I just got my membership badge and key (as well as a couple of guest passes) to the PCWC (Pitt County Wildlife Club).  It's a lot more than a gun club and I'm very happy to become a member.  I really like the Club, it is a nonprofit organization and it, or more properly, the folks that constitute it, do a lot to promote firearm safety and education.  I'm also a huge fan of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, as I think everyone should be, since it's the one that makes sure we get to keep all the rest.  Of course, nobody has to have guns if they don't want them.  You don't have to like them, either.  Just don't mess with my right to cuddle and fondle them as much as I want.

      (You can find out more about the PCWC at http://www.pittcountywildlifeclub.org/)

     Which is where we often tend get off the trail of democracy in America, I think.  It seems like a bunch of folks out their think that their 1st Amendment right isn't s much the right to free speech as it is the right to tell other people what to do.  That is not what the framers of the constitution had in mind when they wrote that document.  It is the opposite, in fact.  Instead of using their right to vote as it was intended--casting their ballot in whatever political direction is in their own best interests, so that if their best interests are in the majority, they get those interests seen to--many people seem to have gotten the idea that their vote is a tool to be used to decide what is good for everyone else, so that if they can get enough intolerant people on their side they can oppress whoever or whatever they disapprove of.

     The vote to ban gay marriage here in North Carolina (in May of 2012, if memory serves) is a shining example of this.  What goes on between consenting adults in their bedrooms is no business of mine, and certainly not the government's.  If two people want to get married, their gender has absolutely zero impact on my life or the lives of my family members.  I can't see a negative for two people in love being allowed to formalize their bond.  If anything, the world would be a slightly better place, since two people just got happier.

     Guns get that kind of treatment, too.  Every day someone is killed by a drunk driver--but nobody tries to outlaw cars or booze.  Well, outlawing booze was tried once (if you don't know how Prohibition went, Google it).

     I have a suggestion: let's all try a little less self-righteousness and a little more minding our own business.  Our nation was founded in a revolution because the people didn't like being told what to do.  That is what we are, at our core.  Or at least were.

     When did we forget that and become what we fought so hard to be free of?