EDITORIAL
Our Business Is Everybody’s Business

There is material in this issue of The American Rifleman—authentic, reliable information—in ample quantity to explode a fallacy which has in the past kept thousands of American shooters from going along shoulder-to-shoulder with the members of the National Rifle Association. This fallacy is to the effect that the average sportsman does not need to worry very much about antigun legislation, on the theory that such legislation is directed only at the pistol and revolver. There is listed in this magazine a total of 53 bills which have been introduced in 19 State Legislatures during the first six or seven weeks of the current legislative session. The summaries of these Proposed laws indicate very plainly that the lawmakers nowadays are not worrying nearly so much about just the pistol and revolver shooters’ activities as they are about the sport of shooting as a whole.

Some of these laws propose a state excise tax on shotgun and rifle ammunition (in addition to the existing 10 per cent Federal tax) which in some cases would run as high as 40 per cent. Some of the bills would prohibit a father from teaching his son how to handle any kind of a gun until the boy had reached voting age. Several of the bills propose to outlaw machineguns, and in many cases the wording of these so-called machinegun bills is such as to outlaw every semiautomatic pistol, rifle and shotgun.

Facing a situation of this kind, what intelligent sportsman can any longer believe that he can afford to sit on the sidelines and refuse his support to the single organization in the United States which consistently and persistently fights the efforts of that noisy reform element which is intent not merely upon the abolishment of the pistol and revolver, but upon the restriction, by whatever means can be put into effect, of absolutely all shooting activity in the United States?

On one side of the picture we have sportsmen giving of their time and money for the conservation and propagation of our game, fish and forests, and on the other side we see thousands of these same individuals sitting idly by while the attempt is made to disarm them so that they will never have the pleasure of going afield in the forests which they are helping to plant, in search of the game which they are paying to have conserved and propagated!

The experience of the National Rifle Association has amply demonstrated that with proper organization and with intelligently-directed campaigns these attempts in State Legislatures to disarm the sportsmen can invariably be overcome. That same experience has indicated, however, that without proper organization the efforts of individual sportsmen are of no avail.

It is too much to expect, of course, that all the 8,000,000 sportsmen of this country will ever be banded together into one organization, but if only 1 in every 10 could be enrolled into the compact, aggressive, experienced ranks of the N. R. A., there would be an end to the ever-broadening efforts to make an outlaw of every man in the country who loves a gun. This end can be accomplished at no expense to those loyal shooters who have made the N. R. A. the organization that it is today—no expense except that of a little consistent endeavor and persistent missionary work in the telling of the true story to their sportsmen friends. The antigun crowd have not permitted “hard times” to interfere with their activities. The sportsmen of this country must not permit “hard times” to interfere with the enlargement and perfection of their organization. There is no alternative for this endeavor on your part except a constantly tightening noose of restrictive legislation around the neck of the shooting game in this country—not merely the pistol shooting game, not merely the rifle shooting game, but the entire sport of shooting both at the targets and in the field.