Typically I like to focus on the lighter side of shooting sports. It's fun, enlightening, enjoyable and something we all can relate to. There is a darker side of course, which is why I titled this blog entry the same as Wayne LaPierre's article in the September 2010 American Rifleman, p. 12.
Thanks to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights my opinion [still] counts for as much as any US citizen's, so I offer it for consideration. Being that this is a blog and not a dissertation I'll try to be brief and skip the dry stuff. (Remember my promise to try not to nerd it up...too much?)
Let's start with a quote from Justice Stevens in Wayne's article:
"...[T]he experience of other advanced democracies, including those that share our British heritage, undercuts the notion that an expansive right to keep and bear arms is intrinsic to ordered liberty...it is silly - indeed arrogant - to think that we have nothing to learn about liberty from billions of people beyond our borders."
-Justice Stevens
Um...I think we have learned...quite well in fact, from billions of people beyond our boarders and thousands of years of recorded history. That's how the republic, America, and the Second Amendment came to be. Ignoring and not learning from the richness of history, including that shared with our British heritage, is silly - indeed naive - to think that the founders didn't have an advanced understanding of liberty from first hand experience. I think they understood liberty with such clarity they were willing to die for it, as many Americans have been since. What was inspired, debated and crafted was a gift to us all. A gift that limits the power of government over the people, but not the people over their government.
Recently when I was in Maryland I saw a District of Columbia license plate that read, Taxation Without Representation. With a few exceptions, I haven't felt represented in a while either. In this election year exercise power over your government and take care to identify and elect true representatives of good character, preserving the inalienable rights of all Americans. It is your right and duty to vote.
Remember, sometimes progress means turning around and heading back in the direction you came from.
In shooting sports you don't have to buy a beautiful piece of furniture, spending thousands of dollars, to go out and have fun. "Ugly" guns can do you proud too. Shooting sports can be affordable and fun even in Illinois.
