Neal Knox - The Gun Rights War

Table of Contents

Neal Knox — The Gun Rights War

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

Colophon

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Introduction

Picture: The future Mr. and Mrs. Neal Knox on the Red River circa 1955.

Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Electronic Edition

Foreword by Tanya K. Metaksa

Prologue: The Belgian Corporal

2019 Update

Part 1: Credentials

Editor’s Note

Chukar Partridge

January 1970, Handloader Magazine

Picture: Alectoris Chukar

What Luck! or The Editor Wins a Championship

November 1974, Handloader Magazine

Picture: Portrait by Handloader and Rifle art director Dave LeGate

Remembering Elmer Keith

May 28, 1986

Picture: Famously loquacious Elmer Keith and friend circa 1970.

Goodbye Gun Shows

He Got Me Started: Lloyd Smith

May 29, 1987

Editor’s Note

Part 2: Principles

Editor’s Note

Three Decades Later—Gun Laws Still Don’t Work

October 20, 2001

The Dodd Bill Both Fact…and Fantasy 1

June, 1966

Table: Comparative violent crime rates in American Cities

End Notes

The Dodd Bill Both Fact…And Fantasy 2

July, 1966

End Notes

The Hunker Down Jeremiad

Editor’s Note:

January 20, 1984

Unchanging Truths of Gun Control

December 28, 1986

Editor’s Note

Picture: The Unprotected Woman and Child

The 2nd Amendment—Avoided, Never Voided by Courts

October 9, 1987

End Notes

The Drift Toward Prohibition

December 12, 1983

What’s Wrong With A Waiting Period? Plenty!

February 28, 1984

The Tiananmen Lesson

June 14, 1989

Gun Bans Violate The Second Amendment

May 12, 1989

Bill Ruger’s Magazine Ban

Editor’s Note:

November 16, 1989

A Second Amendment Essay for National Public Radio

December 20, 1991

Mr. Jefferson On The Militia

May 10, 1995

Ultimate Confiscation

June 6 1996

Part 3: The Culture War

Editor’s Note

Absence Of Malice

March 27, 1984

Editor’s Note

Selective Censorship

July 27, 1986

Better Tried By Twelve: The Bernie Goetz Affair

July 27, 1987

Editor’s note:

Self Defense Ads Draw Fire

November 17, 1987

Prohibition In Small Bites

December 15, 1987

Deodand Law

December 22, 1987

Arming Aircrews

Editor’s Note:

February 12, 1988

Editor’s Note

Squeaky Gets Personal

January 30, 1988

The Insatiable Thirst To Ban Guns

July 29, 1988

Editor’s Note

2019 Update

Defending Assault Rifles—To Our Friends

July 6, 1990

Defending Assault Rifles—To the General Public

Editor’s Note

Kennedy’s Bodyguard

February 26, 1986

Unintended Consequences Of A Bullet Ban Campaign

January 26, 1988

On Civilization and Hurricane Hugo

October 4, 1989

Lesson From Russia

August 21, 1991

The Los Angeles Legacy

May 10, 1992

Sad, Wonderful Great Britain

June 22, 1993

Florida’s Defenseless Tourists

September 20, 1993

The Panicky Middle Class

January 6, 1994

Targeting Brutality

January 21, 1994

Teens and Guns

February 21, 1994

Grabbers Never Satisfied

December 10, 1994

Editor’s 2019 Note

Rhino Ammo Hoax

January 3, 1995

Jackbooted NRA Bashing

April 28, 1995

On Totalitarianism: A July 4 Essay

July 4, 1996

On Arming the Somali Mothers

July 2, 1997

Picture: Armed Peruvian Mothers

Part 4: Politics

Editor’s Note

The Virtuous Senator Glenn

Editor’s Note

October 1, 1983

Treasury Form 4473 and the Paperwork Reduction Act

July 25, 1984

Frey Appointment a Slap in the Face

August 17, 1984

Editor’s Note

Reagan Re-Election Endorsement

August 24, 1984

Waiting Periods: The Battle Begins

March 27, 1987

Editor’s Note

Keep The Second Out Of Court—For Now

Editor’s Note

2019 Update

September 26, 1987

Why Not Ban Plastic Guns?

December 1, 1987

Editor’s Note

2019 Note

A Lead Bullet Ban?

December 3, 1987

Editor’s Note

Republicans Refuse To Dance With Who Brung ‘Em

June 14, 1988

Editor’s Note

2019 Note

An Embarrassing Court

July 10, 1992

Perot Out — Clinton Wins?

