An NRA-certified firearm instructor was doing some recreational shooting in a gravel pit in Nevada one day and was approached by a deputy who said some nearby residents called in complaining about the noise.
That’s right. It happened in Nevada, a state where its largest city boasts that “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas;” and a state where the federal government owns 63 percent of the land. So why is it so much of a nuisance for someone to exercise one of their constitutional rights?
On the surface, it might seem that Nevada is fairly accepting of gun rights. After all, one can carry openly without a license (though concealment requires a permit) and the state even allows people who have lost their right to own a gun to petition for a reversal.
But when a certified shooting instructor can’t even practice his marksmanship in a desolate area, well that’s representative of a trend that is gaining traction across the country—infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, or be proficient in what is most definitely a perishable skill.
Often, what works one place gets taken a bit further someplace else. The objective being to make it so inconvenient for law-abiding gun owners (or prospective ones) to exercise their right that they just give up because it’s too much bother.
Another scary thing is, what happened to the firearm instructor in Nevada isn’t an isolated incident; rather, it’s indicative of just how far-reaching the anti-gun phobia’s tentacles are reaching.
We’ve seen it most openly when it comes to the debates for the early Democrat candidates. Cory Booker, for example, sees nothing wrong with the prospect of establishing a federal licensing system for gun ownership. Other contenders for the Democratic Party’s nomination want to step on our First Amendment rights to advocate for gun rights.
But more worrisome might be the less-publicized aspect, where people hide behind making phone calls to law enforcement just because someone is shooting in a sparsely populated area of the desert.
If you need to be convinced that it’s reaching the point of absurdity, consider this: it wasn’t that long ago that someone in a public park called the police because another citizen was wearing a T-shirt that promoted guns.
Is that really where we, as a country that was founded on the premise of individual freedoms, wants to go?
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