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Posted: 2003
By NTI Team Member
Samuel Adams
The men sat in the corner of a bar. They were part of a group who had attended a Gunsite Training center course. They were a mixed group; two Army Colonels, a State Trooper, a government employee, an EMT, two private detectives, a firearms trainer, and a bakery employee. Their commonality was the spirit of the free man. Their talk was that which always concerns such men; guns, politics, and war stories. In front of several of them were bottles of Samuel Adams beer. No brand could have been more appropriate to this group.
But for Samuel Adams, the United States of America would not exist. There was no other man in Colonial times who understood the concept of a free man better than he.
Samuel Adams believed that free men were right to fight a supreme authority in order to secure freedom and liberty. He worked, schemed, and connived to make the fight happen. He orchestrated the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the stand at Lexington Green. When listening to the "shot heard round the world", he said to John Hancock, "What a glorious day!"
Adams believed and wrote constantly that all men should keep and bear arms. He spent many hours with his cousin, John Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and other Patriots talking, smoking, and drinking. They talked of guns, politics, and saluted the bravery of men.
In our group, Rich Jee talks about a sniper rifle imported by Gunsite. He speaks not so much about the rifle as about what a man can do with it. Such is the difference between individualists and gun enthusiasts. The individualist understands that it is what the man is capable of, in operating his skill in combination with his spirit, that allows him to control and dominate his environment. Gun enthusiasts debate the qualities of the tool.
Undoubtedly, Samuel Adams and his associates spoke about the same qualities when they discussed the Battle of Bunker Hill were a lone rifleman stepped onto a three foot high pedestal built on the ramparts of the Colonial fort and shot twenty British officers before he was felled.
Individualists share the beliefs of Adams, Hancock, and the Bunker Hill rifleman. When you sit with men of that caliber, talking, smoking, and perhaps drinking Samuel Adams beer, understand the heritage of the ritual in which you are engaged. If you want several days of that kind of an experience, shoot the N.T.I.