Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Shootin' at Daves, and other stuff.

Went up to Gatesville, or really up west of Gatesville last Sunday and blasted away for a few hours with a few friends. Let's say we were celebrating our constitutional right to piss off a hell of a lot of scared liberals. You might say we were celebrating a last hurrah.



Looks like a mug shot, don't it? Maybe the James Gang, in better times.

God knows how long folks like us will continue to enjoy the right to get together in a field, as generations of our forefathers have done, and practice with our guns. We might soon be beaten down and "civilized", like our British cousins.

I was there a while back, about 2003. I stepped into a gun store in Sheffield, just to see what they had. It was sad. Nothing there but BB Guns, non firing replicas and toys! Sad, to see what these formerly free people have been reduced to. Sad, to think that this new government of ours, which publicly celebrates individual liberty and the individual "right to choose", doesn't trust it's own citizens enough to allow them unfettered access to the very power that average citizens once used to assert American Independence and sovereignty.

I'd bet good money that the leaders of the modern left, if transported back to 1775, would be riding out into the back country of Massachusetts to beg the colonists to pay their taxes, telling them it was their patriotic duty to submit to government authority, and help the Redcoats confiscate the arms of the patriot resistance. And now these nutless wonders run our country? Sad indeed!

But, it's not like the Right hasn't handed them all the ammunition they need to take over. It couldn't have happened without the corruption, mismanagement, and ineptitude of the Republicans in Congress, and the mismanagement of the Bush administration... amplified out of proportion, of course, but the regular rants of the media. They sowed the seeds of their own destruction. And we all were complicit, failing to stand up and shout "NO" when the Republicans outspent the Democrats and failed to live up to their own stated principals.

So, with nothing else left to do, resigned to the "change" that's rolling our way, my buddies and I went out Sunday to keep the faith with our forefathers. We filled the air with lead, and let a few war whoops fly. Maybe a few Rebel Yells too. And when the gun grabbers come, we won't give up these rights as easily, as sheepishly and our British brothers did, or the Canadians, or the Aussies. This is Texas, mother fucker! We don't play that shit here!

Having said all that, I've got to say that I'm proud as hell to see my country, 40 years after Martin Luther King's assassination, electing our first Biracial President. It does make me feel good. It makes me feel good about my own people, like we've moved on from a horrific and repressive past. So God bless this country, and it's resilience, and our new Executive. And please God, grant him the wisdom to know, as so few in our government on ether side of the aisle seem to know... that there is a HUGE difference between what you CAN do, and what you SHOULD do!

God bless this system of ours, with all of it's flaws. It's still better than most others I can think of. Still... but the time is coming I fear when I may not be able to say that any more.

Anyway, rant over. Here's some shots of the fellas and I out blastin' away.



This is Dave, our host, taking a turn with one of the pistols that materialized when we all got there and unloaded our toys. I think it was a .357 Magnum. Kicked like a mule.



This is Dally, loading his Civil War musket with a mini ball. He's the guy that makes all the Civil War loads for these shoots. Works on them at home. All perfect replicas of English Enfield rounds.



Eventually, Belknap (that's the other little fellow there behind me) and I took out our Tokarev SVT-40s and started blasting away. His son (the kid with the western holsters below) set up a good sized rock next to the paper targets and we proceeded to blast it into pebbles.



Then his son took a turn with my rifle. Love that rifle. Fun to shoot.

Well, that was our fun. Lets hope we can continue to do this sort of thing in the future. Cheers!

3 comments:

PRH said...

Guns(and God), more important now than anytime since the Civil War.

Suldog said...

Here's hoping you're dead wrong, of course. The ability to fight off the bad guys is what guarantees democracy.

FHB said...

True guys, very true.