It was expected yet ironic that Hillary Clinton in reaction to the latest mass shooting in Oregon announced that she would make gun control a central theme of her run for President of the United States. First of all, ironic not just because she is a criminal herself, but because I spent the first weekend of October 2015 on a life changing mission dedicated to the future promotion of the Second Amendment. When I announced a few weeks ago that my next career would be that of a gunfighter—I was quite serious. But between now and then I have many thousands of hours of practice and many tens of thousands of spent money to get where I want to be with that new career. It will be a long process of which I am just starting. I have shot guns a lot over the years and am good with them now. But what I’m talking about is a whole new level where timing is measured within a quarter of a second. Given that progressive politicians like Hillary are going in one way, I am decisively going in the opposite to not only even out the imposition that these gun grabbing politicians are attempting, but to resurrect a marketing of firearms that worked years ago that I have decided needed to be implemented again. I’m talking about the kind of America that we all know and love from the famous Christmas Story movie that plays every Holiday Season where the little boy dreamed fervently about owning his own Red Ryder BB gun. Hillary and her gang of loony progressives are and have always been at war with that traditional American culture and I’m personally sick of it. So I looked in the mirror and decided I’m going to do something about it. And I have taken those first hard steps over the last several days.

I am proud to announce that I am officially a member of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association and several other gun related groups, which is unusual for me. I typically stay away from memberships, but in this case I’ll make the exception. We are in an ideological Civil War in this country and you have to pick a side—and I have. And when I do engage myself in such an activity I don’t choose to lose. I have also made a commitment to Second Call Defense for the same reasons that I joined Cowboy Fast Draw. I am going to make these organizations a part of my daily life and help them in ways that I can. I consider them extremely important to preserving what I love about America. However the things I say, I say on behalf of myself as an individual, not on behalf of them—so let’s make that clear as we go forward.

As far as fast guns to me single action firearms are the fastest. They have less moving parts than semiautomatics and don’t jam up on the feed mechanisms. So in that respect a good portion of the technology invented at the turn of the 20^th century was the fastest and most reliable in firearm manufacture. That is the reason that Cowboy Fast Draw is the fastest sport there is, and why there needs to be more promotion of it to the mass marketplace. The first step for my participation in this new endeavor was to purchase a new .45 Ruger Vaquero which I did over the weekend at Right 2 Arms gun shop which is essentially in my back yard. One thing about where I live, which I am very happy about, there are three gun shops within a few miles of my house, real legitimate shops that have a constantly good stock of ammunition and firearms. I am thankful for them. I am particularly sentimental of Mike Reed at Right 2 Arms because he’s a great guy who is making it happen the right way. Then within a few dozen miles of my home is of course a Bass Pro Shop, a Cabela’s and a Dick’s Sporting goods all of which have a decent selection of firearms. God bless America! It felt good to purchase such an important gun from a good, all American gun shop at Right 2 Arms. It felt good buying it.

Of course then my next investment which as a large one—actually bigger than the gun was the targeting equipment needed for Cowboy Fast Draw. The timing lights and targets themselves are pretty sophisticated for a shooting sport and need to be acquired since times less than a second are needed to measure. If a Fast Draw shooter has times over one second, they are too slow, so the targets are needed to work with in knowing how to practice. I will be setting up in the coming months a special range in my basement just for this equipment. To be honest, it was in understanding all this equipment that has been the biggest hindrance to jumping into this sport for me. It is the key to learning Fast Draw.

Equally important is the holster rig needed for shooting Fast Draw. I’ve wanted a good one for many years now, but couldn’t justify it for just range shooting. The holster rig must have a metal lining to allow the revolver cylinder to turn within the holster so not to slow down the shooter and a deflection plate is good to have to keep the gun from going off into your feet. Fast draw largely uses wax bullets and powder charges in competition, so a really good holster is needed for both speed and safety. For me it had to be an official Mernickle Holster that I’ve had my eye on for at least a decade. Those rigs are custom-made for each customer, so it will take a few months to get it. But I bought the one I wanted and it wasn’t cheap.

After buying all those items to celebrate my wife and I took our grandson to the Wild West Festival out in Eastern Cincinnati—beyond the Eastgate Mall by about 15 miles east. I had been meaning to go as some of the people I have known over the years within the Western Arts community perform there. Through Gery Deer I know the Pickle Brothers act and their sword swallowing displays complete with fire and freakish spectacle. There were some fun gun fights and a pretty good Wild West act in the main saloon. The environment was wonderful and really put a cherry on top of the weekend for me since I had just deeply committed myself to another few decades of fun with Western Arts with a whole new skill development. I was certainly in the right mindset to go to that particular festival.

As I watched my grandson take the new gun my wife bought for him around the town and shoot everyone he met, I thought about Hillary Clinton and what a fit she would have if she witnessed a three-year old child shooting everyone he met. Progressives like her would want me arrested for child endangerment. But in that Wild West environment, everyone played along. When he shot street vendors, they pretended to die. He actually shot the gunfighters who roamed the streets and gratefully died spectacular deaths to give my grandson that taste of being a Wild West hero on the hunt for bad guys. When I was a kid, I mostly played those types of games and I have never been at risk to shoot anybody for anything. When I have been in conflict with others, melee combat has been just fine. It’s perfectly healthy for young boys to play with guns so that they can adapt their emotional stability to a proper, healthy red-blooded American man who holds doors open for young ladies, and works hard into the night to care for his family. Not having those types of values gives you people like Bill Clinton—Hillary’s husband, the former president who has conducted his life as a sex crazed lunatic who craves power so he can have access to the girls who love it. During the Wild West period of westward expansion and all the romance that was born of that era, brave families risked everything to live on the frontier to essentially get away from people like Hillary Clinton, big government aristocrats who want to rule the lives of everyone to satisfy their own egos. But in our modern age, there isn’t anywhere left in the world to run to, so the ideologies of what made America great through guns, and the progressives who are so in love with Europe that they always want to remake the world into the image of that debacle of historic failure—are clashing and there’s only room for one side—as the two clearly can’t co-habituate. Progressives are unwilling to get along with people who are not like them—timid specimens of fear and loathing.

All this activity left me feeling very good about America. It was nice to be free for a little while of the parasitic decay so commonly associated with progressive types, like Hillary Clinton. It was a little shocking after all that reverie to hear from them their latest attempts to remove guns from American culture which left me thinking hard about why I enjoyed all these gun related events so much. My conclusion is that the American gunfighter is a unique concept in the world invented here in the United States during the frontier period. It was largely an invention of myth based on actual history surrounding heroes and villains that emerged in the Old West from around 1850 to 1900. The romance and freedom associated with gunslingers at Wild West festivals which excite boyish enthusiasm in young and old alike are unique inventions of American capitalism. The deep-rooted assumption is that guns guarantee freedom because it prevents a larger, faster, or more aggressive lunatic from imposing their will upon individuals. It doesn’t matter if the force of aggression is a country or another individual, the gun allows people the security of being self-reliant—and it’s a comforting concept. It is there that people like Hillary Clinton are so wrong and out-of-step with the correct way to socially carry our nation to the next philosophic step. The world in general has banned guns, and their economies and their people are suffering because of that decision. America has a different experience, it has been defined by revolution and expansion—where the American gunfighter is the pinnacle ingredient of its national mythology. For that reason I am very proud of my decision and I look forward immensely to being a part of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. It is one of the few groups I find it a pleasure to be associated with because of its well-defined roots in Americana. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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