by Leon Archer

Surpises

What would life be like without surprises? Sometimes it might be a whole lot better or more comfortable, yet at other times surprises are wonderful.

When I was a kid—how many times do I say that?—the least enjoyable Christmas I ever had was when I found out just what I was getting well before the day actually arrived. Being surprised was a big part of the fun Christmas morning.

I had a bit of a surprise when Tuesday morning rolled around. I had been planning on rounding up a few of the geese that had been spending their summer at my brother-in-law’s home during the summer.

His flock has been continually growing despite my pruning their numbers each fall. This year several pairs raised about twenty goslings on the pond near his house. They had been home bodies until a day or two before the season opened.

I called my nephew Monday and he told me the geese hadn’t been around for a couple days, but I figured they should show up Tuesday. Sweet Thing and I had to take her mother to the doctor in Camden on opening day, so I put my shotgun in, planning to give the geese a surprise either before taking mom in or after her appointment. By now you have probably guessed it. I was the one who got surprised. The geese were no shows.

I could have gotten out and tried hunting a couple of fields, but I wasn’t really prepared to do that Tuesday. After all, there are a lot of days left in September and I’ll get a number of chances to pop a few birds before the early season ends. I know hunters were collecting some birds, because I heard shooting a number of times during the day. So much for the geese.

Another surprise. A segment of the folks who run our government have been getting an ongoing surprise. That’s the segment who have nothing better to do in their political life than to try to pile more useless regulations on the backs of honest citizen gun owners.

Congressmen may be adept at riding the political winds, but they haven’t been watching the political barometer very closely. The general public has been steadily turning their backs on gun control. There are many reasons, but the actions and reactions of Congress, and some state legislative bodies have been the main instigators of the dramatic increase in gun ownership and record purchases of ammunition. It’s all a nasty surprise for anti-gun legislators.

The sad fact is that most pieces of gun-control legislation are aimed directly at the honest gun owner and has little if any effect on criminals with guns. With all the gun laws on the books, legislators are at a loss to explain how gun crime can go up, other than to claim we need more restrictive laws.

Well hello, if criminals have no respect for the laws about murder, assault, and armed robbery, what makes legislators believe they can make a difference by piling on guys like you and me?

It has been a surprise for Democrats, the party that the largest percentage of anti-gun legislators call theirs, that since the election of a Democrat majority in Congress and a Democrat president in the White House, gun sales have soared and bullets have been flying off sport shop shelves so fast that there are shortages of popular calibers in many sections of the country.

Two things in closing. First of all, don’t be taken in by the email that is circulating about SB 2099, which allegedly would require gun owners to list firearms on their tax documents and pay $50 per firearm owned. This is one of those emails that falls in the class of urban legend or spoof. There is no such bill. Don’t forward the misinformation.

However, with that said, there really is a bill HR 45, called the Blair Holt act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush. It calls for, among other things, all handgun owners to submit to the federal government a formal application including photo identification, fingerprints, medical and mental health records and a completed written firearm safety examine.

The legislation also mandates that a federal database be established of all firearms sales and transfers. This legislation is real, but the bill has no co-sponsors, and at present, is no threat to become law. It does however illustrate the mentality of Mr. Rush’s party, and it shouldn’t be any surprise to anyone which party that is.