Unbeknownst to me, this post was going up as the thread was going down so they passed in the dark. With Daves OK, I post this as a final word to the Best Advice thread that had devolved into some harsh critiques of American gun ownership and us as gun owners.
I checked this thread daily for its wisdom early in its existence but then abandoned it when it went OT. Just today I wondered why it was still repeatedly rising to the top and so read these last few pages of discussion. American gun owners and gun ownership are not as perceived here.
Before retiring here in the west, I lived not far from two Massachusetts towns: Lexington and Concord. In April of 1775 when Gen. Gage ordered Pitcairn to take 700 British soldiers and march on Concord to disarm the populace the plan was discovered and a silversmith and a tanner were dispatched to warn the citizenry. When Pitcairns 700 marched onto the Lexington green on the 19th of April (now and forever known as Patriots Day), he found standing in front of him not soldiers but citizens. Seventy of them. The math is easy. They were outnumbered 10-1. And yet they stood. Then after he is reported to have said, Throw down your arms, ye villains, they died. Eight American citizens who valued liberty above life flowed their last drops of blood into the Lexington dirt as Pitcairn marched on.
At Concords Old North Bridge perhaps 200 British soldiers again saw American citizens standing in their way. They were farmers and storekeeps and ministers. And they did not back down either. As they had earlier assembled at the house on the hill above the bridge they knew they had not been summoned because a thief was in the hen house. They knew that the greatest army in the world was coming. And they moved down that hill anyway. And they stood their ground because they understood that their right to live free of oppression and tyranny depended on their right to arm and defend themselves.
I sometimes take from my safe an American Enfield, the Model of 1917, mine built by Winchester in November of 1917, and I lay it before me. I think then alone of my grandfather. Small of stature, a poor Midwest farm boy who without hesitation went to Europe when duty called. Since most of the expeditionary force carried the 1917 rather than the more popular 03 Springfield, I imagine that my little grandfather carried this heavy rifle as well. And he did not back down until tyranny was defeated. We have a saying here, Its not the size of the man in the fight but the size of the fight in the man. It most certainly applies to him. And I am proud.
One of our fellows here in this double gun fraternity has said previous,
Armed people are citizens. Disarmed people are subjects.
From our beginning, we determined to be citizens and not subjects. That has not changed. Now our freedom is again threatened by those who vow to destroy our republic and replace it with a one party socialist autocracy. Necessary to accomplishing this is the demonization of American gun owners. But, rather than the gun nuts or wackos that they label us as, we are what weve always been:
Citizens. Patriots. Americans
