Ninety-Six Years Ago Today

The Military of these united States adopted the finest sidearm ever created- the M1911 on March 28th, 1911.

This morning, I was able to start my morning out quite nicely when a client who called me Saturday, from a gun show, asking me which M1911 I would chose, a used Kimber II or a new Springfield Armory Stainless Loaded (I said the later) told me of his excitement on this new purchase.

And as it is written, glad tidings and joy be unto thee and he, when another is brought unto and in the church of John Moses Browning...

WP

Dumb Assumption?

CSMK responded to it:

"Wrong. This was a grassroots move that was over before the NRA even knew it was happening. It points to the quickness of the Internet to spread news, good or bad. Zumbo's position was misinformed and stupid.

The only real difference between the so-called "assault rifle" and any other semi-auto rifle is merely cosmetic, not functional. Oh, and a REAL assault rifle is a select fire weapon capable of either single shot or burst mode operation.

That Zumbo didn't know many hunt with "assault rifles," but he, like you, let his elitist attitude get in the way of good sense. And Zumbo's treasured bolt action rifle with its scope is called a sniper's rifle by the idiots at Brady/Handgun Control. Maybe you elitist need to remember you need to stand with ALL gun owners, not just the ones who can afford to spend $1,000 or more for their chosen rifle."

CSMK was extremely polite, IMO, in responding to Ray Schoenke's, Special to The Times, entitled "Real hunters and shooters need to stand up to the NRA" in which he attacks the NRA for the Internet Forums and Blog responses to Jim Zumbo's career ending admittance of elitism regarding firearms (and freedom)- particularly those EBR's (much like Mr. Schoenke's apparent attitude).

"One of nation's most famous and respected hunting and outdoors journalists, Zumbo was professionally assassinated by NRA hysteria for simply uttering a single and — many hunters would say — reasonable point of view."

Most who read my postings regularly, by now know I find NO reasonableness in binding, limiting, and shackling of rights, especially those enumerated by the BOR's, however, for those that may be reading me for the first time must understand this, I brook no wordplay moral high ground stands like this elitist's mewling and outright lies. Schoenke's words are an attack on freedoms and is a effort to criminalize you and me, once again, for owning rifles that he finds (on the surface) offensive in appearance, demonstrated by the same column also being posted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Many might be skeptical of my thoughts about Ray Schoenke, but let me point you to this fact, in 1996, Schoenke donated $1000.00 to the campaign of the disgraced Robert Torricelli who is also virulently anti-freedom.

Further, Jim Zumbo has publicly recanted his last blog comments:

"I was wrong when I recently suggested that wildlife agencies should ban semiautomatic firearms I erroneously called "assault rifles" for hunting. I insulted legions of my fellow gun owners in the process by calling them "terrorist rifles." I can never apologize enough for having worn blinders when I should have been wearing bifocals."

However, I will point out that Jim Zumbo was advised not to post that particular piece by Tommy Millner of Remington, and my I still hold my original opinion that Jim Zumbo is playing CYA.



Schoenke has attacked the NRA falsely, and does so with words I will wager were penned for him and this post is a reminder and a simple one. There are many men who own firearms to shoot, hunt, and for self-defense, but when ANY one of them states he believes in "reasonableness" regarding this freedom, do not trust him and do not call him friend as when it suits him, he will shoot you in the back.

Oh, and Schoenke, you gun grabbing son-of-a-bitch, when you want to take my arms, as has been said before to others, you come, do not be cowardly and send anyone else, as you may freely have them- one round at a time...

WP

On the Alamo, Independence & Lines In The Sand

Blogonomicon has one of the finest posts I have ever read- you should go and read it as well.

Fine words sir!

WP

BASTARDS!

My kids will never get another Marvel comic, and, as for your movies- hah!

WP

Rosie hangs upside down because of depression.

BULLSHIT!

She hangs upside down because she is a bloodsucking bitch...

WP

Remember the Alamo! March 6th, 1836

ALAMO DEFENDERS

Alabama
Buchanan, James
Fishbaugh, William
Fuqua, Galba
White, Isaac

Arkansas
Baker, Isaac G.
Thompson, Jesse G.
Warnell, Henry

Connecticut
Jennings, Gordon C.

