Texas is a state proud of its independence and its history, proud of the way it holds onto traditions and also, proud of its sports and the sportsmen that play them.
This includes hunting, a pastime that although I fired many a gun in my youth when my father was friends with eighth district Chicago Police Officers, I never have partaken in.
However, I feel I agree with the Native Americans that if you eat and use the animal in the proper manner, there is nothing wrong with hunting, unless you are talking about hunting an endangered species of course.
It is the connection to man’s distant past, the age when if you were hungry you had to go out into the world to get it, and not just going to a job to punch a time clock and stop off at HEB to buy a frozen pizza and some potato chips, but rather you had to put your body and your mind on the ‘front-line’ and go and get dinner like our ancestors did.
In today’s political climate, and in the wake of too many mass shootings, especially at schools, where our most precious resources are really held, there has been much talk about gun control and how to stop these horrible tragedies from occurring.
I am going to focus on the former, because I have as said had experience firing guns of all types and calibers as a child and still keep one Taurus Five shot .38 revolver for home and self defense. On the latter, stopping these outbreaks of violence, would not only take tremendous thought before I would feel competent as a writer to give an opinion but also it would probably take more words then I can use here.
What I wanted to state was that I am a bit of a misplaced soul in Texas, being a liberal and usually backing the Democratic or Independent tickets in most elections but I also think for myself and as a liberal some of the talk I have heard through comments on news articles online and on social media make me shake my head as much as some conservative policies sometimes do.
Mainly the over the top suggestion of abolishing the second amendment all together, which, while I do not think it will happen, is absolutely nonsense because it was put in place to not only give the American citizen the right to protect himself and his family and provide his own food from the wild, but also is in place because the forefathers knew when you take away the common man’s guns, the ‘kings’ have all the weapons in the kingdom and can now use them to control you.
If it sounds farfetched, that last bit, it might be, but it was part of the reason for being there in the first place and I would rather be safe than sorry, especially the way the modern world is turning today, with all of the random violence.
All in all, my belief is, even as a liberal. that the great document that started this country is once again being tested and my hope is that although some changes could be made to the process it takes to obtain legal firearm ownership, that document once again prevails against those that would take her power.
