Independence isn’t an excuse for recklessness

Alaska is known for its rugged individualists and independent spirit. The Last Frontier is still home to mountain men and women. It still breeds and breaks people who live where civilization has a tenuous grip and the laws of nature hold more sway than those of man. It remains a place where life-and-death situations aren’t metaphoric financial battles in a boardroom; rather, they are confrontations with an unconquered wilderness.

This may sound like the promotions of a tourism brochure or the voice-over on the trailer for the next Sean Penn movie. Fact is, some 81,000 people live in the 25,000 square miles that make up the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. While some live along the shores of the Yenta or Lake Louise where nature still reigns supreme, most of us live within a fast dash of about 268 miles of the major highways that cut through the two valleys.

As the Borough grows, some who live and visit here still think they are blazing a trail through a lawless frontier without neighbors or social responsibility.

Aecent gunshot near Trapper Creek Elementary School reminds us how careless it is to have a mountain man (or woman) mindset in even a sparsely populated area. A witness told our reporter the shot had been fired in the direction of Trapper Creek Elementary’s playground while children were outside for recess.

Thankfully, no one was injured; however, the shooter was close enough for his rifle to be heard by students and throw the school into its “lockdown” mode.

According to the witness account, the hunter was neither young nor new to the area. The shooter told the witness, whose property is near the school, that he had seen the “no trespassing sign” and was not concerned about what he’d done. After all, he had got his quarry — a spruce grouse perched in a tree in the witness’s yard.

The witness went on to tell about similar incidents that have happened recently and in past years.

Alaska has changed a great deal in the last 50 years. In the last decade, the growth of the Valley has been remarkable. Wilderness areas disappear. Favorite hunting and berry-picking spots become subdivisions. Continued change is inevitable.

Growth is all relative. While the Valley is the fastest-growing area of the state, much of that growth is centered around its populated areas. There is still plenty of appropriate wilderness out there where one can hunt safely and responsibly without having to trespass and fire a rifle near an elementary school.

We revere our right to bear arms and the Second Amendment. We also recognize the responsibility that comes with choosing to exercise that right.

Those who still figuratively spin their six guns like gunfighters of old, shooting without regard to where those bullets fly need to either saddle up and ride into the sunset or change. When rugged individualism puts innocent children in harm’s way, it goes beyond being an exercise in self-reliance and freedom. It’s illegal and a selfish, stubborn way of clinging to what has passed.