Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/100010
I n the numbing silence following the latest and greatest, single-incidence of public mass murder in the history of America, this time in the unsuspecting realm of a Colorado movie theater, you could hear and feel the collective shudder of disgust and despair from every responsible hunter and shooter in the nation. Another deranged, diabolical idiot had crawled out of the woodwork ��� irrationalizing himself into the evil and fictional Batman character known as the Joker ��� randomly directing semi-auto gunfire upon happy and innocent people. Killing and wounding openly, wantonly and arbitrarily. In the process, desecrating yet again the constitutional right and responsibility of every sensible and accountable American to keep and bear arms. An inalienable right written into the original American legal fabric, that millions of our fellow patriots have died to protect, on every battlefield this union has occupied since its founding. Another nail in the coffin, bringing another spasm of dangerously 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 the oratory that ever rang through the halls of Congress and the chambers of the Supreme Court to the contrary, the simple and undivided truth is that the basic entitlement of the people to keep and bear arms against the forces of criminal intent and tyranny . . . is the very essence of freedom. Had not the farmers and backswoodsmen of preRevolutionary America had the means to defend themselves against, to overthrow servitude and tyranny, there would not exist today the democracy which allows us to pursue life and liberty at large with such singular vigor that we are envied by the rest of the world. A different place and time, today, the face of modern America? Hardly. The fight for freedom has continued every year of our independence, continues daily, is endless . . . for there are ever forces at work that would subjugate it to servitude. Which would demand that it bow before a single and conscriptory ideology and supremacy that would ring the death-knell for the machinery of true democracy. And the single greatest power that stands in their way is the right of the people to keep and bear arms: the individual right of American gun ownership for personal and communal defense, and for all rational and legitimate purposes within the framework of reasonable, civil morality . . . including the fundamental pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. A right which ��� . . . shall not be infringed.��� The day that it is, will be the day America is no longer America. The day the bountiful and sustaining individual freedom every American has enjoyed for nigh onto a third century, will take its death bed. The publishers and editors of this magazine, along with all responsible hunters and shooters in this nation, denounce and S P O R T I The Day Freedom Died The basic entitlement of Americans to keep and bear arms is the very essence of freedom. N G C 18 L A S S I C S