My favorite meme from Facebook about Independence Day showed a fireworks display. The caption said, “Never forget that the lights and booms of our fireworks celebrate the sounds and flashes of muskets, cannon and rockets being fired against those trying to restrict our freedoms.”

Right now, with groups and politicians determined to restrict our 2nd Amendment Rights and groups shouting down speakers they disagree with at colleges and public forums, many of our rights are under attack. When people riot in the streets, destroying property and beating up people for disagreeing with them, we are in danger.

Our 2nd Amendment Rights have never been more important.

Contrary to rants you hear almost daily in the main stream media about me and other NRA members, this is the kind of things we do.

Last Saturday, 220 4-H’ers, grades 7-12, represented 4-H Clubs from 15 counties at one of the Georgia 4-H Northwest District Project S.A.F.E. (Shooting Awareness, Fun, and Education) Modified Trap State Qualification matches. It was held at the Griffin Gun Club and club members assisted with the event and provided clay targets, with help from a Friends of the National Rifle Association (NRA) grant.

The 4-H’ers competed to qualify for the State Modified Trap Target Challenge Weekend Match to be held at the Rock Eagle 4-H Center on May 12. To qualify, 4-H Juniors (grades 7 and 8) must break at least 16 out of 25 clay targets. The 4-H Seniors (grades 9-12) must break at least 20 out of 25 targets.

The targets are thrown, one at a time, by a trap that randomly oscillates up to 45 degrees to the left and right of center and wobbles the elevation from 0-35 degrees. Target speed is from 49-53 mph. Tie-breakers, in the top scores in either age division, require the 4-H’ers to shoot at two targets thrown simultaneously.

One trap throws targets as a near straight away and a second trap throws a target 35-45 degrees left of center. Five pairs of targets are thrown to determine the best scores out of the 10 targets.

The sportsman stands to the left of the trap with a dividing screen set to prevent the 4-Her from being able to see the traps. If additional rounds of doubles become necessary, the shooting station may be moved to the right of the traps or the elevation of the thrown targets may be lowered.

Awards are provided to the top-scoring individuals and to the top-scoring teams of 4-5 members in each of the two age divisions. Each county has 4-H certified coaches who volunteer to help teach the 4-H’ers shotgun safety, handling, and shooting skills. In addition, the 4-H’ers learn life skills such as teamwork, emotional control, task focus, and leadership.

The NRA Foundation was established in 1990. The NRA Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that raises tax-deductible contributions in support of a wide range of firearm-related public interest activities of the National Rifle Association of America and other organizations that defend and foster the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans.

These activities are designed to promote firearm and hunting safety, to enhance marksmanship skills of those participating in the shootings sports, and to educate the public about firearms in their historic, technological, and artistic context. More information about The NRA Foundation can be found online at www.nrafoundation.org.

Want to buy your kids or grandkids a BB gun, take them out in your back yard and teach them gun safety and shooting skills? Not in Spalding County unless you live in an AR-1 Zone if a proposed county ordinance passes. You could not even shoot a bow of any kind in your own yard. Spalding County proposes gun restrictions on law abiding citizens.

The proposed ordinance as originally written, Section 11-1005, has many restrictions on shooing a gun in the county. You probably could not hunt on your own property if you have five acres or less, due to the distances shooting a gun is restricted from property lines. At least it exempts use of a gun for self-defense on your property.

The hearing last Monday night did not get much attention until the last minute, and the ordinance was tabled until the first meeting in May, on May 7th. Apparently, some changes have been made to the original ordinance that restricts shooting firearms within 300 feet of a residence and 150 feet of a property line, but I have not seen the changes in writing.

I am fortunate that my property in Spalding County is large enough that only one of my deer stands is near a property line, and that property is thickly wooded and grown over, with no buildings on it.

Supposedly this ordinance is trying to address “inconsiderate neighbors.” There are already laws that address it. How about enforcing them rather than creating another law to harass neighbors that are not inconsiderate.

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In other news trying to harass gun owners and businesses. Citi Bank will not longer allow its customers to do any business related to guns. I will be mailing them my Citicard since I might be tempted to buy a gun or ammo with it.

Last Friday I mailed my Kroger Plus Card to their headquarters office and mailed the crying towel and face shield with their name on them to Dicks Sporting Goods. Dicks had given me those two things at a Bassmasters Classic a few years ago. I will not visit their booth at this year’s Classic. I also sent an email to Simplisafe about why i would not use their product for my rental houses.

Both packages had the explanation that I wanted nothing to do with businesses that support restricting law-abiding citizens due to the actions of a madman and the failure of law enforcement.

I got a shock when I came home from UGA for Christmas Holidays my freshman year. I was 18 years old and looking forward to quail and squirrel hunting and had brought my 22 Remington Semiautomatic rifle with me. I had it with me, in my dorm room, all fall quarter in Athens.

When I walked into Mr. John Harry’s store to get a box of 22 long rifle bullets he told me he could not sell them to me. The recently passed federal Gun Control Act of 1968 made it illegal for anyone younger than 21 to purchase or possess any ammunition that a pistol could fire, so that included 22 bullets.