Georgia
Grimes, Albert (Alfred) Calvin
Melton, Elice (Eliel)
Shied, Manson
Wells, William
Wills, William

Illinois
Lindley, Jonathan L.

Kentucky
Bailey, Peter James III
Bowie, James
Cloud, Daniel William
Darst, Jacob C.
Davis, John
Fauntleroy, William H.
Gaston, John E.
Harris, John
Jackson, William Daniel
Jameson, Green B.
Kellogg, John Benjamin
Kent, Andrew
Rutherford, Joseph
Thomas, B. Archer M.
Washington, Joseph G.

Louisiana
Despallier, Charles
Garrand, James W.
Kerr, Joseph
Ryan, Isaac

Maryland
Smith, Charles S.

Massachusetts
Flanders, John
Howell, William D.
Linn, William
Pollard, Amos

Mississippi
Clark, M.B.
Millsaps, Isaac
Moore, Willis A.
Pagan, George
Parker, Christopher Adams

Missouri
Baker, William Charles M.
Butler, George D.
Clark, Charles Henry
Cottle, George Washington
Day, Jerry C.
Tumlinson, George W.

New Hampshire
Cochran, Robert E.

New Jersey
Stockton, Richard Lucius

New York
Cunningham, Robert W.
Dewall, Lewis
Evans, Samuel B.
Forsyth, John Hubbard
Jones, John
Tylee, James

North Carolina
Autry, Micajah
Floyd, Dolphin Ward
Parks, William
Scurlock, Mial
Smith, Joshua G.
Thomson, John W.
Wright, Claiborne

Ohio
Harrison, William B.
Holland, Tapely
Musselman, Robert
Rose, James M.

Pennsylvania
Ballentine, John J.
Brown, James Murry
Cain (Cane), John
Crossman, Robert
Cummings, David P.
Hannum, James
Holloway, Samuel
Johnson, William
Kimble (Kimbell), George C.
McDowell, William
Reynolds, John Purdy
Thurston, John M.
Williamson, Hiram James
Wilson, John

Rhode Island
Martin, Albert

South Carolina
Bonham, James Butler
Crawford, Lemuel
Neggan, George
Nelson, Edward
Nelson, George
Simmons, Cleveland Kinloch
Travis, William Barrett

Tennessee
Bayliss, Joseph
Blair, John
Blair, Samuel C.
Bowman, Jesse B.
Campbell, James (Robert)
Crockett, David
Daymon, Squire
Dearduff, William
Dickerson (Dickinson), Almeron
Dillard, John Henry
Ewing, James L.
Garrett, James Girard
Harrison, Andrew Jackson
Haskell, Charles, M.
Hays, John M.
Marshall, William
McCoy, Jesse
McKinney, Robert
Miller, Thomas R.
Mills, William
Nelson, Andrew M.
Robertson, James Waters
Smith, Andrew H.
Summerlin, A. Spain
Summers, William E.
Taylor, Edward
Taylor, George
Taylor, James
Taylor, William
Walker, Asa
Walker, Jacob

Texas
Abamillo, Juan
Badillo, Juan Antonio
Espalier, Carlos
Esparza, Gregorio (Jose Maria)
Fuentes, Antonio
Jimenez, Damacio
King, William Phillip
Lewis, William Irvine
Lightfoot, William J.
Losoya, Jose Toribio
Nava, Andres
Perry, Richardson

Vermont
Andross, Miles Deforest

Virginia
Allen, Robert
Baugh, John J.
Carey, William R.
Garnett, William
Goodrich, John Camp
Herndon, Patrick Henry
Kenny, James
Main, George Washington
Malone, William T.
Mitchasson, Edward F.
Moore, Robert B.
Northcross, James

Denmark
Zanco, Charles

England
Blazeby, William
Bourne, Daniel
Brown, George
Dennison, Stephen (or Ireland)
Dimpkins, James R.
Gwynne, James C.
Hersee, William Daniel
Nowlan, James
Sewell, Marcus L.
Starr, Richard
Stewart, James E.
Waters, Thomas
Wolfe, Anthony (Avram)
Wolfe, son age 12
Wolfe, son age 11

Ireland
Burns, Samuel E.
Duvalt, Andrew
Evans, Robert
Hawkins, Joseph M.
Jackson, Thomas
McGee, James
Rusk, Jackson J.
Trammel, Burke
Ward, William B.

