THE RIGHT TO BARE ARMS

Blog number 109                                               Aug 16, 2007

Got my first rifle when I was twelve.  Paid $10 for it.  Got it from a private party because no weapons for civilians were being sold at that time.  The War, ya know.  I had to talk the private party into it.  I even told him I would pay $12, but when he finally said yes, I only gave him ten and he didn't object.  Nice guy.  That family had a lot of guns and also several Indian motorcycles.  This was in Graettinger Iowa.

Bullets were rationed.  You could only buy one box at a time, and often the store didn't have any.

When I worked in a grocery store in 1948 - three years after the war ended, things were still rationed.  We used to hide Kool Aide under the counter to save for steady customers.

On the farm I used to take 22 cal. bullets, place them on a rock and hit them with another rock.  Ping!  We also used to take a large bolt, place a nut on one end, just barely tightened onto the nut, snip off the white ends of wooden matches and put them in the nut hole and then put another bolt slightly tightened down onto the matchhead filled nut.  Instant hand grenade.

When I was a senior in high school I bought a home made .22 pistol for $2.  I used to fire it in the basement.

I am pretty sure my parents knew nothing of any of this.

Except about the rationing part.