Gun owners should be very concerned

I want to let you know about some upcoming events before I launch into the main topic of the column.

Tomorrow, the Mat-Su Friends of the National Rifle Association (FNRA) will be holding its annual fundraiser banquet at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center in Wasilla. Festivities begin at 5 p.m. Tickets are still available. For more information, contact Lori Hamann at 373-5938 or email loriann@mtaonline.net.

The weekend of March 23-25 gets even busier. The seventh annual Mat-Su Outdoorsman’s Show opens that Friday and runs through Sunday at the Menard. You should be seeing an insert explaining in detail about the vendors, seminars, times and other pertinent information in the Frontiersman shortly. I’ll be there Saturday morning participating in an outdoor writers seminar. Stop in and ask a question or two.

After you’ve spent Saturday at the Sportsman’s Show, you can attend the Mat-Su Chapter of Ducks Unlimited fundraising banquet at Evangelo’s in Wasilla. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and the banquet runs from 6 to 11:30. The group’s website also shows tickets are still available. For more information, contact Paul Leishman at 232-9587.

The Southcentral Alaska Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society will be holding its annual fundraiser banquet at the Hilton Hotel in Anchorage on April 7. The preliminary information I used in a recent column had the doors opening at 5:30 p.m., and the dinner starting at 7:30. Its website shows doors opening at 5 p.m. Tickets are available online at ruffedgrousesocietyak.com until April 1; after that, call (907) 244-0747 for availability.

OK, now let’s talk about guns and the politics of gun ownership. As we all are already painfully aware, this is an election year. Alaska recently held its Republican primary and all the media outlets carried results. I doubt the Democrats will hold a primary since President Obama has already announced he is running for a second term.

If you think back to the 2008 election year, and you are a shooter, firearms hunter, gun collector or ammunition reloader, you will remember how folks started buying and hoarding firearms, ammunition and reloading components like there was no tomorrow when it became evident that Barack Obama was probably going to be elected.

I did. There was a real fear among citizens that with Obama’s election, the federal government would make a concerted effort to ban many types of firearms and tax or legislate ammunition out of existence.

Because of other major national and international issues, President Obama pretty much left the whole firearms discussion alone during his first four years. He was more concerned about the economy and unemployment, two wars on terrorism and other factors that might bring him votes for a second term. Don’t look for that apparent disinterest to happen a second time if Obama gets re-elected — he won’t need your vote then.

The Obama administration has taken a position that guns bought in the United States are fueling the Mexican drug cartels and shootings that routinely occur in Mexico and along its border with the U.S. Since machine guns have been tightly regulated in this country since the 1930s, that contention is largely false. Those machine guns are coming into Mexico through Central America. In fact, the American government’s totally inept handling of a program intended to trace the firearms flow from the U.S. into Mexico ultimately resulted in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Our government has been participating in the development of a treaty through the United Nations which, if adopted by a country, would essentially ban private ownership of firearms. I read that a final version of the treaty should be available by July. This is a treaty our government is helping to write and promote — not oppose, as the Bush administration did. If Obama is re-elected, you can know he will introduce that treaty into the Senate on the grounds that it will make the world a safer and better place because you can no longer own a firearm.

Perhaps the biggest concern if Obama gets re-elected is that he will likely appoint at least one, and probably two, U.S. Supreme Court justices during his next term. Based on his record of who he has appointed so far, one or two anti-gun justices would guarantee major reversals in our Second Amendment-protected firearms ownership rights. A lot of people are saying they fear Obama will be re-elected because there is no strong and viable candidate to oppose him. I really hope these people are wrong.

I enjoy my freedom to own and use a firearm for hunting, recreation, and personal protection.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.