I hear that, Tracker! When I was nine years old in Oklahoma (circa 1946), my widowed mother gave me my deceased father's Winchester Model 1906 .22-caliber rifle, taught me the rules of gun safety and how to shoot, enrolled me in the NRA, and turned me loose on the banks of the Arkansas River to supplement our larder. I can still recall riding through town to the Western Auto store with the rifle tied with leather boot laces across the handle bars of my bicycle, stopping at the store to purchase a box of shells, and then heading out to the river to hunt small game along the sandbars and thickets of some land owned by family friends. No one gave me so much as a second look at the time.
In the words of the late Peter Sellers in one of his comedy routines -- words which seem more sad than amusing in the present context, "It is not everything, I fear, which has changed for the better."
