns grievance into a general rule, but the passage does not identify every target the father had in mind. The line is presented not as a passing outburst but as a settled belief.

Inheritance and setting

The narrator says the father’s convictions were inherited one by one, together with his patriotism. That inheritance takes shape in a household living on what little remained of its sheep operation: fifty acres, mostly steppe, in the San Joaquin Valley between Salinas to the west and Bakersfield to the south. The family included the father, his older brother, disabled in a different war, and the narrator; others had abandoned them, and were never discussed.

The maxim’s force

The surrounding account recalls the father’s hatred of predatory birds that swooped down on the livestock, and describes migrating crows darkening the sky. This context places the maxim beside the practical vulnerability of the farm, without reducing its broad language to a specific threat. Its importance lies in the way it carries an inherited habit of judgment: the father’s certainty becomes part of the narrator’s own outlook, even as the silent absence of those who left remains part of the same family history.