7/29/2019 The Day Freedom Died

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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S

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up once upon the birth of this country, so that all could The other chilling assurance, however, is that politic

insanity copies itself also, and perpetuates itself as wellindividual rights of the Second Amendment are threatdirely, as never before, perhaps critically. There are thoamong our own, who sincerely believe now, that its daynumbered. That it will die within the half-century.

If we believe in America, if we believe in basicindividual freedoms, that must not happen. Withicentury or any other. If it does, we will have faileduphold our responsibility as Americans, and we wmore dearly than we can know.

One of the most sensitive writers of our time inimitable Gene Hill spoke poignantly to this matter Day They Took My Guns. We present it now, on pagetrust that you will share it widely with all who should ca

Along with our better hopes and prayers that freedolarge, and individual liberty as we know it, shall prevail

Mike Gaddis, Associate P

Duncan Grant, Publisher

Chuck Wechsle

stand forever in contempt and condemnation of any individualor faction gathering and using firearms for criminal intentof any kind, moreover to take innocent lives, or to pursuethe objectives of anarchy or supremacy. As stringently,supporting all reasonable legislation and regulation, whichwould validly forestall or prevent such occurrences. Mostof all, urging far more aggressive action within the courtsystems to impose swift, severe and certain penalties uponthe person or persons who commit such atrocities.

Insanity will never be controlled by legislation. But everytime someone is driven to political, religious or ideologicalderangement, picks up a firearm, and commits assassinationor wanton murder, social America at large is coaxed closer tothe brink of manipulation by anti-gun political sections thatwould argue and invoke irrational means to try.

The frightening reality is that insanity will repeat itself.It will happen again, as it has happened before. If, eachtime, we fail to define it for what it is, a critical majorityof Americans will be led further along the guilded path ofdeception, away from how essentially important individualgun ownership is to basic freedom. Led from the fact thatoverwhelming millions of gun owners in this country aresane, patriotic and responsible, and that people like them stood

the numbing silence following the latest andgreatest, single-incidence of public mass murder

in the history of America, this time in the unsuspectingrealm of a Colorado movie theater, you could hear and feelthe collective shudder of disgust and despair from everyresponsible hunter and shooter in the nation.

Another deranged, diabolical idiot had crawled out of thewoodwork irrationalizing himself into the evil and fictionalBatman character known as the Joker randomly directingsemi-auto gunfire upon happy and innocent people. Killing

and wounding openly, wantonly and arbitrarily. In theprocess, desecrating yet again the constitutional right andresponsibility of every sensible and accountable Americanto keep and bear arms. An inalienable right written into theoriginal American legal fabric, that millions of our fellowpatriots have died to protect, on every battlefield this unionhas occupied since its founding.

Another nail in the coffin, bringing another spasm ofdangerously misdirected political corollary. More greatly,threatening the life and liberty of the Second Amendment and the sacred thing that undergirded it from the beginning . . .the perpetuation of freedom. Because, regardless of all theoratory that ever rang through the halls of Congress and thechambers of the Supreme Court to the contrary, the simpleand undivided truth is that the basic entitlement of the peopleto keep and bear arms against the forces of criminal intent andtyranny . . . is the very essence of freedom.

Had not the farmers and backswoodsmen of pre-Revolutionary America had the means to defendthemselves against, to overthrow servitude and tyranny,there would not exist today the democracy which allowsus to pursue life and liberty at large with such singularvigor that we are envied by the rest of the world.

A different place and time, today, the face of modernAmerica? Hardly. The fight for freedom has continued everyyear of our independence, continues daily, is endless . . .for there are ever forces at work that would subjugate it toservitude. Which would demand that it bow before a singleand conscriptory ideology and supremacy that would ringthe death-knell for the machinery of true democracy.

And the single greatest power that stands in their wayis the right of the people to keep and bear arms: theindividual right of American gun ownership for personaland communal defense, and for all rational and legitimatepurposes within the framework of reasonable, civil morality. . . including the fundamental pursuit of life, liberty andhappiness. A right which . . . shall not be infringed.

The day that it is, will be the day America is no longerAmerica. The day the bountiful and sustaining individualfreedom every American has enjoyed for nigh onto a thirdcentury, will take its death bed.

The publishers and editors of this magazine, along with allresponsible hunters and shooters in this nation, denounce and

The basic entitlement of Americansto keep and bear arms is the

very essence of freedom.

The DayFreedomDied

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