July 20, 1992

2019 Note

The Unrepentant Bush

August 16, 1992

Brady Bill Testimony

Brady Law Signed

December 1, 1993

FFL To $600?

January 6, 1994

HCI ‘Kitchen Sink Filed

March 3, 1994

Regained Respect

Editor’s Note

Crying Sham Passes

September 1, 1994

A Pox On The 103rd

October 12, 1994

What An Election!

Clinton Blames NRA

January 20, 1995

The Importance of Keeping Promises

Editor’s Note

November 18, 2000

Part 5: The Gun Lobby

Editor’s Note

How To Read A Congressional Vote

October 5, 1984

Dealer Informants

Editor’s Note:

May 28, 1986

Talk To The Candidates

August 17, 1986

Machine Gun Freeze Must Be Overturned

July 15, 1986

Editor’s Note

2019 Note

Gun Show Power

Editor’s Note:

November 10, 1986

The Maryland Defeat

December 10, 1988

Confiscations Begin

April 27, 1989

Californians Defying Law

January 9, 1991

2019 Note

Victory In New Jersey

August 11, 1992

Sarah Details What’s Next

September 2, 1993

Dam’ s About To Burst

October 4, 1993

Roberti Survives

April 10, 1994

Revenge A Tasty Dish

June 9, 1994

Roberti’ s Revenge

May 4, 1996

Editor’s Note

2019 Update

Gun-Grabber Greediness

June 23, 1994

The Danger of Being Reasonable

August 22, 1997

Lobbying Effectively

December 10, 1997

Part 6: Dark Passages

Editor’s Note

Exploring the C.I.A. Connection

October 10, 1988

Editor’s Note

Coincidences

November 19, 1991

2019 Update

The Assault Weapon Hysteria

January 31, 1992

The Woman Who Almost Stopped A Massacre

July 19, 1990

Dr. Gratia’s Counter-Attack

March 1, 1992

Editor’s Note

The Waco Horror

April 20, 1993

Waco Warrant Flimsy

May 3, 1993

JPFO Proves Me Wrong

May 20, 1993

Bombing Gun Law Reform?

April 22, 1995

Ruby Ridge Findings

October 22, 1995

Editor’s note

Senate Waco Hearings

November 1, 1995

Principal’s Gun Saves Lives

October 29, 1997

Editor’s 2019 Note

Part 7: An Uncertain Trumpet

Editor’s Note

Neal Knox and the NRA

Beginnings

The Colonels’ Club

The Cincinnati Revolution

Good Morning, Gun Lobby!

