Russia’s Veto Saved the Fossil Fuels for Now

In the 1980s, the environmentalists believed that using paper grocery bags harms the environment by excessive deforestation, so they moved in the direction of replacing the paper grocery bags with plastic ones. It made sense, plastic bags made from petroleum by-products were certainly cheaper and more plentiful.

Fast forward to 2021, environmentalist governments in counties like Fairfax, Virginia, moved to replace the plastic bags with paper bags by charging a tax of 5 cents per plastic bag previously given free (included in the price because nothing is free). Furthermore, a fine of $500 will be levied on anyone who dares to leave grass and other yard clippings on curbside in plastic bags other than heavy paper bags.

Fossil fuels have become environmentally and politically such a Democrat hot potato that they have been labeled public enemy number one, including plastics.

What is Fairfax County and other like-minded counties around the nation doing with the 5 cents tax per bag, or 8 cents in other places? Will they fund the bloated Democrat government or their guaranteed basic income schemes? And how is this tax going to solve the manufactured global warming which gave rise to a very lucrative climate change industry and a huge money-maker?

When Amazon and other online retailers run out of places to buy cheap shipping boxes, I wonder which forests are they going to cut down, and can excessive demand for paper and carboard boxes keep up with supply and with tree growth?

The U.N. Security Council moved to vote on December 13, 2021, on a resolution on climate change co-authored by Ireland and Niger, under the guise that adverse climate change can “lead to … social tensions …, exacerbating, prolonging, or contributing to the risk of future conflicts and instability and posing a key risk to global peace, security, and stability.” The concern is that climate change affects more negatively “women, children, ethnic minorities, and the most vulnerable.” Climate Change and Security: Vote on a Resolution*: What's In Blue : Security Council Report

According to the New York Times, “the resolution, which enjoyed wide-ranging support, would have significantly expanded the criteria used by the most powerful U.N. agency to justify intervening in armed conflicts around the world.” Russia Blocks U.N. Move to Treat Climate as Security Threat - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

It is claimed that the U.N. resolution was supported by 100 countries. Twelve of the fifteen Security Council countries signed on, but Russia’s veto blocked its passage. China abstained, and India, with its invited temporary membership status, also declared against the resolution. It is obvious that all three countries have similar interests, the survival of fossil fuels.

The U.S. government has been busy replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar power, doing severe damage to its economy and weakening its position in the world as a superpower. Biden closed the Keystone pipeline on day one and interrupted supply. “Nearly 40% of America’s electricity is produced from natural gas. When gas goes up, so does your electric bill.” Varney on the 'price' of Biden eliminating fossil fuels | Fox Business

The regime stopped giving new drilling permits on federal land and interrupted off-shore drilling. U.S. became again dependent on oil imports.  During President Trump’s administration, America became an oil exporter.

If the U.N. Security Council vote would have been unanimous in favor of the resolution, then members who would fail to take “drastic” measures recommended by “experts” to green their economies immediately, then they would have been considered aggressors against the global governance.

What might have been the expectations to green a country’s economy urgently? To close coal mines, oil derricks, refineries, oil and gas pipelines, and to give up fossil fuels immediately, with huge economic costs and disastrous economic results for that country.

If a country would have refused to comply, then the most intimidating measures against it would have been justifiable, imposing a global dictatorship of the U.N. to save the planet from climate change Armageddon.

So, Russia, China, and India, with one fifth of the world’s land surface and almost half of its population, saved fossil fuels for now. They viewed the manufactured global warming as a political fantasy and the preservation of their economies and of their economic development as most important for their peoples.

The West wants electric cars (they did not do so well recently in one foot of snow stuck for 24 hours on I-95 in Virginia), electric bikes, electric buses, ships, home and business heat and light from solar panels and wind turbines (when the wind blows and the sun shines, otherwise it is cold and dark). China wants coal burning power plants and builds them at high rates. Russia depends on natural gas and pipelines. And India is adding more coal mines.

Biden’s Green New Deal is neither new, nor green, nor a deal, it is a political plan aimed at killing fossil fuels and destroying the American economy that depends on the fossil fuels’ reliability and consistency.

So, the global warming/climate change scheme to enact global governance has been defeated so far. But the grand plan of one world government might still be realized. To achieve it now, the globalists are bringing out the pandemic green passports of Covid vaccination and the social scoring system which is already underway in China and in America.

