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ISRA Thursday Bulletin – August 25, 2022

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ISRA Thursday Bulletin – August 25, 2022

August 25, 2022

The Smallbore National Championships are over.  One of the last matches this year is the Pershing Trophy Match.  This is a match between the United States Smallbore Team and the British Smallbore Team.  Although you would never know by watching, reading, or listening to the media, the National Matches and International Matches are steeped in tradition and camaraderie among shooters.  There is no finer group of people around the world than competitive shooters.  One of my first observations I made when I became a competitive shooter was that if shooters ran the world, it would be a much better place to live.  The Pershing Trophy is an excellent example of the camaraderie and tradition that accompanies these matches.

The Pershing Trophy was established in 1931 in honor of American General John J. Pershing.  The match is fired every eight years when the British Smallbore Team comes to the United States to compete in our National Matches.  On alternating eight-year cycles, the United States Smallbore Team travels to Great Britain to compete in the Field Marshall Earl Roberts Match.  In four years, the United States team will be in Great Britain.  This year marks the 13th Pershing Trophy Match.

Competition is intense on the range but off the range shooters host dinners and receptions for each other and it is an all-around good time.  I have found this to be the same in the shooting community no matter the method of competition or country represented.  My experience is in pistol competition, but it is the same way.  The Grand American National Shotgun Championships that were held in Sparta a couple of weeks ago was the same.  I will say I have noticed shooting teams from South America have the best uniforms, particularly Brazil.  We should try a little harder in the uniform department.  This year, the United States won the Pershing Trophy Match by two points.  Each team of ten shooters fires 400 shots for a possible score of 4000 points, with a total of 8000 possible points.  As you can see, winning by two points means it was a close match.

The ISRA shooters and team members did very well this year in all of the rifle and pistol matches.  Thanks for their hard work and dedication. 

A would-be carjacker got a lesson from the Second Amendment school a couple of nights ago in Chicago.  The would-be carjacker, Jarmari Edwards, tried to take a vehicle at gunpoint.  The 45-year-old owner of the car was a licensed Illinois Concealed Carry holder.  The carjacker received a bullet in his chest for his trouble.  Edwards is charged with two counts of aggravated vehicular carjacking, discharge of a firearm and aggravated battery/discharge of a firearm.  Oh well, we all have a bad day now and then.

In Arizona, a convicted child molester crawled into a 12-year-old girl’s bedroom in the middle of the night.  Shortly thereafter, he got to meet the girl’s mother and her shotgun.  Another happy ending. 

The Second Amendment Foundation et al has filed a brief in the Maryland so-called assault weapons case.  The case is known a Bianchi v Frosh.  The State of Maryland bans certain types of semiautomatic rifles.  Once again, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen has come to bear on overreaching gun laws.  The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has remanded the case back to the Fourth United States Court of Appeals and has been told to revisit their ruling on the case.  Originally, they upheld the Maryland ban.  This case will have a great impact throughout the Union States and will send a message to state and local governments trying to infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment Rights.  This case will have impact here in Illinois, particularly.  The Justices in the Freaky Fourth are a lot like the Justices in the Nutty Ninth.  I expect this case to be back before the Supreme Court of the United States.

The NYSR&PA v Bruen is also impacting a denial of a permit case in Hawaii known as Young v Hawaii.  George Young who is otherwise qualified has been twice denied a Hawaii permit to carry by the local police chief.  The local police chief cited Hawaii law which allows him to do that.  Mr. Young sued.  He lost in the District Court, so he appealed his case to the nutty Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  A three-judge panel upheld Mr. Young’s position in Hawaii and for an en banc panel which ruled against Mr. Young.  The Supreme Court of the United States granted a writ of certiorari and agreed to hear the case.  Now that the Bruen case has been decided, the case was remanded back to the District Court for rehearing which means they ruled wrong.  If they don’t change their ruling, the case will go back to the nutty ninth and on to the Supreme Court once again.  Many view this as a delaying tactic of the Ninth Circuit.  In any case, Bruen is definitely influencing these and other cases.

The Massad Ayoob MAG 80 Course, September 7th-11th at our range, is an intensive study of defensive firearms that teaches extreme speed for hits, and includes shooting at greater distances, and management of such contingencies as weak hand draws, one-hand only reloads and malfunction clearing if wounded, etc. Students receive several hours of hands-on training in handgun disarming, and in countering attempts by an attacker to disarm them. Shooting while moving, and the use of long guns for defense, are among the areas covered. Round count: 500 handgun, 100 long gun. Prerequisites: MAG-20/Classroom plus MAG-20/Live Fire; MAG-40 or LFI-I.  Contact Andy Kemp at 208-771-3413 or Andy1911@imaxmail.net

Tidbits:

August 24, 1944 – Paris is liberated after more than four years of Nazis occupation.  The French 2nd Armored Division commanded by French General Jacques-Philippe Lecterc who was attached to American General George Patton’s 3rd Army, was given the honor of entering the city first.  Adolf Hitler had ordered the city destroyed but German General Dietrich von Choltitz disobeyed the order.

August 27, 1859 – Edwin Drake finds oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania.  Those areas of Pennsylvania became “boom towns”.  Drake failed to patent drill pipe methods and he went broke.  The State of Pennsylvania eventually granted him a small pension in recognition of his contributions to the state.

August 27, 1883 – The volcano Krakatoa erupts.  Located in Indonesia, the Krakatoa was one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history.  The smoke and ash sent into the atmosphere lowered the temperature of the earth by a couple of degrees for months.  Maybe we should not clean all the smoke out of the atmosphere and reflect the sun’s rays back into space, 

August 27, 1939 – German aircraft designer Ernst Heinkel successfully flies the world’s first jet aircraft.