Feet To The Fire

Revolution Begets Revolution

Into The Mainstream

The Knox Legacy

2019 Update

First NRA Board Candidacy

Editor’s Note

Handloader July-August 1971

Editor’s Note

NRA Restored to Proper Course

Handloader July-August, 1977

Picture: Knox the Fox Cleans out the NRA Chicken Coop

Editor’s Note

Why Neal Knox Was Fired At ILA

Editor’s Note

April 7, 1997

The Board Expulsion

Editor’s Note

April 28, 1997

Treasury Amendments Testimony

October 4, 1983

Editor’s Note

Written addendum to Testimony submitted by Neal Knox

Ineffectiveness of Gun Laws

Effect Upon Law-Abiding

Secret Law

Willful Violations

Dealers’ Private Collections

Defining Engaging In The Business

Interstate Sales Where Not Prohibited

Preserving Existing Regulations

Preventing Gun Registration

Ammunition Recordkeeping

Interstate Transportation

Dealer/Collector Inspections

Dealer Sales At Gun Shows

Waiting Period

Conclusion

Division On McClure’s Bill

December 28, 1983

NRA Supports Bullet Ban

June 25, 1984

Editor’s Note

Welcome to the New NRA

October 25, 1984

Editor’s Note

NRA Misleads Members On AP Bullet Issue

Editor’s Note

AP Bullet Ban Passes Congress

March 24, 1986

A Question of Fairness

January 14, 1987

2019 Update

NRA’ s Attack On The .357 Magnum

February 27, 1987

Editor’s Note

2019 Update

Harlon Carter Passes

December 2, 1991

Editor’s Note

Hardliners Sweep NRA Elections

April 13, 1992

All-Out Offense

March 13, 1995

Editor’s Note

Trouble At NRA

January 31, 1997

NRA Argument Breaks Into Public View

February 20, 1997

Unfair Election Ad In NRA Magazines

Nasty NRA Fight

Heston, LaPierre Win

May 6, 1997

Editor’s Note

Moses Goes Astray

May 10, 1997

Fallout From Heston’s Gaffes

May 12, 1998

NRA Finances Improve

June 20, 1998

Editor’s Note

Ethics Complaint

November 2, 1998

Editor’s Note

The Mutiny At NRA

January 1, 1999

Last Cincinnati Reform At Stake

January 11, 1999

2019 Note

Wagging the Dog at NRA

July 30, 2000

Editor’s Note

2019 Note

The Last Word

Neal Knox — The Gun Rights War

Dispatches from the front lines 1966 through 2000

Compiled, edited, and annotated

by Chris Knox

Copyright © 2009 Christopher Knox and Neal Knox Associates

Electronic version Copyright © 2019 Christopher Knox

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without written permission from the publisher. Permission is hereby granted for journalists to quote brief passages for use in newspapers, periodicals or broadcasts, provided full prominent credit is given to Neal Knox: The Gun Rights War, edited by Chris Knox, published by MacFarlane Press.

P.O. Box 84015

Phoenix, Arizona 85071

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

Knox, Neal.

Neal Knox : the gun rights war : dispatches from the front lines 1966 through 2000 / compiled, edited, and annotated by Chris Knox. — 1st electronic edition.

p. cm.

LCCN 2008906247

ISBN-13: 978-0-9768633-1-1

ISBN-10: 0-9768633-0-8

1. Knox, Neal. 2. Firearms—Law and legislation—

United States—History—20th century. 3. Firearms ownership—

Government policy—United States. 4. Gun control—

United States—History—20th century. 5. National Rifle Association of America—History—20th century. 6. United States. Constitution.—

2nd Amendment—History. I. Knox, Christopher, 1957- II. Title.

III. Title: Gun rights war.

HV7436.K57 2009 363.3’3’0973

QBI09-600077

Colophon

Cover by Ruby Lane Design.

E-Book layout by Joe Bob Barnes.

E-Book edited with Sigil and Calibre.

E-Book conversion via Online-Convert.

Acknowledgments

Thanks first of all, to Kelli, my wife for putting up with me for all this time, especially during the home stretch of this project.

Thanks also to each of the following:

To Alan Korwin, for his advice, and especially, for his nagging.

To Derek Bernard, for his feedback.

To Dave Hardy for the stories.

Thanks also to Guns editor John Taffin, as well as to Mark Harris at Wolfe Publishing, and Red Bell and Guns & Ammo for blanket reprint permission.

And to Bob Hunnicut and Shotgun News (now Firearms News) for running The Knox Report column for these many years.

Special thanks to the late Joe DeSaye, founder of J & G Sales. In the early 1980’s Joe felt that Neal Knox’s message about the internal NRA fights and about legislative issues in general were so important that the firearms community needed to see them. Joe bought ad space in Shotgun News which he turned over to Dad for a column. The feature proved so popular that Shotgun News started running the column as one of their first steps into being more than just an advertising paper. My brother Jeff and I still share the writing duty for that column today.

Dedication

To Mom.

Dad would have insisted.

Introduction

Neal Knox loved to spin a yarn, but he rarely committed his yarns to print. Trained as a daily newspaper reporter, writing was, for him, a present-tense activity. Reminiscences were entertainment, something for after dinner. He always figured that the time for looking back and writing it down was at the end of one’s life. In the fall of 2003 he returned from a South Dakota bird hunting trip with an upset stomach little suspecting that he was facing the end of his life. Even in that final year, long-ingrained habit kept his focus on the current events of the day, not on what had gone before. Only at the very end did it sink in that he might not beat the thing. 

If you are a long-time fan—and you are among many—welcome back, and thank you for your years of support, sometimes through difficult times. 

To you who have only heard of Neal Knox as a controversial figure within the gun rights movement, welcome also. I hope you will read these pages ever mindful of the times when they were written. And to you who are among those who disagreed with him, especially welcome. I appreciate your taking the time to look back on what he had to say. Some of you have told me yourselves that he was right all along. I appreciate that acknowledgment. 

In many ways, the early 21st Century is a good time for gun owners. Licensed concealed carry is the law for most of the population. Gun control is a losing political issue for most politicians. Yet only a couple of decades have passed since, in the wake of schoolyard massacres and a media frenzy over assault weapons, Congress seriously considered European-style licensing of all gun owners, and bans on many or most, semi-automatic firearms. Since the eighties, the political pendulum has swung in the gun owners’ favor. But never forget that it is the nature of a pendulum to swing. As the trend moves the other way, it is well to have a history to look back on. That is the purpose of this long overdue project.