Mr. John Harry’s store was one of five in Dearing, and he, like the others, sold everything from hoop cheese and saltines to overalls and boots. He had a selection of hunting and fishing supplies, and I had been buying 22 bullets from him since I was eight years old and got my semiautomatic rifle with an 18-cartridge magazine capacity for Christmas.

The Gun Control Act that cause me silly problems and made me start paying attention to the news about guns, was passed mainly in response to the assignation of John Kennedy. It also outlawed mail order gun purchases. Until that time anyone could go to the Sears catalog and order a gun.

Over the past 50 years since then thousands of gun control laws have been passed at the local, state and federal level. Most are a response to the actions of a madman like Lee Harvey Oswald, and all are equally useless and ineffective, affecting only law-abiding gun owners.

Currently there is a push to do something, anything, even if nothing suggested would have had any effect on the school shooting in Florida. These laws pit law-abiding gun owners like me against those wanting to control me and you and create dissent and bad feelings. And according to the New York Times, of all places, Russians use social media to promote these new laws to disrupt our country.

I was a school teacher and administrator in this area for 29 years, the last seven as principal of the Alternative School in Griffin, so I have some person experience. One year while the whole middle school was out on campus I got a call on my radio from a teacher that a student I had suspended was on the elevated railroad tracks across Experiment Street, waving a rifle.

There was an armed resource officer in my building and he went out the back door as I went to the front door. I got my deer rifle out of my truck. Only the resource officer, i and my secretary that had notarized my permission to have a gun on campus knew I had one.

I was ready to shoot the student, trying to decide to wait until he pointed the rifle at the students trying to get inside the building or wait until he fired. I knew I would be criticized no matter what I did, and probably face legal action.

Fortunately, when the student saw the resource officer, he ran. I don’t think he ever saw me aiming at him. I was spared a terrible decision, but I was not going to let anyone open fire on my students.

I see no way to stop school shootings other than having personnel in the building ready to stop them. Doing “something“ about guns in response to the latest tragedy does nothing to solve the problem.

he latest email from the Brady Bunch begging for donations crows that they are suing the ATF as well as sellers, marketers, and manufacturers of “bump stocks.” This is a tactic long used by gun banners to try to eliminate everything related to gun manufacture, suing them out of existence and making it impossible for citizens to buy guns.

This tactic got so ridiculous a few years ago that congress passed a law making it illegal to sue gun manufacturers and sellers unless the gun was defective, placing guns in the same category as all other things we can buy.

Using this illogic, Ryder trucks, rental truck centers, truck manufacturers, fertilizer sellers and producers would have all been sued after Timothy McVeigh used a rental truck filled with fertilizer to bomb a federal building and kill 168 people and injure more than 600 in 1995.

Look for more and more efforts to “do something” about guns, even though folks making those efforts will admit, if forced, that nothing they are proposing would have made any difference at all.

Those wanting to end your civil right to own a gun will do anything to overturn the constitution.

Its amazing how fast liberals change their mantra pushing their agenda to the latest crisis. They went from “Russia, Russia, Russia” to “Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico” to “Gun Ban, Gun Ban, Gun Ban” in record time.

In response to the reprehensible murders in Las Vegas, the usual suspects have become completely unhinged. As usual, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, aka the Brady Bunch, sent out no less than four fund-raising emails within a few hours. They also called for passing new gun control laws that would have had no effect at all on the Las Vegas shooting even if they had been in effect and actually enforced.

Nancy Sinatra, who used to sing better than she thinks now, tweeted that NRA members, like me and the other 5,000,000 in that civil right organization, should face a firing squad. Rejected politician Hillary Clinton showed that all she knows about guns is from movies when she condemned the effort to allow devices that somewhat lower the sound of a gun, called “silencers” by those that know nothing about guns, saying it was a dangerous idea.

One insane madman did the shooting in Las Vegas. But all gun owners are condemned for his evil actions, and an inanimate object, the gun, is blamed.

The NRA has called for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco and Firearms to reexamine their approval of the “Bump Stock” device they approved under the Obama Administration. But the demand for bans on bigger magazines, semiautomatic guns and longer waiting periods, things that would have no effect, are common. The ultimate goal of those calling for “doing something” is to ban all guns.

I was surprised at a CBS News commentator defining the difference between a “semiautomatic” gun and a fully “automatic” gun. He proved that gun banners actually know the difference and have been lying all these year they have called everything from revolvers to single shot rifles “automatic” weapons.

To paraphrase a quote, “its not the gun or law-abiding gun owners, its the evil in men’s souls” that result in horrible actions like this murderous rampage.

I’m sure some law will be passed to do “something” as so many are demanding. As usual, whatever is done will affect only people like me and you, those of us that follow the law and harm no one unless threatened. That is if I am not put before a firing squad for supporting the US constitution.

