It’s a shame gun safety courses aren’t mandatory
While gun sales in general are booming, sales of sporting firearms has languished.
It’s been said the sitting president is an excellent gun salesman. Much the same could be said of the Clintons.
Conservative gun owners and would-be gun owners fear a tightening of the many gun laws and are flocking to stores before more worthless gun laws are enacted that take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens and create a climate where only outlaws are armed and the rest of us are at their mercy.
When discussing firearm ownership, you must keep in mind the purpose of the second amendment. It is neither to enable the outdoorsmen to hunt or to protect us from a foreign invader but to keep the central government in their place.
Otherwise, we could end up similar to Nazi Germany.
Founding fathers such as James Madison insisted the second amendment insured the private ownership of firearms. I do not want to hear what is legal and what is not allowed in a foreign nation. Perhaps those differences in rules are the reason for the existence of the United States. We were created to be different. That’s why the country stood tall among other countries.
Along that same line, I never understood why firearm safety is not taught in schools.
We instruct children in other forms of safety, such as fire and home. Hiding your head in the sand and pretending firearms don’t exist in other homes doesn’t work.
The powers that be should insist on safety classes in our schools.
I am sure the NRA would be willing to assist. For a couple of years, I presented the Eddie Eagle Program to grade schools in the area and I felt it went over well. Joining the NRA was never suggested to the students. Yet, some teachers and parents treated such classes and those presenting the program as pariahs.
The courses were about teaching children guns are not toys and shouldn’t be handled without adult supervision. Losing these courses does a great disservice to our young and putting young children at risk needlessly.
• I recently received a special patch from Pennsylvania Game Commission given to a select group of hunters. This patch is only sold to those who placed an animal in the state record book.
If you have a deer, bear or elk in the state record book, you can purchase one of these patches from Pennsylvania Game Commission for $10. I plan to have mine at the upcoming sports show at Washington Crown Center in early February. You can see it when I am scoring big game in the rear of Gander Mountain Saturday and Sunday starting at 1 p.m.
Remember this patch can only be bought by those with a Pennsylvania trophy in the state record book. To order yours, call 1-888-888-3459.
• There are very few things I enjoy more than discussing the positives and negatives of certain cartridges. Note that I referred to cartridges, not bullets. This is especially true when a person likes a certain round and the other a different one. The other day, I got into such a disagreement with a younger shooter at Johnson’s Sporting Goods Store near Eighty Four.
The other person, while knowledgeable, stated his Creedmore round was faster than the 6.5×84. I disagreed.
While the Creedmore round has a smaller capacity case than the 6.5×84, some magic powder made it push a same weight bullet to a higher velocity, according to him.
I interjected if true, pressures must be greater or barrel length must be longer.
When those two factors are equal, the larger-cased round will move a bullet at a higher speed. That falls into the category of physics.
The law of diminishing returns might enter the picture, and the larger cased round may be inefficient but it will still be faster. Powder cost might be higher and barrel life much shorter, but there will be a gain in speed, although it might not be much. And recoil might double.
After all, the same powder can be used in either round. There is really no magic in the creation of a rifle or pistol round, only sound rules of physics.
George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.