"Jack, when I was fourteen I was a man.  Had to be.  Well, looks like your father dying has made you a man too.

"I'm giving you this Sharps.  She's an old gun, but she shoots straight.  I'm not giving this gun to a boy, but to a man, and a man doesn't ever use a gun unless he has to.  He never wastes lead shooting carelessly.  He shoots only when he has to and when he can see what he's shootin' at.

"This gun is a present with no strings attached except that any man who takes up a gon accepts responsibility for what he does with it.  Use it to hunt game, for target practice, or in defence of those you love.

"Keep it loaded always.  A gun's no good to a man when it'sempty, and if it is settin' around, people aren't liable to handle it carelessly.  They'll say, 'That's Jack Moffit's gun and it is always loaded.'  It is the guns people think are empty that cause accidents."

~ "The Mountain Valley War" by Louis L'Amour.  May, 1978, Bantam Books, New York. p. 12

"You know, Jack," he commented, "there's a clause in the Constitution that says the rigth of an American to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.  The man who put that clause there had just completed a war that they won simply because seven out of every ten Americans had their own rifles and knew how to use them.  They wanted a man to always be armed to defend his home or his country.

"Right now there's a man in thies area who is trying to take away the liberty and freedom from some men.  When a man starts that, and when there is no law to help, a man has to fight.  I've killed men, Jack, and it's a bad thing, but I've never killed a man unless he forced me into a corner where it was me or him.

"This country is big enough for all of us, but some men become greedy for money or power and come to believe that because they have the money and the power, whatever they do is right.  Your father died in a war for freedom just as much as if her was killed on a battlefield.

"Whenever a brave man dies for what he believes, he wins more than he loses.  Maybe not for him but for me like him who wish to live honestly and decently."

~ "The Mountain Valley War" by Louis L'Amour.  May, 1978, Bantam Books, New York. p. 13

Comments

View of AnAmericanGirl