That Old Gun  
(Thoughts on Guns Freedom and America)  

By Jack Spirko  

As sportsmen we hear often about the Second Amendment of the US Constitution and the right of all Americans “to keep and bear arms”.  Yet to me the real story of America, our guns and the freedoms we enjoy, is a much deeper and much more moving story.  It is a story that has been handed down from father to son to grandson.  It is a story that lives in the hearts of old men who still can remember autumn days of their youth.  It is a story that has been told around fires at deer camps and above all it is a story held in millions of guns.  Most hunters have such a story in a gun they carry, I would like to share mine with America to show the real issues behind what sportsmen defend when we protect our “right to keep and bare arms”.

My story takes the form of an old bolt action Model 25 Marlin in 22 long rifle.  This little gun has been with me since my dad gave it to me at 13 for Christmas.  It is without a doubt the most accurate 22 outside of those custom target models I have ever seen.  I've have shot squirrels in the 100 yard range with it, crows galore, ground hogs, and more varmints then one can ever hope to number.  If my house was on fire and I could only grab one of my guns (after getting the kiddo and wife out of course) it would be that Marlin.   

 
Marlin Model 25 in 22 LR.

A custom Mauser 30-06 can be replaced, a collection of many guns can be replaced and the oak cabinet that houses them can be replaced.  However, a gun a man has carried for more then 20 years since being a dream filled 13-year-old boy can never be replaced.  Such a gun is destined to belong to a son or daughter and is priceless to its’ owner.   In America guns are not just a weapon or a tool.  In America guns are tradition, value and something handed down from generation to generation.  In America a gun can be transformed from fifty dollar Christmas present into a boy's best friend and then eventually become a gateway to a man's cherished memories.   

When I hold that old gun I can almost feel the wind in those wide fields I chased rabbits through.  I can feel the young much stronger legs I once had ache from pursuing squirrels on steep slopes, with all day vigor that would make an elk hunter sweat.  I remember how on Sunday afternoons as I crawled on my stomach and crested a shale bank that cut up my knees and looked 100 yards across an old strip mine dump at a flock of crows, I was not “Jack Spirko, poor boy from the coal region”, no I was Jack O’Connor or Robert Ruark.  On those Sundays my status in life did not matter, nor my minimum wage existence and when I leveled the crosshairs on a crows wing it was not even a crow it was a Dahl Ram or a Cape Buffalo.  Then when I squeezed off the shot I could begin to truly understand the feeling those great authors were trying to convey to us when they took us with words to the Alaskan Mountains and the African Plains.  

As a young and free American boy I carried that gun up and down the remains of Pine Hill and Sharp Mountains, which had been ravaged by strip mining and through countless farm fields all over rural Pennsylvania.  Today those fields are mostly gone, lost to the progress of housing developments and strip malls.  Much of my old Pine Hill Mountain now has homes built on it and the coal company closed off the rest so you can't hunt there anymore.  Yet that little old Marlin is like a time machine.  I can pick it up and remember shots made and missed on seemingly meaningless game.  A black bird at 80 yards, a walnut plucked from a tree with no damage on a bet that won me a beer from a buddy and a lot more.  It is the freedom we have enjoyed in this nation that turns an old fifty dollar rifle into a time machine, a reminder to conserve our wilderness and one of a man's most cherished possessions.  

When one of the Second Amendments best know defenders, Charlton Heston stated often, “you can have my rifle when you pry it from my cold dead hands” this is the tradition and value that spawned such devotion to a basic American freedom that the anti gun groups simply can not understand.  As time has turned, page-by-page, so many special places where a young man could escape with a 22 rifle and a pocketful of shells have vanished.  Sometimes when I look around it seems almost none of them are left.  Yet there are still many such places and millions of others live inside guns like my old 22 and those memories of lost fields inspire us to protect the ones we have left.   

You probably have such a gun that holds your own memories that you hope to hand down to a son or daughter some day, go ahead, pick it up and remember what it was like the day you held it for the first time.  Then remember the day you fired it for the first time and the pride you took in taking care of it.  Remember the special places you traveled with it but above all remember the imagination it inspired in you.  As adults we loose so much of that imagination that makes our children special.  We just can’t seem to imagine away our debts for a little while or thoughts of a job we would prefer not to have.  We can’t travel to Africa in milliseconds they way we did stalking small game as kids or can we?  I can and I bet you can too.  All I do is pick up that old gun and I am there if only for a moment and it seems each time I do it, I find another forgotten memory held within.  

So the next time you hear about the Second Amendment or a political battle to keep our right to own firearms remember it is not just a legal debate.  No, it is much more.  When anti gun groups want to take away your guns they are really trying to take away your memories and your youth.  They are also trying to take away your ability to have those memories live beyond your years in an old gun that you hope some day will be carried by your children and grandchildren.  When you think about it that way the debate is totally different, it is not just legal sparing, it is at its’ core a debate to preserve the freedom that has made America a nation of dreamers who have dared to both dream and achieve the impossible.  Think about that the next time you pick up “that old gun”.

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