Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
by: James Stoker
Sacrifice.
What exactly does that mean to you? Sacrifice. The past few weeks have been chaos on the road for me. Mill Creek, Langhorne, Newville, Butler, Long Pond… a lot of highway miles. This past Thursday the seminar team needed a break, but I had to be at Long Pond for a four-hour seminar with V.P. Klint Macro. The weather was fair, so I took the Shelby and made the four-hour trip to the Pocono Raceway to present to a crowd of roughly 25 pro-gun citizens, almost half of which were brought to the room by Director Stephen Laspina.
After a lively four-hour block of instruction, questions, and answers, we cleaned the room and headed for the cars. The number of people concerned for me driving the four hours back after was touching, but it struck me how unusual my lifestyle must be to some. You see, after roughly 37 years of service, such small sacrifices don’t really register to me. It was a four-hour drive and nothing special, just meant I’d be getting home around 3am. A little discomfort in a car on the road. A little fatigue. It’s nothing compared to the missed birthdays, holidays, and special events sacrificed by my family. Or more importantly, those lost and no longer here who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for us all.
And so, I got to thinking during that late night drive home, how does such sacrifice rate so differently amongst us? Sacrifices are important for “the cause” we all fight for. But compared to the sacrifices of others, this was a drop in the ocean. It gave me time to think and to wonder what our forefathers would think of exactly where we are and what we must do to maintain what they had given us. That we even must fight for the 2nd Amendment would certainly strike them as preposterous. Let alone that we are slowly losing that fight because our own fellow citizens are intent on taking it from us.
On September 17th, 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it”.
What did it take the founders of this nation to make it? The leaders and the soldiers who had bled or died for our freedom. The loss. What sacrifices had they made for all our sakes? Hanging for treason. Families hunted and homes burned to the ground. Fortunes taken by tyranny. Prosecutions for seditious speech that often resulted in confinement to the stocks, public whippings, and worse, cutting of tongues and ears. Long years of war with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the weapons they’d often manufactured for themselves. Walking miles upon miles with no real footwear to protect them and suffering through long, cruel winters away from family and friends… all for us. Eight long years of suffering, warfighting, struggling to attain supplies, or even decent clothing to withstand the weather. Eight years of sacrifice on a scale that most of today’s Americans have no idea how to even begin to comprehend.
And here we sit, listening to people manufacture reasons NOT to attend this years 2A Rally a mere three-hour drive away. Our founding fathers would start walking there TODAY if they had to, and do so with bare feet and no food, thinking they would figure it out on the way. While some of us complain about missing work or the price of gasoline, so spoiled in our modern comforts we’ve lost sight of what is truly important in America.
Freedom. Freedom of choice. Freedom to assemble. Freedom to bear arms in defense of ourselves and our state that “shall not be questioned”. Freedom earned with sacrifice. Exercise your freedom and find a way to meet me on the steps at the capitol building at 9am on April 30th, 2024. It’s our turn to sacrifice.