The Rifleman  

[WARNING: Unless you are an Appleseed volunteer, some of this may be incomprehensible to you.]

Surely, you know already, being an Appleseed volunteer is about doing things.

About working.

Not the typical internet “who can be the biggest talker” or “who can win the post count contest.”

“Getting the job done, safetly and effectively” should be a mantra for all Appleseed volunteers.

Becoming an instructor is only the first step.

Sure, being an instructor is a Big Deal.

For starters, it means you know how to shoot a rifle - since you are rifleman-qualified.

500 yards, which would be nearly incomprehensible for most shooters and rifle owners, and absolutely miraculous to non-gunowners, is for you the mere routine - even if it will always remain challenging. (Why? Because firing the shot is the least of the three challenges facing a rifleman. But you know the other two, right?)

But that’s for starters.

Under the “learn to shoot today; teach to shoot tomorrow” Appleseed imperative, you are doing the most important task in this country today: waking up your fellow Americans into becoming what Americans should be about.

But, being an instructor is not a full time job.

In fact, it takes up, for most instructors, no more than one weekend a month.

And there’s 27 other days in that month.

And a nation to save.

Uh-oh, what do we do with all that free time?

Most of us volunteers will be so concerned about our Mission we will want to put in some hours during those 27 other days, doing the things we need to do to handle the rapid expansion of our program and see that we are being effective as we can in attaining our Mission.

Now, I wish I could say being an Appleseed volunteer was all wine and roses.

But, in truth, it is not.

There are aggravations, there are frictions, there are many things to make you unhappy - discouragements being a major one.

Trying to ‘get the word out’ is both discouraging and frustrating, as you find the vast majority of your fellow Americans are not into being woken up - in fact, are resistant to waking up. They simply don’t want to.

You find you quickly have to ratchet your expectations down, not a notch, but a couple of orders of magnitude.

From getting all or most in your family to an AS, you find you’re lucky to get one - and that, after ‘working’ on him or her for a while.

From imagining a neighborhood caravan headed for the next AS, courtesy of your efforts, you quickly lower your hopes to getting one or two to come - and like as not, they won’t be coming to the same AS!

Co-workers? Gotta be careful and low-key - can’t be TOO persistent - or your reputation will turn to that of a “kook” or “fanatical”. Slow and easy, steady as she goes, is the answer.

And you’ll learn to be sly about it. You’ll learn a direct approach may not be as good as an indirect approach. So you don’t ask a guy to come directly. You may first find out if he has kids and grandkids, and stress the educational (in terms of firearms safety and the history which Appleseed teaches) aspect of getting them to come - and getting him to come, in the process.

Sometimes, to get into the yard, you don’t go thru the front gate, as it’s easier to go around back, and climb over the fence…

Indeed, from visualizing dozens of friends, neighbors, co-workers, family and relatives coming to an Appleseed from your efforts, you may have to rachet down to getting ONE PERSON A YEAR into Appleseed. Yes, it’s that bad in modern America!

But do not discourage over that: ONE a year means every year you double this program, and if every person you get into AS will also recruit “one a year”, this program will expand with phenomenal speed.

In addition, as an AS volunteer, in the face of these discouragements, you are fortunate to have certain Appleseed precepts to fall back on, and to strengthen you in your tasks.

One is “Persist!” But you learned that, on the road to becoming a Rifleman.

It’s possible, at your first Appleseed, you heard this:

“I want to congratulate you on your decision to learn to shoot rifle.

“But I also want you to understand that you’ve grabbed something of a tarbaby.

“That is, something you can’t let go of.

“In other words, once you start on the journey to becoming a rifleman, once you take that first step, you can’t quit. You have to continue - thru the aggravation, the pain, the discouragement - everything!

“Because if you stop, if you quit, what does that say about you?

“That you are a quitter - right?

“Now, where in the definition of ‘American’ do you find the word, ‘quitter’?

Ouch! That’s a tough approach to take, even if the same speaker will take some of the sting out by telling you that, if you persist until you become a Rifleman, you’ll later come to realize that the process which seems so daunting at present will not only seem not so daunting in retrospect, but actually - fun!!!

Another set-in-stone saying you’ll be able to rely on is ‘Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome’ - the motto of the RWVA Engineers, whose mission is to travel to strange places and put on a good AS, despite any and all obstacles, whether weather-related or range-related.

You’ll find some of the legends relating to that ethos echoing down thru the program. Evansville in ‘06, where because of threatening weather, the night before the AS the RWVA Engineers put up 90 feet of firing line shelter out of metal pipes and tarps.

Or Phoenix in ‘07, where the wind was exploding target frames and hurling the bits at the shooters on the firing lines - where a 6″ X 6″ 2-foot long piece of wood was seen rolling down the concrete firing line - courtesy of that same wind. All other events on the range were cancelled; the public part of the range was closed - but we secured permission to cut the frames down, remount them with bracing ropes, and continue the AS.

“Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome!”

Now, why do you do all this?

Why go thru all the pain, all the aggravation, all the discouragement?

Because there’s a Mission involved.

Something as simple as survival.

For some of us, it’s personal survival.

For most of us, it’s more likely aimed at the survival of our kids and grandkids.

For many of us, it’s a feeling we should never let this country drift from its founding principles which relate to liberty and equality.

For more of us, it’s a steel determination to pay back some of the debt we owe the founders by not letting their sacrifices end up in vain.

The Mission.

It comes first.

It should be more important than any of us.

More important than temporary discouragements, temporary aggravations, temporary pain.

In fact, none of us faces the level of suffering the founders voluntarily undertook in order to create what all of us should see as the most valuable things in our lives - not flat-screen TVs, not music, not the greenest yard in the neighborhood, or the newest car - but liberty and equality before the law, pure and simple.

For some of us in Appleseed, when the going gets tough, comparing what we face today to what they faced puts a calming perspective on us before we start to weep and wail over the frustration, etc.

The historic fact about Americans, we soon come to conclude, is that they don’t weep and wail - they get things done. They persist.

When enemy planes sink our fleet at Pearl Harbor, we not only build a new and mightier fleet, we build a weapon which will make the enemy surrender, unconditionally.

You don’t mess with Americans.

At least, you didn’t used to.

Now, with our politicians adopting the failed policies of Neville Chamberlain, the likelihood of “messing with Americans” is prob increased a bit.

But that’s talking about politics, which in Appleseed is like complaining about the weather - not much you can do about it - it may be good today, but will be bad tomorrow - like election outcomes.

Appleseed, you soon come to learn, is about changing the climate. We do that by waking up the American people to their history and heritage, so they understand what they need to understand, so they once again have standards to serve as anchors, and prevent drift away from our founding principles.

It’s a big Mission.

One that prob has never been undertaken, before, in this country.

Not with such a precise focus on the founders, and the founding principles.

Not stripped of conspiracy theories (there are none, in Appleseed - what you see, is what you get - a simple education of Americans to the first principles behind the founding of their country).

Yet we can do it.

We don’t have to ask anyone’s permission, to do it.

Not as Americans, we don’t.

And if enough of decide we want to do, it shall be done.

If enough of us continue - persist! - despite the obstacles of apathy, laziness, and ignorance which lie before us, each a mountain piled up by preceding generations - we can do it.

Being an Appleseed volunteer is not easy.

It flies in the face of what it is, to be, in 21st-century America.

Because it takes intelligence, to realize the importance of the Mission. Intelligence, in fact, to even be able to see and understand the necessity of the Mission.

And it takes commitment. The determination to persist thru both thick and thin. To stay the course.

To understand the Mission is more important than our personal ego, or our personal comfort.

Intelligence? Commitment?

They’re becoming increasingly rare birds in modern America.

In fact, they are one aspect of the need for Appleseed, and the Mission.

Ignorant people who put themselves and their comfort before everything else are doomed not to last long on this planet. Too many thin and hungry humans out there…

We have a saying in Appleseed, one instructors hear very early in their training: Check your ego at the door!

Sure, everyone nods - but us AS veterans know nodding is not the same as “checking”.

People have to learn the hard way what “checking your ego at the door” means. Some don’t make the cut, prefering to leave the program.

Those who make the grade are the better for it (in fact, us AS vets will tell you right up front: AS is a program about many things - and one of the important ones is that it’s about self-improvement - about making you a better, more effective, more mature person).

Go thru the Appleseed smelter, and you emerge, on the other side, solid steel. Something much better than when you went in, as pot-metal.

Appleseed is clearly not for everyone in America.

Just as the founders believed, that people back in 1775 were not unanimously for liberty - in fact, according to Sam Adams, not even a majority was for liberty! - modern 21st-century Americans, many of them, are prob never going to wake up to AS and its message.

But we don’t have to have every American, shameful as it seems, to sign on to our country’s foundational principles.

We don’t even need a majority.

We need a strong, dedicated, awake, steely-eyed, committed, liberty-loving, founder-appreciating energetic minority which will send the message that what the founders fought so hard for will never, as in NEVER, be allowed to die in this country.

That’s all it takes.

That, and you coming to an Appleseed, and seeing if this program is for you.

While you’re at it, see if you can bring a friend, relative, co-worker, neighbor…

See if you can bring more than one…

(Pssst! I haven’t mentioned, have I, that participation in Appleseed - in saving a country deserving of salvation - is deeply satisfying in and of itself. But you have to persist, thru all the BS, all the discouragement - freedom ain’t free!