Good News On Gun Control and After the Eclipse

Jim Shepherd
from The Fishing Wire

We’re only hours away from the great solar eclipse of 2017, but that’s not the only thing happening in our world today (unfortunately). Although it’s still craziness as usual in Washington, it appears a ray of sanity has injected itself into Arizona’s dual-minded arguments over guns.

This is what the solar eclipse later today will look like – if you have NASA’s technology and know-how. The rest of us will likely see it in a different light. NASA photo with permission.
Last week, Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled – unanimously, no less- that cities, towns and counties have no right to enact their own gun regulations. That decision voids a 2005 Tucson ordinance that says when a police department obtains a gun through a seizure or surrender, the agency “shall dispose of such firearm by destroying the firearm.”

That’s in contradiction to state law, and the Arizona high court says that’s a no-no. Technically speaking, the ruling upholds SB 1487 a 2016 law that allows individual lawmakers to direct the Attorney General’s Office to investigate claims that run contrary to state statutes.

In fact, SB 1487 triggers an automatic investigation that can lead to the city losing half its shared state revenues. The 2005 Tucson ordinance mandating destruction of seized firearms came under that investigation after a state lawmaker used SB 1487 to complain.

Arizona state law bars enforcement agencies from destroying operable seized weapons and direct they be sold, not destroyed.

The implications for Arizona’s 19 charter cities is clear: they do not have the constitutional right to enact their own absolute laws -and in many cases the Arizona legislature will have the last word. Simply stated, except in narrow instances, in conflicts between state and local ordinances, the local ordinances fail.

Now, about that darkness…..

Emergency management personnel are on high alert across the country (seriously), preparing to deal with, well, whatever happens when the solar eclipse starts to race across the country in only a couple of hours (Actually, it’s scheduled to begin just after 9:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time).

Before it passes off the South Carolina coast just after 4:00 P.M. Eastern time, millions of Americans will have taken time out of their Monday to see what happens when the moon blocks the rays of the sun across a 14-state swath of the country. And everyone from the USFWS to the Audubon Society is anxiously waiting to see what wildlife will do when darkness happens hours ahead of schedule.

Will the birds nest? Will the fish stop biting? Will mosquitoes emerge -only to be fried to a crisp when the sun reemerges (sorry, wishful thinking on my part..nothing kills mosquitoes during summer in the south)?

Actually, no one’s exactly sure how wildlife will behave. But officials have some idea how the people who have jammed the path of the eclipse across the country will behave. They’ve ramped up emergency services, rented portable toilet facilities and agree with the advice offered by Oregon officials -especially when you’re dealing with the same kind of congestion you face during any big event.

Here’s the advice if you’re out to watch the eclipse in the path of totality: “Arrive early, stay put and leave late!”

Seriously, officials are already reporting congestion and crowds in advance of the eclipse, but it’s only expected to worsen throughout the day.

Here’s some very simple advice: make certain you have plenty of fluids to stay hydrated, have fuel for your vehicle, and be patient.

And if you’re out to observe the eclipse, we’d really like your perspective on the whole thing. You can send your images and observations to editor@theoutdoorwire.com and we’ll do some coordinating and sharing between our readers.

We’re especially interested in how the wildlife behaves, but don’t feel like you’re limited- if it’s interesting to you, it will probably be interesting to others.

One final word of caution: please don’t risk serious- and potentially permanent- eye damage by trying to watch the eclipse with your naked eye or through an unfiltered camera lens. Use the pinhole viewer, watch online or borrow a pair of #14 (the minimal safe number) pair of welder’s goggles.

Stay safe- and remember, we’ll keep you posted.

There is a lie being repeated by those either pushing an agenda or too lazy or uncaring to check the truth. One of the NRA lies is that the NRA did not allow firearms at their recent convention in Atlanta.

Anyone with the ability to search the internet can go to the NRA site and find the following policy statement:

“Firearms Policy for the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings: During the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, lawfully carried firearms will be permitted in the Georgia World Congress Center and the Omni Atlanta Hotel at CNN Center in accordance with Georgia law. However, firearms are not allowed in the remainder of the CNN Center, including the food court and shops. When carrying your firearm, remember to follow all federal, state and local laws.”

A similar lie claims the NRA required all guns in the huge gun show at the convention be rendered inoperative by removing the firing pin. Even Snopes, a very liberal fact check site, says this is not true. It is just another lie perpetrated by the gun ban fanatics and their allies in the liberal press.

In reality, there were 15 acres of exhibits at the World Congress Center during the NRA convention, with thousands of guns in those exhibits. They were in working condition.

So, the only thing about firearms at the NRA convention from the NRA was to follow the law. Unlike criminals, NRA members and legal gun owners follow the law. Criminals do not. That is why gun control law are useless. They have no effect on those that will use firearms in ways that hurt other people.

A similar lie that regularly makes the rounds is that the NRA does not allow firearms in their headquarters building. Gun control fanatics that push an agenda repeat that lie trying to show how dangerous firearms are to us normal folks. But the NRA headquarters has exactly the same policy as the convention. Follow the law. If you can legally carry a gun in Virginia, you are welcome to carry it into NRA Headquarters.

If you have the facts on your side, you do not have to lie.