The Long Hiatus

I've been on a break for a while. I understand that some missed new posts. I apologize for that. I hope that in the new year I will do better. I have not quit shooting and I've tried a number of different firearms.

I was also on the board of my local club. I've now been voted off. Why I wasn't elected is more troubling than the fact that I wasn't elected. It would seem that some of the membership is more interested in promoting one sport than in supporting the entire membership's interests. That is sad but there are parallels in the broader society and we are seeing that in the politics of the day.

Speaking of politics... Politics is rightly a separate issue because politicians, those who deal in politics professionally, have set themselves apart from the majority of the citizenry. Those that most concern me at the moment are those who seek to advance their various personal agendas through their efforts to disarm the public. The current Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia has apparently decided to make that which has long been legal to possess by otherwise law abiding citizens suddenly illegal to possess by anyone aside from the government's enforcers. This does not bode well for liberty. All the implications of this effort by the governor and the efforts to counter it are too complicated to address in a short blog post so I won't try to do that. Suffice to say that this will be a complicated, perhaps lengthy conflict that might go to the courts and we'll have to see how this turns out.

There have been lots of changes in the shooting industry. Several firearms distributors have gone under because of mismanagement and one has left the business due to the retirement of the founder. Nikon is ceasing production of telescopic sights after making a controversial marketing change. In our area they have already effectively left the marketplace so they might not be missed at all. SKS founded by J. D. Jones has been sold and in conjunction with Haus of Arms is going to produce OLD style Contender frames. There have been several new producers of firearms that I really don't care about for personal use and probably won't report on here but might bear research by you, dear reader.

There are many pages of old posts which I need to edit to improve the illustrations and I hope that I'll be able to do that this coming year.

However, the one thing that I've been concentrating on for the past two years is creating memorial biographies of all the soldiers of the 116th Infantry Regiment and its ancestral and descendant units who have died in service. This project is currently in its fifth year. I have completed those from World War One and estimate that I am about one-half to two-thirds of my way through World War Two. I have and will continue to do soldiers out of sequence if a request is made or an opportunity to capture information presents itself. The 116th Infantry Regiment Roll of Honor is searchable if you are looking for a particular soldier or date.