Rebranding, or rustling with a running iron?

The RWVA Forum is just full of comments and ideas and chatter of great potential... check it out. I have to laugh, at myself, in the first few days I commented a couple of times. But I stopped. I am a volunteer and all those professionals, don't need me to add my foolish thoughts - I have Facebook! I can swim in foolish all day long there. There have been some serious emails about Appleseed events without Shoot Bosses and shooters, and crew. I find even volunteers can't do it all. Just getting it put on a host range schedule doesn't make ammunition available, get to the local or a couple county away shooters. Much of the discussion is about how to get to them.

As my links on the side show, I have been working Appleseed pretty steadily, met lots of great shooters, people that are worth my attention and fun to be with on line. Lots of them. But out of a hundred and sixty million gun owners in America - only 70,000 have been to an Appleseed. So we think we should stretch out and reach some more. The how to do that is where the professionals come in, or the lack of firm organization and leadership? Hmm, I have no idea about how it could be, I have never been to the great shooting schools, I have never worked for the firearms companies, I have a long association with the NRA, but really, I have been instructing and coaching more shooters on Appleseeds than I ever did with the NRA. The National Rifle Association does have qualified instructors and great programs for a shooter. It just seems to me they want political influence and money. Appleseed wants your participation, your time and talent and if nothing else - speak well of us and send more shooters to our events.

One of the secret goals of the RWVA and Appleseed is to ignite the shooters with a mission of finding out how our country started, heritage. There are people that think the ship of America is sinking, off course and out of control... and most of the passengers are still sitting in deck chairs talking about the latest sitcom on cable. We instruct the shooting because that would get the shooter to feel empowered, and challenge them to reach Rifleman (only ten percent of shooters will get that high). Of the Riflemen, only like half a percent will volunteer to become a member and aid in the events and instruction, going through all the training to become a Red Hat. Then, because life is in the way, they slow down their participation - I mean, shooting isn't the beginning and the end of everything. There is family, friends, work, politics, aging -- a lot of reasons to slow down on the Trail... but speak well of us.  Especially all you shooters that talk to shooters, family and friends that don't shoot. We aren't Hollywood, we aren't anything but marksmanship and heritage.