Most of the volume at hand has been culled from more than twenty years of computer files. A few earlier articles have been transcribed from published sources. Because he wrote so widely, I’ve taken the editor’s prerogative of categorizing the pieces into major categories. Within each category the pieces are arranged in roughly chronological order. Dates usually reflect the date of the writing, not necessarily of publication. 

Dad’s writing schedule was heavy and it was his habit to feed items from a frequent venue, such as his email updates, to less frequent columns such as Shotgun News. Those, in turn, became grist for the monthly columns that appeared in Handloader and Rifle magazines, The American Rifleman, Guns & Ammo, and in his own bi-monthly newsletter, The Hard Corps Report. Given the transitional nature of his writing, it is often impossible to say where, or even whether, an item was published. 

In my role as editor, I’ve worked for a light the editorial touch, mostly just keeping out of the way. I’ve added pre- and post-notes to some pieces, setting them off in indented italic font (the same as this Introduction). Neal Knox was a good writer but a great editor, which has made this task easier—and which makes me wonder why we didn’t set about it sooner. 

He always figured the gift of long life was his birthright—we came from a long line of old codgers. But he didn’t get to be one of them. Here is wisdom: don’t let the merely urgent get in the way of the vitally important. 

I miss his physical presence mightily—years later I still catch myself picking up the phone to call him. But I’m rarely blessed to hear his voice in his writing. He has been present with me as I have trawled his files. 

Sometimes a piece raises more questions than it answers about a specific event. It’s especially frustrating when I can remember him talking—often at length—about some matter that appears as a few terse words in a tiny computer file, but I can’t call to mind the details. That’s part of life. The big pieces go with us, but we can’t keep every last detail. 

I would be remiss to close without mentioning the two central forces in Neal Knox’s life. The first is his wife and my mother, Jay Janen Knox. Dad often remarked the Providence that led him to the only girl on the Abilene Christian College campus who kept a rifle in her dormitory closet. What he rarely mentioned is that they both came from divorced families—an unusual circumstance in 1950’s Texas, and especially so at prim Abilene Christian. They understood each other like no one else from the start. 

The match was made in Heaven—the other driving force in his life and something Neal Knox took very seriously. While he did not wear his religion on his sleeve, he was a committed Christian with a deep faith in God’s Providence. That Providence had brought him the love of his life, and set him on a path that allowed him to spend a half-century at the center of a battle he believed in with all his being. He did not simply believe in his work; he felt called to it in exactly the same sense that a minister is called to his work. He was convinced, and could back up the assertion with scripture, that he was doing the Lord’s work in defending the right to keep and bear arms. 

He remained true to his faith throughout his life and it sustained him through the end. No hopeless rage against the dying of the light for Neal Knox. He had no patience for such foolishness. He was satisfied with his portion and delighted in what had been entrusted to him. As he said as he neared the end, It’s been a great run.

By any meaningful measure, Neal Knox’s life was a successful one.

The future Mr. and Mrs. Neal Knox on the Red River circa 1955.

How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust 

Psalms 40:4

Chris Knox

Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Electronic Edition

In the original Introduction to this project, I refer to the political pendulum and mention that it is the nature of a pendulum to swing. Without question that pendulum has swung in the past ten years. After assiduously avoiding the topic of guns for almost a quarter-century, Democrats now define themselves in unambiguous terms as the party of gun control. Some have even called for repealing the Second Amendment. A repeal is not something I seriously worry about. In fact I appreciate the honesty of the position, as opposed to feigned misty-eyed reverence for the right to keep and bear sporting goods, such as Hillary Clinton attempted to conjure up in her first presidential run. 

I knew in 2009 that the good times would not last; that the Democrats could not forever tiptoe around one of their most reliable fundraising issues. The 1994 election that made gun control the electrified third rail of American politics was a quarter-century ago — beyond the memory of the youngest generation of voters and even of some politicians. The slow-motion riot of soft-target massacres has galvanized a new generation of anti-gun activists to "do something about guns. Yet the something" they propose never seems to address the problem of human evil, choosing instead to focus on an inanimate object — a simple tool. 

