Now that the weather’s cooled, the beach crowd has gone home and the latest Nascar race in Dover is history, perhaps we can get back to a normal life around this place. I’m not so sure what normal is around here any more but I sure would like to see it.

    Politics, as seems to have been constant since 2004, is an inescapable issue today. Sometimes I’d just like to wake up and find that it’s December, but time is flying by too rapidly to begin with.

    There’s always partisan politics but for those of us who love to hunt and to shoot, this should be a wake up call. This election, more than any in our history, can decide the fate of our sport. The Democratic Party has now declared open season on all of us. As reported by Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman in the Idaho Examiner, the platform of Barack Obama and Joe Biden contains some scary passages. They claim to “recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ continued Second Amendment right to own and use firearms.” Now comes the scary part. It continues, “We can work together to enact and enforce common sense laws (my italics) and improvements, like closing the gun show loophole, improving our background check system and reinstating the assault weapons (my italics) ban.”

    Any time I hear a politician cite common sense as a modifier in any sentence, I know he’s: 1) implied that I don’t have any; and 2) planning on stealing something from me. Since Pope Innocent II declared that the crossbow was an assault weapon in 1139 A.D., I’m not sure what definition these people are capable of. Vote wisely this November, and remember whose interest the name you select has in mind.

    I’m positive the Democratic leadership is not happy with the release of the FBI Crime Report for 2007. It seems that the gun control nuts have taken another shot to the chin.

    According to the report, the U.S. Department of Justice said that in 2007 the violent crime rate in America is at its lowest point since 1974. Since 1991, that rate has dropped 38% and murder rates have gone down every year since 1999.

    The message implied by the Democratic platform fails the smell test on this one obviously. They continue to wail that more guns mean more crime. Gun sales have increased to 4.5 million per year, there are more gun owners than ever in our history and violent crime is lower than at anytime since Gerald Ford sat in the White House.

    Now I’m sure the Brady bunch will try to spin this as usual with their sneaky agenda of state score sheets. They routinely use Detroit (where the mayor was just imprisoned and where Michigan law forbids sale of a firearm without a permit), Baltimore (where Maryland law restricts sales and has a seven-day waiting period) and Washington, D.C. (which was just taken to task by the Supreme Court for restricting lawful ownership of firearms). For good measure, they’ll like throw Philadelphia and Los Angeles into the mix because of their high crime rates. Don’t expect to see that bunch ever find any common sense reasoning in anything they put out.

    Just a reminder for you waterfowl hunters, if you haven’t picked up the green addendum sheet to your hunting and fishing guide, don’t wait. The sunrise and sunset times are incorrect in the book and the correct ones are reflected on the green sheet. The sheet contains species seasons, bag limits and the changes in the mourning dove bag limits that went into effect after the book was printed.

    For you muzzleloader hunters, remember there’s only nine days until that opener. Although you should have sighted in your gun months ago, we all procrastinate and it would seem right if we didn’t wait until the last moment. Go do it now before you forget, and if you’re using anything but smokeless powder or the new Blackhorn 209 propellants you need to clean the gun before you put it away. In nine days it will be a ball of rust if you don’t.