THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

I have been doing a lot of video work, self-teaching and archiving lately, but today I actually did some still shooting so I felt it facilitated a blog posting. I was planning on heading out to check out some extreme ice sculpture when I found out that a few friends of mine were headed out to Pelican Island to do some target shooting. Now I know I live in the great state of Texas, but I am not a fan of guns. In my younger years my dad used to take me hunting so I am familiar with firearms, but I don’t have any, don’t like to shoot them and don’t care to really be around them, but when they start talking about blowing things up my photo gears began turning and I decided to ride along.

It has been a nice week, but today was cold, windy and rainy and being on the Island amplified the elements. It was the first time I had been back on the Island since my only post-Ike visit back in September. Things are still pretty hairy, but the recovery process is moving along in most areas. The guys stocked up on ammo and supplies on the Island before we piled into the car and headed out. Before the guys began shooting they spent a while setting up various targets…pieces of tile flooring, cans of spray paint, tanks of propane and other debris on the land as well as an old Southwestern Bell pay phone full of change.

After about 40 minutes of shooting we hear a pretty loud siren behind us. It startled us since we were in a pretty remote area. We see what looks like a cop get out of a truck and with an AR-15 pointed at us, he tells us to put our weapons down and get our hands up. We obliged and continued down the hill per his demands. The officer, which turned out to be a game warden, was really nice and really only wanted to make sure we were not up to any mischief. The land is private land, but given its remote and desolate nature, it is known to be used for various public use. In fact there were a group of ATV’s being ridden nearby as well. Although we had a slew of weaponry…3 AR-15′s, 3 shotguns, 5 or so pistols, and an assortment of other guns and ammo as well as my large Canon’s (<—lame camera reference) We were in full compliance as all weapons were clean and registered as well as the owners of the handguns all having CHL’s.

We had to cut our trip short, but it was definitely an interesting journey down. I really wish I could have seen a full propane canister being lit up by an armor piercing tracer round, but there’s always tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 2:21 AM. It is filed under Editorial, Personal Work and tagged with adventure, cops, firearms, friends, Galveston, game warden, guns, Houston, Pelican Island, Personal Work, weapons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.