More than once readers have remarked to me how sometimes eerily prescient Dad seems to be in these pages, and indeed, in much of his other writings. I’ll break the spell. It isn’t prescience at all. The simple fact is that there are only so many ways to ban guns. And every restriction, whether a license on possession, a prohibition of some evil feature, a waiting period, or a background check, eventually ratchets down to a ban. Over the years, Neal Knox catalogued every sort of restriction and called out where it would fail. He put his blood, sweat, time, and treasure behind all of those arguments and backed them up with verifiable facts. Over time, the specifics change, but the fundamental fact remains: Gun Laws Don’t Stop Crime. The sooner we as a society recognize that truth, the more likely we are to address the root cause of the problem.

Foreword by Tanya K. Metaksa

I knew of Neal Knox during the 1960’s. I was a young mother and housewife, but also a legislative activist for gun rights. I read Gun Week from cover to cover in order to write letters to my U.S. Senator – the infamous Senator Tom Dodd. In those days there was no National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying group. The NRA membership learned about legislation two to three months after the fact and then in only a cursory manner. The only source of real information was Gun Week and it was timely and well written. Much later I learned that the force behind it was a young Texan whose fervor in the defense of the Second Amendment was equal or possibly greater than mine.

It would take another decade to pass before our paths crossed again.

In 1976 the first Executive Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), Harlon Carter, hired me to manage the NRA/ILA referendum campaign in Massachusetts. The referendum, known as Question 5, was to ban the private possession of handguns for every Massachusetts citizen including off-duty police officers. Knox later told me that I was expected to make the effort but no one believed that I could win. Since no one told me I couldn’t win, I never thought I wouldn’t. And win we did! Question 5 failed—70% to 30%.

As a result I went to work for ILA in the spring of 1977 as the Director of State and Local Affairs. That put me right in the middle of the 1977 NRA Cincinnati Revolution. It was in Cincinnati that I met Neal for the first time. He wasn’t a big man in stature, but he had big ideas and the drive and energy to implement them. During the summer of 1977 he visited ILA and talked with some of the staff, me included.

Yet, the first time he made a profound impression was the day he walked into ILA as its Executive Director. He told all of us in his corner office that we were going to take the fight to our enemies on Capitol Hill, BATF, and in all the 50 states. His enthusiasm and determination made a very positive impression on me.

Thanks to Neal Knox, in great part, national registration and its resulting confiscation as he retold many times in the story of the Belgian Corporal (see the Prologue) has not come to pass in the United States.

He warned gun owners over and over again about the perils of what I call the salami technique of legislation: politicians taking one slice at a time and telling their constituents that is all they are after. His mantra that gun laws do not reduce crime has become the watchword of thousands of gun activists.

In reading these articles, many that I had read when originally published, I was struck not only by their timeliness but their timelessness.

The chapter entitled Goodbye Gun Shows could just as easily have been written in 2006 as it was forty years ago. He writes a federal agency, acting under provisions of an ‘anti-crime law’ has launched a move that may be the death knell of organized gun shows, lifeblood of antique arms collecting.That could just as easily describe the Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (BATFE) effort in the fall of 2005 to check out the homes of gun purchasers who had complied with both federal and state laws when buying guns at a gun show.

When asked by Gun Week (yes, it is still a very viable and important publication for gun owners) why agents were illegally conducting residency checks, BATFE answered,in order to verify legality of firearms purchasers…residency checks on every purchaser were done. In my mind I can still hear Neal expounding on this treacherous behavior of BATFE and then see him pounding out his story of indignation on his computer.

Besides the government Neal directed his wrath against those who he believed had betrayed Second Amendment rights. He did it in the chapters entitled,Bill Ruger’s Magazine Ban,The ‘Hunker Down’ Jeremiad, and all of the pieces in Part 7 NRA:An Uncertain Trumpet. He defended the Second Amendment with all his being and he decried any compromise of principle.

He was a writer, lobbyist, and political strategist. But first and foremost he was a gun owner. He truly loved firearms and everything about them. When he first came to ILA he was surprised that many staff members were really not interested in guns or shooting. He organized a trip to the Marine Corps base at Quantico so we could learn about shooting different types of firearms and ammunition. But, as was his habit, during many of the demonstrations and instructions he would interject himself into the lecture and end up overshadowing the Marine who had been told to educate us. Neal was never at a loss for words and he loved to talk, especially about guns.

As a writer he was a true reporter. He wrote from a particular perspective but that perspective did not get in the way of his clearly and unambiguously reporting the facts of the situation. Reading his descriptions of events on Capitol Hill is a window on the legislative process, reading his bill analysis is an education on the law, and reading what he called his evergreen pieces is a call to action in defense of the Second Amendment and indeed freedom itself.

