The stupid behavior of the men in McGuane's Sporting Club

To give you an idea of the stupidity of the men at the fishing/hunting lodge in Thomas McGuane's novel The Sporting Club (1968), they engage not 1 by 3 times in a "duel" with pistols  (this just in the first half of the book). The nasty club member Stanton has a collection of antique pistols; he prods others to duel with him - ten paces, turn, fire, each gets one shot, just as in a Western. In the opening scene of the novel, the protagonist, a more reserved and intelligent character, Quinn, believes they're just playing around and is literally stunned when he feels that he's been shot in the heart and knocked down. Laughingly, Stanton informs Quinn that it's "lust" a wax bullet that he has "poured" himself - but was or not it still had an incredible impact. A shot like that could easily take out someone's eye - plus consider the shock of being hit when you didn't know the pistol was armed. Of course we also learn that Stanton in his gun obsession is also crafting real lead bullets for his pistols - so who wants to bet that before the end of the novel someone gets shot and killed, inadvertently or not. The right and mature way to behave in a situation like this, as anyone who is a true outdoorsman/woman must know, is to say put that pistol down, guns are not to be played with. We are meant to sympathize and empathize with the main character, Quinn, who's a well-meaning victim and who does give his old friend and antagonist, Stanton, a piece of his mind now and then. But he bears complicity; he allows Stanton to act like a child and an idiot - toward the middle of the book, Stanton (we think - not yet clear who did this), in pique against the newly hired club manager, blasts down the dam that holds back water in a retaining pond that controls the water flow into the fishing stream - almsot drowning Quinn in the process - so we have to wonder why Quinn doesn't just abandon his association w/ Stanton, or possibly with the entire club of rich, old, cantankerous men of privilege.