Germany
Courtman, Henry
Thomas, Henry

Scotland
Ballentine, Richard W.
McGregor, John
Robinson, Isaac
Wilson, David L.

Wales
Johnson, Lewis

Unknown Locale
Brown, Robert
Day, Freeman H.K.
Garvin, John E.
George, James
McCafferty, Edward
Mitchell, William T.
Mitchell, Napoleon B.
Roberts, Thomas H.
Smith, William H.
Sutherland, William Depriest
White, Robert
John (last name unknown)

Newly Discovered Defenders
Baxter, Joseph
Edwards, Samuel
Edwards, William
Gordon, Pelitiah
McClelland, Ross

Known Survivors
Joe, Travis' slave
Alsbury, Juana Gertrudis
Dickerson (Dickinson), Angelina Elizabeth
Dickerson (Dickinson), Susanna Wilkerson
Esparza, Anna Salazar
Esparza, Enrique
Esparza, Francisco (child)
Esparza, Manuel (child)
Esparza, Maria de Jesus Castro (child)
Gonzales, Petra
Guerrero, Brigido
Navarro, Gertrudis
Perez, Jr., Alejo Alsbury
Saucedo, Trinidad

Unproven Participants
Rose, Louis (Moses)
Villanueva, Andrea Castanon

Surviving Couriers & Foragers
Allen, James L.
Baylor, John Walker
Brown, Robert
Coy, Trinidad
Cruz y Arocha, Antonio
De La Garza, Alexandro
Desauque, Francis L.
Dimmitt (Dimitt), Phillip
Highsmith, Benjamin Franklin
Johnson, William P.
Lockhart, Byrd
Nobles, Benjamin F.
Oury, William Sanders
Patton, William Hester
Seguin, Juan Nepomuceno
Smith, John William
Smither, Launcelot
Sowell, Andrew Jackson
Sutherland, John

I want to thank ALAMO DEFENDERS DESCENDANTS ASSOCIATION for having the only page, that was readily accessible, for the names listed above, and of course, those that died this day one hundred and seventy-one years ago...

--WP

Happy Texas Independence Day!

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence made by the Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the town of Washington on the 2nd day of March 1836.

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.

The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.

In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.

It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected.

It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government.

It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.

It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.

It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.

It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.

It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.

It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation.

It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.

It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.

It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.

It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers.

It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government.

These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.

The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.

We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations.

Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate from Red River.
Charles B. Stewart
Tho. Barnett
John S. D. Byrom
Francis Ruis
J. Antonio Navarro
Jesse B. Badgett
Wm D. Lacy
William Menifee
Jn. Fisher
Matthew Caldwell
William Motley
Lorenzo de Zavala
Stephen H. Everett
George W. Smyth
Elijah Stapp
Claiborne West
Wm. B. Scates
M. B. Menard
A. B. Hardin
J. W. Burton
Thos. J. Gazley
R. M. Coleman
Sterling C. Robertson
James Collinsworth
Edwin Waller
Asa Brigham
Geo. C. Childress
Bailey Hardeman
Rob. Potter
Thomas Jefferson Rusk
Chas. S. Taylor
John S. Roberts
Robert Hamilton
Collin McKinney
Albert H. Latimer
James Power
Sam Houston
David Thomas
Edwd. Conrad
Martin Palmer
Edwin O. Legrand
Stephen W. Blount
Jms. Gaines
Wm. Clark, Jr.
Sydney O. Pennington
Wm. Carrol Crawford
Jno. Turner
Benj. Briggs Goodrich
G. W. Barnett
James G. Swisher
Jesse Grimes
S. Rhoads Fisher
John W. Moore
John W. Bower
Saml. A. Maverick (from Bejar)
Sam P. Carson
A. Briscoe
J. B. Woods
H. S. Kimble, Secretary

WP