request for help
#amimoore
Dear Reader:



I am writing you because I think you could make a contribution to a worthwhile project. I am helping Will Graves, the author of the popular 2007 book “Wolves in Russia”, assemble material for a book about our common heritage and traditions of hunting, guns, and associated culture and how that relates to the broad social changes that worry many of us today.



What he is seeking is remembrances and observations about guns, hunting, animals, and associated incidents from men and women that were raised anytime after the First World War up to the social turbulence of the mid-1960’s. He hopes to contrast the changing perceptions of and behavior toward guns, hunting, and animals in this period with the era from the mid-1960’s down to the present day.



This period since WWI, when gun control began in Europe down to the social turbulence, environmentalism, animal “rights”, war on traditional culture, and the ascendancy and dominance of urban political values beginning in the 1960’s is worth examining and describing in order to make some comparisons with subsequent years down to today.



Since the 1960’s, radical changes such as the decay of public education, the explosion of fatherless children, and the concentration of political power at ever-higher levels of national and international government at the expense of liberty, families, traditional values and local government authority have given us all concern for our culture and our children’s future. Simultaneously during this period of anti-gun, anti-hunting, anti-animal control, and anti-animal use movements; the lives and values of our children have been assaulted and demeaned by ideologies and individuals that are attempting to change history in order to impose their values and their rule on us and our descendants.



With the foregoing in mind, I ask you to give some thought to your youthful memories (be they from the USA or elsewhere) of certain guns or relatives or teachers or incidents in your home or on a hunt (whether for elk or crows) or anywhere else that would be worth sharing with people today. It might have been some animal control work on a farm or for a friend; it might have been some urban incident or an event when someone’s life was saved. It might have been something when you went into the military or even an incident that happened in your hometown when you were growing up. The purpose would be to give a glimpse into how a freer and more self-dependent (as opposed government-dependent) era thrived with gun availability, gun use, gun proficiency, hunting, animal management for the good of man, and strong families.



Then, if you would, please write it down; be it a paragraph or two, a page or two, or whatever it takes. You can sign and date it or just sign it Anonymous. Will’s hope is to use what he can, based on what he gets. Your help is really what would be the heart of this effort and the key to any success. Please give this some thought and then send me something at jimbeers7@comcast.net



Your help is not only greatly appreciated, it just might be a way to assure a better future by helping others to understand what is right and to defend what is important. It has been my experience that too often we never hear about the good that we did but when we are fortunate enough to hear about how we affected others in a positive way, there is a feeling of gratitude and pride (good pride) that cannot be gotten in any other way.



Thank you for any and all help.



Jim Beers