He was a lucky man. He left a wonderful legacy. We who were lucky enough to have known him, worked with him, and called him friend, miss him. Those who didn’t have the privilege of knowing him have this book in which he leaves not only a history of his time, but principles and a primer to continue in his footsteps defending and protecting the Second Amendment.

Tanya K Metaksa

Prologue: The Belgian Corporal

In the summer of 1955,I was a young Texas National Guard sergeant on active duty at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. A corporal in my squad was a Belgian-American named Charles DeNaer. An old man as far as most of us were concerned, being well over thirty, Charley commanded a certain amount of our respect, for not only was he older than the rest of us, he had lived in Belgium when the Germans rolled across the low countries bypassing the Maginot Line on their way into France. He had seen war. One soft Oklahoma afternoon, sitting on a bunk in the half-light of an old wooden barracks, he told me his story. 

In Charley’s little town in Belgium, there lived an old man, a gunsmith. The old man was friendly with the kids and welcomed them to his shop. He had once been an armorer to the king of Belgium, according to Charley. He told us of the wonderful guns the old man had crafted, using only hand tools. There were double shotguns and fine rifles with beautiful hardwood stocks and gorgeous engraving and inlay work. Charley liked the old man and enjoyed looking at the guns. He often did chores around the shop.

One day the gunsmith sent for Charley. Arriving at the shop, Charley found the old man carefully oiling and wrapping guns in oilcloth and paper. Charley asked what he was doing. The old smith gestured to a piece of paper on the workbench and said that an order had come to him to register all of his guns. He was to list every gun with a description on a piece of paper and then to send the paper to the government.

The old man had no intention of complying with the registration law and had summoned Charley to help him bury the guns at a railroad crossing. Charley asked why he didn’t simply comply with the order and keep the guns. The old man, with tears in his eyes, replied to the boy, If I register them, they will be taken away.

A year or two later, the blitzkrieg rolled across the Low Countries, and the war arrived in Charley’s town. A squad of German SS troops banged on the door of a house that Charley knew well. The family had twin sons about Charley’s age. The twins were his best friends. The officer displayed a paper describing a Luger pistol, a relic of the Great War, and ordered the father to produce it. That old gun had been lost, stolen, or misplaced sometime after it had been registered, the father explained. He did not know where it was. 

The officer told the father that he had exactly fifteen minutes to produce the weapon. The family turned their home upside down. No pistol.

They returned to the SS officer empty-handed.

The officer gave an order and soldiers herded the family outside while other troops called the entire town out into the square. There on the town square the SS machine-gunned the entire family—father, mother, Charley’s two friends, their older brother and a baby sister.

I will never forget the moment. We were sitting on the bunk on a Saturday afternoon and Charley was crying, huge tears rolling down his cheeks, making silver dollar size splotches on the dusty barracks floor.

That was my conversion from a casual gun owner to one who was determined to prevent such a thing from ever happening in America.

Later that summer, when I had returned home I went to the president of the West Texas Sportsman’s Club in Abilene and told him I wanted to be on the legislative committee. He replied that we didn’t have a legislative committee, but that I was now the chairman.

I, who had never given a thought to gun laws, have been eyeball deep in the gun control fight ever since.

As the newly-minted Legislative Committee Chairman of the West Texas Sportsman’s club, I set myself to some research. I had never before read the Second Amendment, but now noticed that The American Rifleman published it in its masthead. I was delighted to learn that the Constitution prohibited laws like Belgium’s. There was no battle to fight, I thought. We were covered. I have since learned that the words about a militia and the right of the people to keep and bear, while important, mean as much to a determined enemy as the Maginot line did to Hitler.

Rather than depend on the Second Amendment to protect our gun rights, I’ve learned that we must protect the Second Amendment and the precious rights it recognizes.

Editor’s Note

Neal Knox reluctantly published this story a couple of times, once in a letter to supporters and as part of a speech to a rally against the Clinton assault weapons ban. I knew by heart as a frequent after-dinner story in answer to questions of how he got into the gun issue. I remember asking him why he didn’t beat the drum on this story. Since it was so moving to me, I thought it would impress others. He replied that many returning World War II G.I.’s told variations of the same story and that it was a standard argument against gun laws. And like so many standard arguments, it seems to weaken with repetition. He felt the story was too important to allow it to become trite. 

The naïve and all-too-common response to this and similar histories is to say, That can’t happen in America. But if that were so, then it couldn’t happen in a place like Belgium, either – a storybook land known for windmills, canals and chocolate. But it did happen there. 

And it has happened in America. 

The difference between the Nazi atrocities and those in America is only a matter of scale and frequency. 

