They are out there and they are among us!

Let me say at the outset that I used to have a small collection of old guns. My favorite was a Model 1861 Springfield rifle. Firing it was an adventure: First I poured what I recall as about a thimble-full of black powder down the barrel, shoved a round lead ball down after it with a ramrod, stuck a copper percussion cap on the hollow nipple protruding from the chamber, pulled the hammer back, aimed and … BLAM!

I will tell you honestly that it was a helluva lot of fun. And I actually got pretty good with the thing … could put two out of four balls into an 8-inch fencepost at 70 or 80 yards. At the time, we lived in rural Connecticut and couldn’t see our closest neighbor. In other words, it was a reasonably safe hobby that was of no danger to anyone but, possible, myself.



But times have changed. The National Rifle Association is meeting right now in Phoenix and the paranoids and the loonies are out in force. Some of the locals there have had the temerity to express the thought via letters-to-the-editor that their town might be better of if the NRA met elsewhere. Here is a sample of the comments that thought elicited from the gun nuts:

You mentally bankrupt, driveling, woefully ignorant and unbearably simpleminded, liberal boor.

I am fed up with this double-standard stereotyping and liberal Leninist bigotry.

[We’ll see] the open invasion of our country by 20-30 million law breakers soon to be handed Democrat voters cards who being criminals lead lives of crime while sending the booty back to Mexico.

[Use cash for] some more ammo, because you never know when OBAMANATION is going confiscate all of our stash (knock, knock in the middle of the night).

And John McCain and Mitt Romney and Michael Steele and a host of other Republican politicians are right there in Phoenix sucking up to all those folks.

Is that pathetic … or what!

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