[L-I] Guns, Gun Rights, NRA

[We have many heavy issues with which to deal.  Candor does compel me
to set forth -- as I have at other points -- my position on guns and gun
rights which I do see as important matters.

A few portions of this have appeared in my earlier posts -- some as I have
corresponded with a staunch pro-gun ally on ASDnet, The Mysterious
Issodhos.]

Coming right to the bone:  I see the Second Amendment as a fundamental
Constitutional [and human] right not a whit different in quality than any of
the others in our Bill of Rights.  The ban on so-called "assault rifles"
involved, no more and no less, a ban on conventional semi-automatics. You
have to pull the trigger each time you fire it.  Action wise, the "assault
rifles" are no different than a kid's .22 semi-automatic available, say, at
a discount store.  The only difference is that the  "assault rifles"
have all kinds of cosmetic hype attached to them -- to give them a purely
superficially formidable appearance.  Fully automatic weapons have been
banned in the United States for civilian use since 1934.

I have been a member of the National Rifle Association virtually my entire
life. [Founded in 1871, it may now have as many as four million members.]
And for most of my time, I have been a Life Member.  There are four levels
of life membership in NRA and I  am at the highest.  I am also a Life Member
of the North Dakota Shooting Sports Association. In the late '40s and
beginning of the '50s, our match-winning Flagstaff High School Junior NRA
group -- of which I was a very active officer! -- reflected much of the
ethnic diversity of our school:  Anglo, Native American, Chicano, Black,
Okie.

NRA works on behalf of gun rights, gun safety, conservation, shooting
range development and match shooting.

I had my first firearm -- a .22 Winchester pump rifle, octagon barrel and
curved butt-plate, Model 1890 -- at age seven.  In a recent tally, I can say
that I've had over 200 different firearms since then.  Most have been for
conventional hunting, though a few have been revolvers.  I presently have
five Western-style lever action big bore rifles [two 45/70s, a .444, a .44
magnum, a 30/06], one ten gauge magnum shotgun-- and a fine
Ruger .22 Magnum Single Action ["Single Six"] revolver.

Two of the foregoing -- one 45/70 and the 30/06 -- are Browning High Grade
replicas of the Winchester 1886 and the Winchester 1895, respectively. [John
Browning, of Northern Utah, did all of those patents and many others for
Winchester.] Each has the highest grade steel and walnut stocks --and
various animals in gold inlay. The 30/06 is also one of the very rare One In
One Thousand.

For years, I held a Federal Firearms [dealer's] License and am pretty well
versed in United States gun law.  When it neared expiration, the regional
director of ATF wrote a kind letter advising me of the steps I could take to
quickly and smoothly renew it.  I much appreciated his letter, but I let the
FFL expire.  It had primarily served the needs of our extended family.

In addition to much hunting, I can certainly speak to the sensible use of
firearms in self-defense situations  -- involving social justice organizers
and personal citizenry -- where so-called "law enforcement" is either nil or
very laggard or is on the side of the racists and company thugs.  This
extends -- and broadly so in the United States -- right to the contemporary
moment.  I've often said that I have every good reason to keep, as I do, a
couple of loaded weapons at hand right here and right now in our Idaho home.

Here are a couple of historical pieces which some may have seen, others not.
As an Indian, I am in the soul, very much a traditionalist. And remember,
that great Chiricahua/Mescalero freedom fighter, Geronimo, during his wild
and free days, never failed to include -- in any photos taken of him -- his
45/70 Springfield and then, in keeping with technological movement, his
Winchester 40/60 WCF 1876 lever action.

These are from our website:

John Gray [Ignace Hatchiorauquasha], great/great/great grandfather of Hunter
Gray:

"Gray -- Ross had described him the year before as "a turbulent blackguard,
a damned rascal" -- then launched into a denunciation of the policies of HBC
in general and the men of the Columbia Department in particular:  ". . .the
greatest Villains in the World & if they were here this day I would shoot
them . . ."     John Gray [Ignace Hatchiorauquasha], Mohawk, fighting leader
of the Iroquois fur-hunters in the Far West, to Peter Skene Ogden et al. of
the Hudson's Bay Company, on May 24 1825, at the point John Gray and his
Native band struck Ogden's camp -- near the present northeastern
Utah/southeastern Idaho border -- and successfully ended a viciously
exploitative pricing system and quasi-indentured servitude over the  whole,
entire wide region.

Cited from:  Don Berry, A Majority of Scoundrels: An Informal History of the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company  [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961], page 97.

The Western Federation of Miners -- founder of IWW and later rechristened as
the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers -- responded to
the cruel and viciously sanguinary repression initiated by the Mine Owners'
Association and its lackeys in the Rocky Mountain and environs region.

At the WFM convention of 1897, held at Salt Lake City,  president Ed Boyce
delivered a famous speech:

"I deem it important to direct your attention to Article 2 of the
Constitutional Amendments of the United States -- "the right of the people
to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  This you should comply with
immediately.  Every [local] union should have a rifle club.  I strongly
advise you to provide every member with the latest improved rifle, which can
be obtained from the factory at a nominal price.  I entreat you to take
action on this important question, so that in two years we can hear the
inspiring music of the martial tread of 25,000 armed men in the ranks of
labor."

[Cited in, among others, Vernon H. Jensen, Heritage of Conflict:
Labor Relations In  The Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Up   To 1930  (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1950)  page 67.]

And a few of my many experiences -- under my former name of
John R. Salter, Jr. [from an early 1990s essay by David Koepel]:

"In the 1950s and 1960s, a new civil rights movement began in the South.
White supremacist tactics were just as violent as they had been during
Reconstruction. Blacks and civil rights workers armed for self-defense.
John Salter, a professor at Tougaloo College and chief organizer of the
N.A.A.C.P.'s Jackson Movement during the early 1960s, wrote, "No one knows
what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against
grass-roots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure
of firearms within it." Salter personally had to defend his home and family
several times against attacks by night riders. After Salter fired back, the
night riders fled.

The unburned Ku Klux Klan cross in the Smithsonian Institution was donated
by a civil rights worker whose shotgun blast drove Klansmen away from her
driveway.

State or federal assistance sometimes came not when disorder began but when
blacks reacted by arming themselves. In North Carolina, Governor Terry
Sanford refused to command state police to protect a civil rights march from
Klan attacks. When Salter warned Governor Sanford that if there were no
police, the marchers would be armed for self-defense, the Governor provided
police protection."  [From the essay, "Trust the People" by David Koepel]

Firearms ownership in the United States runs into the many, many, many
tens of millions.  Hardly all of those are in Idaho or Vermont or North
Dakota -- or rural and small town America generally.  A vast number of
them are held by big city people, including the urban working-class
[gun ownership among union members is extremely high] and among
urban "minorities."  Individual self-defense via firearms is not at all
uncommon in the cities.  In recent years,  NRA has provided
considerable assistance to gay rights self-defense groups, almost all of
these in urban settings.

As Ever,

HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR]   Micmac /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'
In the mountains of Eastern Idaho

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]











_______________________________________________
Leninist-International mailing list
[email protected]
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international