As you are reading this, the great U.S. Holiday of Thanksgiving is just three days away, and I thought I would take a moment to remind you that you and I \u2013 we, collectively \u2013 have a lot to be thankful for.<\/p>\n
We live in a country where we are free to practice our religious faith \u2013 or to not practice any faith whatsoever \u2013 and no one is going to threaten or coerce you either way. That\u2019s a thing to be thankful for. There are many countries on this globe where that is simply not the case.<\/p>\n
Since I work some weeks ahead on this blog, as it happens I am writing this on Election Day. I do not know what the outcome will be, and regardless of how you view the outcome, I think perhaps that we can agree that living in a country where we can have an election is a thing to be thankful for. In the heat of campaigning, all of us saw and heard a lot of complaints: this is wrong, that is wrong; this needs to be fixed, that needs to be fixed, and so on. While I won\u2019t deny that we have problems in this country that need to be addressed, perhaps we could take a moment to give thanks for the many things that are right.<\/p>\n
Many of us have families to be thankful for \u2013 spouses, children, relatives, friends. The Elliott\u2019s modest abode \u2013 El Rancho Elliott \u2013 is located in upstate New York. We were spared the wrath of Hurricane Sandy, but a couple of hundred miles to the south of us, many people were not. While it absolutely stinks to lose your home and possessions, if you got out and the people you love survived, you have much, much<\/em>, to be thankful for.<\/p>\n As a shooting enthusiast, I am grateful for airguns. They offer me the opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of shooting in many places where discharging a firearm would be absolutely forbidden. As a result, I can shoot in my side yard without having to load up a bunch of gear, get in my car, and travel to a range. How neat is that!? In addition, airgunning is remarkable friendly to the wallet. Once you have purchased an air rifle or air pistol, high quality pellets cost just pennies per shot, so I have a hobby I can enjoy without busting the family piggy bank.<\/p>\n Further, I am grateful for the breadth and depth of the variety of airguns that are available to us today. Cruise around www.airgunsofarizona.com<\/a>, and you\u2019ll find that the spectrum of offerings is absolutely astonishing. You can spend under $40 for a pump-up rifle suitable for controlling pests in the garden at short range and plinking in the backyard, or you can lay out thousands for a high-powered big bore hunting rifle. And in between, there is a range of offerings to suit almost every taste and budget.<\/p>\n Finally, I would be remiss if I didn\u2019t acknowledge the many fine folks who are involved in airgunning, from the manufacturers and retailers to the people who organize airgun shooting events, to the individual airgunning enthusiasts. I have found them to be, as a group, incredibly generous of their time, treasure, and expertise.<\/p>\n So those are some things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I\u2019m willing to bet that, regardless of your situation, you can think of some more.<\/p>\n Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.<\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jock Elliott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As you are reading this, the great U.S. Holiday of Thanksgiving is just three days away, and I thought I would take a moment to remind you that you and I \u2013 we, collectively \u2013 have a lot to be thankful for. We live in a country where we are free to practice our religious…»<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,20],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2211"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}