Missouri men with guns for McCain

If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. I am pro-Bill of Rights, all for the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and claim as a dear friend at least one bad-ass artist who likes to own and discharge his firearms (Robert Goetz). And I live in Missouri.

I am not, however, a charter member of MISSOURI SPORTSMEN FOR MCCAIN. U.S. Senator Tom Coburn launched this new gun club in Springfield this morning. McCain himself name-checked Theodore Roosevelt, "America's foremost conservation president," in his appreciative remarks.

T.R. also was perhaps America's foremost eugenicist president. He wrote in a 1913 letter to Charles B. Davenport, "It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding. Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum."

Davenport was the author of Race Crossing in Jamaica, which attempted to marshall the techniques of science to prove that "miscegenation" between black and white people led to cultural and biological degradation - a dead horse of a theory that the career of Barack Obama continues to thrash.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty promises McCain "will fight to protect and promote the sportsmen's agenda." I think he means legislative agenda, rather than what's on the daily planner. From what I remember of duck hunters in Granite City, Illinois, the daily agenda included: 1) getting up obscenely early; 2) wriggling into rubber clothes and boots; 3) hiding for long hours in the dark with nothing but cigarettes, beer, and beef jerky; 4) blasting holes into critters; 5) collecting their carcasses.

As a duck eater, I can't criticize the final outcome, but it always sounded like a tedious agenda. To each their own. Some Missouri sportsmen don't like modern Swiss literature; go figure.

As a public service, I now provide a list of the leaders of this new political affiliate group. I am sure their lawyers and assistants will be finding my blog, as they routinely Google the client's or boss' name as part of their office chores. I dig that one man is named, eponymously, "Hunter"; another after a once-important game animal, "Beaver"; a third, "Bub."

National Steering Committee Member

Congressman Sam Graves

Co-Chairs

David Bub, Wildwood
Matt Morgan, Springfield

Steering Committee Members

Andy Beaver, St. Joseph
Robert "Bob" J. Behnen, Kirksville
Carole Benbrok, Mt. Vernon
Rep. Jason Brown, Platte City
Nicole Brown, Jefferson City
Steve Hunter, Joplin
George Janning, Kansas City
Brent Lasater, Independence
Roy Matthews, Ozark
Tom Mendenhall, Columbia
Chris Molendrop, Raymore
Rep. Brian Nieves, Union
Chuck Pennell, Kirbyville
Mitchell Phillips, Harrisonville
Judith "Judy" A. Randazzo, Union
Pete Russow, Carthage
Spencer Schrimpf, Jefferson
Tim Schwent, Jackson
Rep. Joe Smith, St. Charles