August 28,1869 – Three members of John Wesley Powell’s expedition leave in fear of the rapids in the Grand Canyon.  It was a fatal error on their part.  They were killed by a party of Paiute Indians.  The name John Wesley Powell is not a household name but maybe it should be, at least in Illinois.  John Wesley Powell was a largely self-taught naturalist, geologist, and scholar.  Born in New York, his family moved around the country.  Finally, Powell became a schoolteacher.  Powell attended college at the Illinois Institute in Wheaton, Illinois College in Jacksonville, and Oberlin College in Ohio.  He never received a degree from any of them.  He self-financed fossil hunting expeditions along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and studied the natural history and geology of the area.

When the Civil War broke out, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.  He was severely wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and had to have his right forearm amputated.  He returned to duty and was promoted to Major and was in charge of artillery batteries under General Sherman, and later, was on the staff of General Henry Thomas.  After the Civil War, he took a teaching position at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington and later at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois.  He became curator of the Illinois Natural History Museum which was then at ISU in Normal, Illinois.  In 1868, at the urging of General Sherman, Powell formed an expedition to explore the Colorado River and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.  He climbed Pikes Peak and did all the activities in this entire exploration while missing most of his right arm.  The three members of the expedition were correct in the fact that it was tough going down the Colorado River.  The explorers lost their food and lost one of their boats. Finally, Powell halted the expedition at what is now Lake Meade in Nevada.

Two years later Powell returned and finished the exploration.  He produced the first reliable maps of the area.  He went on to write a book on the languages of American Indians and was appointed the first Director of Ethnology (cultural anthropology dealing with the analytical study of cultures) at the Smithsonian Institution.  In 1881, he was appointed the Second Director of the United States Geological Survey, a position he held until 1895 when he resigned.  Powell correctly warned that over settlement of the arid west would lead to water shortages.  He was very unpopular with many western developers from that point out in 1893, but he was right.  In fact, in today’s news, California is paying people to tear out their grass lawns that need to be watered.

People like John Wesley Powell were the types that built the United States, quiet heroes that made all the difference.  There are several grade and high schools within anywhere from 200 feet to a mile of where John Wesley Powell had his office in Normal, Illinois.  I would be willing to bet none of those kids in those schools ever heard of him.

Thanks for being a member.  If you are not already a member, join us today!  Big things are just beyond the horizon, and we need your help.

For more information, visit www.isra.org

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Armed Women of America

RSO Meeting

Sunday, August 28, 2022

Glock League

9th Annual Law Weapons Shootout

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Women’s Precision Pistol Practice Drills

Monday, August 29 & September 5, 2022

Military Bench Rest League

Tuesday, August 30 & September 6, 2022

Tuesday Night Irregular Rifle League

Wednesday, August 31 & September 7, 2022

F-Class Rifle League

Bench Rest League

Paper & Steel League

Thursday, August 25 & September 1, 2022

ISRA Smallbore Prone/F-Class League

Thursday, September 1, 2022

Private Event

Saturday, September 3, 2022

ISRA Steel Challenge

Sunday, September 4, 2022

Bonfield Muzzle Loaders

Black Powder Shotgun

ISRA 3Gun

Thursday, September 7 – Sunday, September 11, 2022

MAG-80 with Massad Ayoob

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Metric Smallbore Prone Championship

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Conventional Smallbore Prone Championship

Covert Carry Handgun

Gun & Trade Shows

Belleville Gun & Knife Show – Belleville, IL

Belleville Fairgrounds

Dates: August 27 & 28, 2022

Hours: Saturday: 9:00-5:00

             Sunday: 9:00-3:00

Admission: $6.00

Westville Gun Show – Westville, IL

Fireside Event Space

Dates: September 10 & 11, 2022

Hours: Saturday: 9:00-5:00

             Sunday: 9:00-3:00

Admission: Free

Kankakee Gun & Sportsman’s Show – Kankakee, IL

Kankakee County Fairgrounds

Dates: September 17 & 18, 2022

Hours: Saturday: 8:00-3:00

             Sunday: 8:00-2:00

Admission: $6.00

Boot City Opry Guns, Knives & Outdoorsman Show – Terre Haute, IN

Boot City Opry

Dates: September 17 & 18, 2022

Hours: Saturday: 9:00-5:00

             Sunday: 9:00-3:00

Admission: $5.00

McHenry County Gun Show – Woodstock, IL

McHenry County Fairgrounds

Date: September 18, 2022

Hours: Sunday: 7:30-1:00

Admission: $5.00

“Ninety-eight percent of the people in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”

Lily Tomlin

“The people who work against your gun rights are basically saying to you, “The right of the criminal to rip you off, rape and kill you shall not be infringed.” And they wonder why we’re a bit testy”

Editor of KABA LIBERTY ADVOCATE, Friday, July 30, 2001

“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.”

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

“You may find me one day dead in a ditch somewhere. But by God, you’ll find me in a pile of brass.”

Tpr. M. Padgett

“Using inner city kids as your proof that guns and kids don’t mix, is like using an alcoholic to prove all people will abuse alcohol.”

Lori Broadhead

“How dare politicians continue to pass insane laws forcing good, law-abiding people to be defenseless and helpless.”

Ted Nugent

The said Constitution [shall] never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe or to prevent the people of the United States from keeping their own arms.”

Samuel Adams, Massachusetts' U.S. Constitution Ratification Convention, 1788

“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”

Thomas B. Reed (1886)

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”

Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution (1776)

“Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution are courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the constitution THEY don’t like.”

Alan Dershowitz

“Every 13 seconds in America someone uses a gun to stop a crime.”

Sen. Larry Craig

“The AK-47 is not a device of aggression … I devised this machine-gun for the security of my country,”

Mikhail Kalashnikov, April 1997