To paraphrase the late Col. Jeff Cooper, merely owning a rifle no more makes you a rifleman than having a piano makes you a musician. But a rifleman is more than a skilled marksman. He is also ready and willing to use his rifle for its intended purpose— to defend life and liberty against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
As Col. Cooper also said: “Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen.” A student of history, the Colonel understood the fundamental necessity that a free people, if they are to remain free, must be a nation of riflemen, keenly aware that their rifles are the final guarantors of liberty.
America was once such a nation, but that awareness and tradition have been in steady decline, slowly strangled by apathy, neglect and the willful, criminal exclusion of our own heritage from public schools, where children are intentionally kept ignorant of the American
Revolution, and where skill with a rifle is certainly not listed among the essential “life skills.”
But it is not too late to turn the tide, to once again make America a nation of riflemen “who know very much what they are about,” as one British officer described the men of April 19, 1775 who “gave ball for ball,” as they swarmed around the retreating Regulars all the way back to Boston.
To read more about the Appleseed project read the rest of Stewart Rhodes’ Article Here: http://www.appleseedinfo.org/pdf/Swat_the_Appleseed_Project_Feb_2008.pdf (PDF)
Visit the Appleseed Website: http://www.appleseedinfo.org
Attend an Appleseed Shoot. The next one on the East Coast is on January 3rd and 4th on the Appleseed Project’s Home Range in Ramseur, NC. $70 for 2 days and Ladies, Under 20, Elected Officials, Active Duty Military, Peace Officers, and Guard/Reserves shoot FREE!
Revolutionary War Veterans Association / Appleseed Project Rifle Range
Corner of Willie Wright Rd and Royal Ridge Rd
PO Box 756
Ramseur, NC 27316