The 1993 Waco debacle proceeded from a suspicion that the compound might contain a trigger mechanism that required a $200 tax stamp. Randy Weaver’s home and family were shot up because Weaver failed to appear after selling a crudely hacksawn shotgun barrel that might have been an inch under an arbitrary limit, and so also required a tax stamp. Kenyon Ballew had a dummy hand grenade that required no permit. Federal agents dressed in jeans and t-shirts kicked in his door and shot him as he tried to defend himself with an antique pistol. 

Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Ballew incident and dozens of other, less publicized, but no less real horrors have proven that such things indeed can happen in America. Neal Knox’s life’s work was to make sure such incidents remain rare. 

2019 Update

Neal Knox never substantiated Charley’s story in his lifetime, which added to his reluctance to focus too much on it.  Your editor poked at the story a bit, and even found a list of Belgian casualties from the war, but nothing that could pinpoint the name of the town, or even what region to focus on.  Nonetheless, recent research has shown that the atrocity seen in Charley’s town was not unusual, even in western Europe.  Stephen Halbrook’s books on the history of gun control in the Third Reich, especially his Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France: Tyranny and Resistance showed that the horror Charley described was routine as the Nazi plague swept across Europe. Thanks to Dr. Halbrook for his scholarship in a long-neglected field

Part 1: Credentials

Editor’s Note

If it goes bang, I like it, Neal Knox once declared in a People magazine interview. He sometimes described himself as a gun meddler. He dabbled in every type of shooting he ran across. The only shooting game that I know for certain that he never tried is biathlon. But he shot everything else. Rifle, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, it made no difference to him. Every aspect of every sort of firearm fascinated him, from how it worked, to how best to make it shoot right. As a guest at the famed Knob Creek full-auto gathering, his host thought he was having trouble with a borrowed sub-gun since he wasn’t ripping through magazines with the rest of the line as they blasted the junk car that served as a communal target. Instead, he was firing two and three shots bursts at a rock on one side of the berm, learning to control the gun and to make it work for him. He was having a grand time. 

Neal Knox was unquestionably a good shot with a maddening approach to competition. He tended to shoot just well enough to beat those around him. My brother Jeff and I experienced that trait more than once. We sometimes came close to his scores, but I can’t remember either of us ever beating him at any game. 

Better shots than Jeff or I had the same experience as when he and Jim Carmichel won the 1972 Arizona Regional 1000-yard Two-Man Team Championship near Tucson. Dad and Jim had entered just to shoot with no thought of winning. Jim was an accomplished gravel-belly rifleman, but it was the first time Dad ever shot the NRA 1000-yard game. At the time he was shooting a lot of bench rest and was a fair hand at reading mirage, the visible wind that boils in the scope before a far-off target. The competition included several military teams as well as the then-reigning national champion team Middleton Tompkins and P.J. Wright. 

As he became better known for his political views than for his firearms knowledge, some folks forgot that Neal Knox was first, last, and always a gun buff. Here are a few pieces to re-establish his credentials.

Chukar Partridge

January 1970, Handloader Magazine

Until a few weeks ago, I had always considered the cock pheasant as The Trophy Upland Game Bird, with ruffed grouse a close second. But that was before I had hunted chukars. The chukar’s trophy status doesn’t derive from mere size, for he’s about midway between a bobwhite quail and a ruffed grouse; nor does his status spring from speed, for though he’s fast, his flight is neither so quick nor so erratic as a dove; it isn’t toughness to kill, for while he can take a stiff jolt of shot and keep going, he can’t handle nearly as much as a highballing ringneck, neither does the chukar partridge have the glorious plumage of the pheasant, though he’ll not take second place to the pheasant or any other bird at the dinner table.

So what makes him such a great trophy bird? It’s the fact that if you’re hunting him on his own mountainous grounds, you’re going to work your legs down to your knees for every shot you get—and under those conditions, getting a shot and getting him are two entirely different matters.

I became acquainted with Alectoris Chukar in his favorite North American habitat, the steep, rocky mountains and cliffs along the Snake and Salmon rivers in northern Idaho, while hunting with the boys from Speer bullets and Omark-CCI. They were working on a film about hunting the Snake. The filming started last year but wasn’t completed, so they were going back and I was fortunate enough to be invited to tag along. Others in the party included Ray Speer, Wally Titus and Dave Andrews of Speer, Arlen Chaney and Elmer Imthurn of CCI, Ted Armitage of Guns & Ammo, John Hall of Wanda Cartridge Co. and Kelly Roberts, owner of the jet boats we took up the Snake.

