It is a day\nwhen we celebrate the uniformed heroes who first won, and then preserved, our\nfreedom. It is significant that the\nfirst of those were the patriots of the American Revolution, who for the most\npart brought their own rifles and muskets to bear against the highly skilled\nand disciplined opposing force they defeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are a\nstudent of the gun, the name of Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC (ret.), will ring a bell\nwith you. Few remember that the late Colonel was a history teacher at one time\nin his life. He found some letters written by a British soldier of the period,\nwho had been horrified by the barbaric practice of the colonists actually aiming <\/em>their rifles, to deadly and\nultimately victorious effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward\nto the War Between the States. Many\nhistorians maintain that man for man, the Confederate soldiers were deadlier on\nthe battlefield than their Yankee counterparts, because being more likely to\nhave been rural in background \u2013 farmers, hunters, shooters <\/em> — they brought\nwith them skill at arms that they had learned long before donning the\nuniform. It was after seeing this that a\ngroup of senior Union officers formed the National Rifle Association in 1871,\nto foster that skill for future combatants defending their nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n World War I:\nsuch storied heroes as Alvin York and Herbert McBride were master riflemen\nbefore they joined up, and each left their battlefields strewn with enemy dead,\none shot at a time. Ditto the most\nhighly decorated American soldier of World War II, Audie Murphy. Vietnam? \nCarlos Hathcock, a national champion rifle shooter well before he went\noverseas. In more current conflicts? \nThink Chris Kyle, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the\nthings they, and so many others, fought and died for was the freedom to prepare\ntheir descendants to be the next Alvin York, the next Audie Murphy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of us\nwill celebrate part of Memorial Day on a shooting range. I will be among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That gunfire\nwill be the sound of the freedom America\u2019s heroes fought and died for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is a day when we celebrate the uniformed heroes who first won, and then preserved, our freedom. It is significant that the first of those were the patriots of the American Revolution, who for the most part brought their own rifles and muskets to bear against the highly skilled and disciplined opposing force they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5847,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5845\/revisions\/5847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}