Outdoor Odyssey

Our new President said that he wouldn’t come after our guns.  He never said anything about using taxes to inhibit ammunition sales.  I wonder why ‘the media’ never probed for this?  I did find out what Texans are doing about it!

Living in a small town, like Goldthwaite, far away from the traffic and congestion of a big city, has many benefits, but there are some things missing – some things like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops and Gander Mountain.  Keeping a running list of items needed from Cabela’s, I got to stop by there this past Monday and was I surprised.

Brad and I had traveled down to San Antonio to meet with his doctors and after lunch with my youngest son, Randy, in San Marcos, we stopped by Cabela’s, in Buda, to pick up .22, .22 Mag and .17 HMR ammo and stock up on reloading supplies.  Buda, for the uninformed, is 16 miles south of Austin on I-35.

It was mid Monday afternoon, but where everyone should have been out working, they were in the gun/ammo department.  It looked like a Saturday!  We found and picked out the items we needed, loaded them into our shopping cart and then went over to the gun cases to get some small pistol primers and Unique gun powder.

The salesman did a perfunctory look under the counter, but we could see that the powder stocks were woefully low and that they were out of Unique.   He added that there were shotgun primers, but no small pistol ones and that their stocks had been pummeled since Christmas.  

Looks like everyone is trying to beat the big tax increase on ammo and reloading supplies!  For sure, it’s coming and we won’t have anything to say about it, so stock up all the ‘stuff’ now and let’s hope we can roll it back in 2 years!

The following is an excerpt from an announcement on the NRAILA website and, folks, we, the gun owners, hunters and shooters of this country, won one!

“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it will significantly revise a recent proposal for new “explosives safety” regulations that caused serious concern among gun owners. OSHA had originally set out to update workplace safety regulations, but the proposed rules included restrictions that very few gun shops, sporting goods stores, shippers, or ammunition dealers could comply with.”

OSHA was “flooded” with negative comments from gun owners and shooting groups and claims their aim was never to inhibit gun ownership or use, but to make the workplace safer. I personally think that is BS! They were trying to “sneak one” past us.

Think about it. A big regulation change, a short time to offer comments and, what do you know, OSHA has severely limited the public’s ability to “Keep and Bear Arms”!

We stopped them this time, but all of us, as shooters, hunters and gun owners, have to be on our toes and make sure our government doesn’t “sneak one” past us again!

"Desert Rat Blog", http://www.arizonahuntingtoday.com/desertrat/ , has a great post, “Et Tu OSHA”, about proposed new regulations that affect each hunter, shooter and law abiding citizen.  At lunch today I also heard Rush Limbaugh mention the regulation.  He mentioned that the NRA is hot after these regulations.

OSHA is proposing a “sneaky” way of achieving a form of gun control. Control the ammunition. They propose to classify powder and primers as explosives. The proposal includes:

1. Prohibit possession of firearms in commercial “facilities containing explosives”—an obvious problem for your local gun store.
2. Prohibit delivery drivers from leaving explosives unattended—which would make it impossible for delivery services such as UPS to deliver ammunition or gun powder.
3. Require evacuation of all “facilities containing explosives”—even your local Wal-Mart—during any electrical storm.
4. Prohibit smoking within 50 feet of “facilities containing explosive”.

The public comment period ends July 12. To file your own comment, or to learn more about the OSHA proposal, go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket Number OSHA-2007-0032. You can read OSHA’s proposal and learn how to submit comments electronically, or by fax or mail.

I went through all of this and left the following comment.

I am against the classification of powder and primers as explosives
and the rules applied to them in this proposed regulation.  This smacks
as a sneaky form of gun control.

Ammunition for personal firearms should be exempted.

Why doesn’t OSHA just ban smoking anywhere?

I’m also e-mailing our President and my senators to squash this very liberal move!