Growing Up in "Flyover Country."

For those you who were born in California, or another of the Deep Blue States, and wonder how growing up in "Flyover Country" was altogether different, read on...

I remember vividly shooting one of my Dad's rifles at the ripe old age of five.  And I emphasize "one of."  For he had many rifles, and many shotguns, and many pistols.

In fact, Dad won the Missouri State Pistol Championship in both 1938 and 1940.  He was also a champion skeet and trap shot, and the winner of many rifle competitions.  Plus, he was a hunter of anything that walked, ran or flew.  

So I was introduced to guns at five years old.  That's when Dad let me pull the trigger on his .30-06.  I was gifted a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas at the age of 6.  And recevied a Stevens .22 single-shot rifle for Christmas at the age of nine.  Imagine having a .22 rifle at nine years old.  

And because my Dad's best friend was a guy named Kenney Frost, who owned the local Army/Navy store, with a substantial gun sales department, I was "given" to him as an intern.  To learn all about firearms.  And I did.  For years.  

I'd go to his shop after school and on weekends and he'd train me about guns.  I actually learned to repair and build custom varmint rifles (gophers, woodchucks, coyotes, etc.) to order for Kenney.  I don't know if those who ordered them from Kenney to be manufactured from scratch, actually knew a 13 or 14 year-old kid was making them in the back room, but they were.  That's where you order a wooden stock blank, a barreled rifle action, and all the other parts and pieces necessary to make a custom gun.  And then fit them together with lots of elbow grease over several weeks into a shiny new rifle.

If fact, I even built one for myself.  It was a 13 pound .270 Winchester small game rifle.  It was a rifle to behold!  My cousin Reinhard Fajen owned the best rifle stock business in the Country at the time, and he gave me the most beautiful Circasian Fiddleback walnut rifle stock blank anyone's ever seen.  It featured a full beavertail forend and scoop cheek piece.  Add to that it had a 10x power Lyman Wolverine telescopic sight and helium-filled Redfield Jr. scope mount.  I chose a Model 98 Mauser magnum bolt action and a 30" Timken steel bull barrel.  Add to that a fully-adjustable trigger with an Ace trigger shoe and you've got a rifle that can put five bullets into a playing card at 600 yards.  That's sub-minute of angle accuracy (1" per 100 yards), for those of you who care about such things.

Oh yeah, I still remember the recipe for my handloads.  That's where you shoot rifle cartridges and then reuse them.  You use the cases and primers and gunpowder and the necessary tools to remake ammunition after it's been shot.  I used Norma .30-'06 rifle cases necked down to .270 so they'd hold more powder.  I used 50 grains of Dupont #4350 smokeless powder and Peters primers.  And 110 grain open point Speer bullets.  This enabled me to obtain 3,200 feet per second performance with flat ballistics out to more than 200 yards.  And all this at less than 0.25 cents per shot.  A quarter.  That's damm cheap fun!  

I was also a member of two quick draw clubs.  That's where you wear a quick draw holster like you used to see on TV, and use an 1873 .45 Colt Peacemaker clone.  You slowly walk toward a man-shaped target with a light bulb on its head.  When the bulb lights up, you draw and shoot a wax bullet propelled only by the primer.  That still propells the wax "bullet" at about 400 fps.  And the clock determines how many pieces of a second it took you to accurately respond and hit the target.  With about a quarter of a second as normal  reaction time, I would average about .320 of a second to observe, draw and shoot. 

Great fun!

And a great afternoon for me back then would be to throw a few guns in the back seat and drive down a gravel road until I found the city limits sign.  Then I'd get out and fill my .22 cowboy revolver with six shots and throw the paper box they came in out as far as I could.  Then I'd draw quickly and shoot at it.  And keep on doing so until I ran out of bullets or the box was so far out of sight I could no longer hit it.  And then do it all over again.

So I owned more than 50 firearms when I was finally drafted into the U. S. Army.  I gave or sold most of them away, figuring I'd likely be killed in the "Nam."  I even posted the highest basic training rifle range score in Fort Leonard Wood's history.  998 out of 1,000.  Even after 50 years, I think that high score still stands today.

And oh yeah, I entered the Schwarzwalden (Black Forrest) Shooting Club's 1968 Olympic qualifications finals competition.  I came in third.  Had I placed first or second, I'd have qualified to represent Germany in the '68 Olympics.  I always wondered how my commanding officer would have received that bit of news.  An American G.I. competing in the Olympics for a foreign country.  Somehow I think that might have caused a stir.  Hmmmm...

I tell you all of this to explain why some of us who weren't born and raised in Democrat, high population states know their way around guns.  And horses and cows and wild boars and so much more.  And why we take it as a personal insult when our governor, and the governor of the other wussie states, sign executive orders limiting our ownership and use of the firearms they deem dangerous.  Or all black and scary looking.  I personally don't care what they deem.  Perhaps if they'd had an upbringing like mine, and like my neighbors, and like the people born and raised in the South and Mountain states and the Big Sky states and all the others with country you can hunt in,  consider as routine.  Normal.  Usual.  Places where they value their 2nd Amendment Rights and are willing to fight to protect them. 

We consider guys like BoyGuv ("Hairgod") Newsom as a shining example of pussyhood.  And that fat dude in Illinois.  And the one in Colorado.  And in the 22 states of our Union where they attempt to outlaw firearms.  Maybe they should be required to take firearm owners and users courses when they're elected.  So they'd know what it's like to grow up like a Man.  Like an American.  Not like a lily livered girly man, as Schwartzenhoozits used to call them.  Before his Kennedy-raised wife threatened to withhold her female favors if he didn't start acting more like a Democrat.  

Sorry to post about guns so often for those of you who "know."  Who know what us gun owners and users know.  But for those of you who don't, it's time to learn what the rest of us consider "normal."

As a remember, here's what the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution guarantees:  

"...the Right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."