The day before making the 55-mile run upriver from Lewiston (named, with its sister city across the river, Clarkston, Washington, for explorers Lewis and Clark) veteran mountain pilot Ray Speer flew us over the campsite in his twin-engined Cessna 310. The country is desolate and rugged-looking, but it’s even more rugged than it looks. (Though it sure looked mean a few days later when Dave and I flew over the same area on our way home in our one-fan Cessna.) The last half of the river trip, the half beyond a sign warning boaters against further travel, consisted of almost constant whitewater rapids. It’s no trip for an amateur boat driver. Because the hunting area is so rough to reach, and because it must be similar to their native Himalayan Mountains, the country abounds with chukars. Although they were planted here only a few years ago, the birds are now so firmly entrenched that an army of hunters could never wipe them out.

The birds are wily. They’ll flush in five to 30-bird coveys like bobwhites if you’re close, but getting that close takes some doing—most of the time you see them hoofing it over the next ridge, about like blue quail. Sit quiet while you’re getting your breath and you’ll hear them gossiping across the canyons with that peculiar cluck-clu-clu-clu-cluck-ing that gives them their name. In fact, if you’re pretty well out of sight, the chatter will convince you that chukars are around you like ants on an anthill—and that a dozen are on the slope you just climbed, but at least 50 more are only 40 or 50 yards farther up the ridge.

So you grab your shotgun, push yourself onto wobbly legs and keep climbing—the birds are always higher. I finally figured out a rule of thumb for chukar hunting in these mountains: for every 1,000 feet you climb, you get one shot. This kind of hunting demands a lightweight gun, preferably fitted with sling swivels, since part of the time it’s one hand for yourself and one hand for your gun—and sometimes one hand for yourself isn’t enough. If you flush birds at such a moment all you can do is glare at them.

A modified choke is about right, since most shots are fairly long, and the load should be all the No. 6 shot the shell will handle, wrapped in a pellet protector sleeve for uniform patterns. You have to work so hard for each shot that you don’t want any ammo problems, but neither do you want a load that’ll kick you off a ridge—something that almost happened to me.

After you shoot your first chukar you’re probably going to have to go a long ways downhill to get him, for that’s the way they usually travel—gaining a great deal of speed in the process. Your chukar will be slate gray and tan with whitish belly; the sole distinctive marks are his striking black and white face pattern, bright red legs and sharply defined black bars alongside the body. None of the pheasant’s flash, but a handsome species and, if you’ve shot him in country like the Snake River, he’s a trophy bird.

Alectoris Chukar

Illustration from Hume and Marshall’s Game Birds of India, Burma and Ceylon

What Luck!

or

The Editor Wins a Championship

November 1974, Handloader Magazine

At 6 o’clock in the morning, any morning, I have all the energy of a bullfrog buried under six inches of January mud. That particular morning, the last day of the Varmint & Sporter championships in Knoxville, was even worse than usual, for I was tired all the way through. Since leaving my work-piled desk two weeks before, I’d flown to Ohio, shot the four-day Unrestricted Bench Rest Rifle Championships (about as poorly as usual), flown to Tennessee, shot the Sporter class (did pretty well), shot the Light Varmint (did terrible), and shot the 100-yard stage of the Heavy Varmint—in which I thought I’d shot my best-ever aggregate, but due to wet targets and other problems, only two record targets had been scored and posted by dark. Perhaps because I was fretting about how those last targets had measured, I had capped the latest of those 12-hour shooting days by

shooting all night—once waking in a sweat when I dreamed I’d shot at a fly on the edge of the record target.

I was vaguely aware that my roommate, L.E.Red Cornelison, had answered the wakeup call and was puttering about the room.Better get out of that bed…Champ. That had brought me awake. In a hurry.

But I lay there wondering if there had been cobwebs in my ears as well as my head; and wondering whether my last groups, so much larger than others on the line, could possibly have averaged good enough to win the 100-yard Heavy Varmint Championship, the largest event in bench shooting.

This portrait by Handloader and Rifle art director Dave LeGate greeted Neal’s return to the office.

As Red came out of the bathroom, his portable electric razor humming, he asked, Didn’t you hear what I called you?

I heard you; but I didn’t believe it.

Well you’d better believe it. Stan Buchtel came in with the results after midnight; I figured if I woke you, you’d be worrying about the 200-yard instead of sleeping.

Red may have been right, but I was so elated that at that moment I wouldn’t have cared if I’d finished last at 200. While every competitor