{"id":2168,"date":"2010-03-01T11:11:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T17:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/?p=2168"},"modified":"2010-03-02T11:30:32","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T17:30:32","slug":"the-raven-is-our-symbol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/the-raven-is-our-symbol\/2168\/","title":{"rendered":"The raven is our symbol"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>March, one of our busiest months of the year, is upon us, as is some of our very best training weather.\u00a0 If you happen to be snowed in somewhere and would like to see some blue skies, endless views and temperate weather, come see us.<\/p>\n

For those of you who are fans of Facebook, you will be happy to know we now have a Gunsite Facebook<\/a> page up. Our good friends over at www.downrange.tv<\/a> helped us put this together and will be linking the sites and providing content.\u00a0 We will be posting training news and videos, answering questions and doing all those other things folks like to do on Facebook (as for me, I\u2019m still learning).\u00a0 So go to www.facebook.com and look up Gunsite Academy then take a look at www.downrange.tv.<\/p>\n

As you know, last year, with your support, Buz Mills was elected to the NRA board of directors.\u00a0 Elections are coming around again and you should have received your ballots in your NRA publications (you\u2019re voting members, aren\u2019t you?).\u00a0 It looks to me as though the NRA has put forth a good slate of candidates but I would like to bring three to your attention and ask you to support them.\u00a0 Running for re-election to the board are our good friends Sandy Froman and Col. Oliver North.\u00a0 Sandy, as I\u2019m sure you know, is a past president of the NRA and Col. North needs no introduction.\u00a0 The third person is Pete Brownell, who is running for election to the board for the first time.\u00a0 Pete is a good friend, and both his father Frank and he have been strong supporters of your gun rights, as well as having supported Gunsite, for many years.\u00a0 If you are not familiar with the Brownell\u2019s catalog you should be, as it has the biggest selection of gun parts and gunsmithing tools you will find anywhere (www.brownells.com<\/a>).\u00a0 So, as they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often, and I urge you to support Pete, Sandy and Ollie for election to the NRA board.<\/p>\n

The raven is our symbol, or totem if you will, here at Gunsite<\/a>.\u00a0 We see them all over the ranch and sometimes at dusk you can see hundreds of them roosting in the trees as you drive down one of the ranch roads, an incredible sight.\u00a0 The origin of the raven as our symbol goes back to Jeff and Janelle Cooper when they founded Gunsite some 34 years ago and were looking for a symbol for the school.\u00a0 The fact that there are ravens flying about the property is an obvious connection, but there is more to it than that.\u00a0 One side of Janelle\u2019s family came from Scandinavia and in Norse mythology Odin held forth as the god of Valhalla.\u00a0 Odin was accompanied by his two ravens, Hugin and Munin, and they are usually depicted perched on his shoulders or on the arms of his throne.\u00a0 The ravens represented knowledge and wisdom and Odin would send them to Earth to bring back news, but more importantly, they were seen as the conduits for dispensing the knowledge and wisdom of the gods to mankind.\u00a0 So for us, the raven is a fitting symbol for our efforts to spread \u201cthe word\u201d, as Jeff liked to put it.<\/p>\n

Having trained under and taught for Jeff for many years, I am often aware of the feeling that he is looking over my shoulder when I am working or, especially, teaching on the ranch.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, I can tell you, anywhere at the school, whether I am in view of Jeff\u2019s house, the Sconce.\u00a0 Now that Jeff has passed I will sometimes be out and about and get the feeling that I am being watched.\u00a0 Invariably, I will look around and find a raven perched nearby.\u00a0 I just say, \u201cHi, Jeff\u201d and go on about my business.\u00a0 Call it superstition or insanity, take your pick\u2026I like to think that Jeff is still keeping an eye on things.<\/p>\n

DVC,<\/p>\n

Ed<\/p>\n

www.gunsite.com<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March, one of our busiest months of the year, is upon us, as is some of our very best training weather.\u00a0 If you happen to be snowed in somewhere and would like to see some blue skies, endless views and temperate weather, come see us. For those of you who are fans of Facebook, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[3605,118],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ed-head","tag-ed-head","tag-gunsite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}