And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that spring has arrived on the calendar at least. There are signs elsewhere, too. I saw a robin. And a noisy flock of geese passed southwest to northeast, I suspect some of them complaining because there was still some snow on the ground this far north.

In past years, I would be thinking about gardening and golfing, but that’s in the past at my advanced age.

Instead, I spent time over the weekend watching the PGA event in Florida which featured the return to significance of Tiger Woods. I know how significant it was because the announcers on the Golf channel and NBC kept telling me how great it was that he was back.

And telling me.

And telling me.

Ad nauseam.

Tiger didn’t win, but played well enough to tie for second.

I will bet more than 75% of those who watched could not tell you today who won, because the announcers didn’t talk about anybody else.

I hate it when the announcers pick our heroes for us.

On a similar note, I have been watching some of the White House press conferences with pool reporters.

And I am convinced most of them are deaf, because they obviously have not been hearing whatever has gone before. They ask the same questions that had been answered several times before, probably hoping for an answer more satisfying for their own prejudices. Were I the one being subjected to that, I think I would rely on the pat attorney’s phrase, “asked and answered.”

The fuss about the age at which someone should be able to purchase a gun confounds me. I did not buy a firearm until I was 24 years old. But so what?

I shot my first squirrel when I was 12 with the .410 my Dad bought me as a Christmas present. I shot my first pheasant when I was 15 with my Dad’s 20 Ga. I used his .32 caliber pistol to dispatch a sitting rabbit that same winter. For years, on every Fourth of July picnic with my uncle, I fired two different .22 rifles, a .177 cal. pellet gun, and his .38 Special Smith & Wesson.

As a college student in ROTC, I fired at a target in the fieldhouse at Iowa, and in Navy officer’s school, I fired both a .45 and a .38.

So what’s the big deal about when one is able to buy?

The question is, how is the firearm used!