Gentle readers, given the events recently down in Uvalde, Texas, I think maybe I don’t have a lot to add. It’s purty much all been said. I will say it has to be one of the saddest, most troubling events that I have been faced to accept. Like you, there just aren’t any words to express the horror of what those little kids and their teachers had to go through. There is much we don’t know at this point. I know enough to know the shooter had absolutely no regard for life. He had to have hated almost everything around him.

Guns, I believe have been around or some form of them since the fourteenth century. In my opinion they are as necessary as anything else that we depend on to take us through our daily comings and goings. Martha’s folks never owned a gun of any kind as far as I know and felt as if they just didn’t need to be armed. They were just plain and common as dirt and both farm raised.

There are folks out there that are terrified of firearms of any kind. Somehow in their mind they have a fear that if they have a gun around, it will eventually kill or wound them or someone in their family. I think that is well and good if they want to depend on a baseball bat, golf club or their own personal ability to fight off an intruder. There are a good many I suspect that in their last few moments of life wished that they had a pistol in their hand as they were being beaten, shot, stabbed or strangled to death.

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It’s my opinion that every family member needs to know how to defend themselves with some sort of firearm just in case the worst nightmare winds up in your house, your car or wherever you may be at the time. Martha would never, ever willingly shoot another person for any reason. I know that for a fact. I taught her how to shoot the best I could teach a reluctant student. She, like her folks had no use for guns but never said anything about my having them. I came in from the Denver Stock Show late one night and it was so cold my hands were shaking as I tried to fit my key into the lock on the back door. She woke up, heard me struggling and thought for sure someone was trying to break into the house. I had instructed her if she ever was fearful that someone was in the house to pick up the pistol by the bed, get down behind the bed and as the person came nearer, “JACK, IS THAT YOU? IS THAT YOU JACK?“ When the person appeared in the doorway ask one more time and if she didn’t get an answer, shoot!

As I finally got into the dark laundry room, closed the door and turned around, we ran smack into each other. I screamed, she screamed and I said, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING BACK HERE?” She replied, I thought I could get back here and push the dead bolt on and the bad guy couldn’t get in. “Yeah, You would be raped or dead or both in a minute or two if I had been the bad guy. She brushed it off and no more was said about it. I knew then she would never pick up a pistol to defend herself if challenged. Her choice. I like many of you close to my age if you went to a small school you could take your single shot .22 with you. I did many times and never locked my car. I might want to shoot at rabbits or snakes on my way out to a farm for an FFA exercise. That was life in the 50s. Oh how I long for those folks and those days and times in my life to return for even a moment. We just didn’t know what kind of idiots would be running our country in the years to come. They are idiots and I think once they have their narrative down and practiced, they NEVER get off that train of thought. It would be so much easier for them to control us if we just couldn’t defend ourselves in a deadly way if necessary. You know the drill. You have heard this crap low these many years. I remember one congressman who bemoaned the ownership of guns of any type and this was some years back. He had an intruder break into his Washington apartment and he shot him dead with a pistol. Hummm…how about that?

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I tell you, it’s going to be up to folks like us that save this country from going completely away and into the hands of morons. Yes, us deplorables and in Colorado here, selfish bastards, to put a stop to all of this nonsense.

Stay tuned, check yer cinch on occasion, remember, “ya can’t lead if ya get in line!” (old Montana ranch manager), I’ll c. y’all, all y’all.