Beth Cody on Rifle Marksmanship

One of my favorite local writers (besides myself) is Beth Cody, who writes a monthly opinion column with a libertarian perspective for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. In this month's column Beth writes about her experience going to an "Appleseed Project" training event for rifle marksmanship.

According to Cody, "The program attempts to teach the vital rifle skills that used to be common and that won our nation its freedom, but that are disappearing from our national general knowledge."

Why are rifle skills important to the average citizen? Cody writes: "The founding fathers of our country understood that the best way to safeguard the liberty of citizens was to leave most power with the citizens and divide government power between levels and branches. Similarly, gun ownership and skills, being a bulwark of liberty, should be broadly spread among the majority of citizens. In many countries, dictators take power by gaining control of the military or police, leaving an unarmed populace with no recourse. This would be more difficult to do in America, where half of households own firearms."

You can read Cody's Press-Citizen column here. She also wrote a good gun-related article shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings, which you can read here.

You can also learn more about the Appleseed Project here. I didn't see any more shooting events in Iowa on their schedule, but they'll be back next year. Although I'm fairly comfortable with a rifle, I think I'll go to an Appleseed event for a refresher. I haven't had any formal rifle training since I was a young kid in boot camp.