Restricting movement of the population can be achieved in more ways than just taking away their fossil fuels; the government can cause severe inflation, double gasoline and natural gas prices, make their currency worth less, obstruct the supply chain of necessary goods and food, restrict access to clinics and hospitals, and restrict domestic and international travel. Under draconian Covid-19 lockdown rules, two years after the declared pandemic, Australians cannot travel more than 29 km from home. How Sydney residents can travel more than 5km from home for exercise (msn.com)

Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. has already enacted draconian rules that a person must show I.D. and a vaccine card to enter any business in D.C. It is racist to be asked to show I.D. to vote but it is necessary to enter a business.

If you have a green passport, you are not just vaccinated and boostered, but it is proof that you are now a compliant global citizen, and you can be given (by the global government) the privilege to enter buildings, to fly, to travel, to board a ship, to ride a bus, a train, you can use a bank, you can buy or rent a home, you can move from on town to another, and you can attend school. The social scoring system works wonders with population compliance and obedience under the Chinese communist dictatorship.

For now, Russia, China, and India have saved fossil fuels. I am not sure who or what is going to save a weakened America from its Marxist regime in control in Washington. They are busy printing money for trillion-dollar pet social programs and to finance national debt v. GDP which has reached astronomic proportions (127.61% federal and 141.24% total) at the time of this writing. The military is busy hunting down fictional, Democrat-invented systemic racism. U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time (usdebtclock.org)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pro Medica's Perennial Lockdowns

I got a phone call this morning from a young lady named Martina, reading a canned corporate script which made her sound like a recording, apologizing, and blaming a computer glitch for not contacting families whose loved ones are residents in the Pro Medica-owned nursing homes.

I picked up the phone and she was none too pleased when I interrupted her prepared and written speech with annoying but logical questions. This was the second call on behalf of the corporate office in Colorado since the lockdowns started on March 14, 2020.

She informed me that last week there were zero positive Covid tests among staff and residents, yet they must wait another week of zero [a worthless test deemed so by the CDC] before they may hear from the health department to release them from lockdown.

They are the only nursing home chain in Fairfax County that is keeping their residents prisoners under a false pretense when nobody has been sick with Covid-19 lately at this facility, only one or two staff and a resident were positive but asymptomatic, according to various staff members.

The staff is being forced to wear masks and shields and the residents wear masks, even those who live alone in their rooms and do not leave their rooms.

I explained to the young woman that I have just returned from Florida and few people were masked there, mostly tourists from New York and other liberal states. The locals were getting sunshine, vitamin D, and fresh salty air. Florida flu cases had dropped to one of the lowest levels in the country.

I asked Martina, since the flu season is starting as the cold fall and winter seasons are moving in, prime time for any type of flu, are they going to keep everyone locked down in perpetuity as it is impossible to keep the population at zero flu cases? Her answer was, of course not. However, she could not tell me what the company’s plans were. I asked her about the facility’s death statistics, and she told me that she did not have those numbers, only corporate does. Who exactly does have those numbers at corporate? Not surprisingly, she did not know.

Martina did say that they must wait on the health department of Virginia and the CDC guidelines before they can allow patients to be free again. All the other nursing homes have been allowing visitations for weeks now while Pro Medica is keeping their nursing home patients under draconian lockdown.

Criminals in prison are treated better and have more freedoms than these patients have. As I tried to argue my point, it was ignored, Martina was only interested in reading the prepared script to me in its totality and did not like to be interrupted.

The insanity of these controlling people with their manufactured pandemic is appalling. Zoo people in Tampa, Florida, are giving Covid-vaccine to skunks because this gain-of-function flu virus is found both in animals and humans.

Covid-19 will never be eradicated among humans like the polio was. The polio virus hosted only in humans, never in animals, it was therefore possible to eradicate it in most western countries.

Are cases of previously eradicated viruses like polio coming back? Perhaps from third world nations, whose citizens are now pouring through our non-existent southern border, individuals who are neither tested nor forced to be vaccinated against their will like American citizens are.

Flu viruses mutate constantly. That is why each year people get a flu shot with a concoction of what pharma thinks may or may not be effective this year, with a success rate of below 50 percent. Are people in nursing homes in the U.S. and elsewhere in places like Australia going to be locked down for the rest of their remaining lives?

Something does not compute when the same people who told us that the earth is overpopulated and we must be culled down to less than a billion, are now trying to save our lives with a vaccine.

 

The Lee and Fairfax Cemetery in Leesylvania State Park

View of Potomac

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

After a long downhill and uphill trek, across thick carpets of dead leaves covering tree roots snaking treacherously out of the ground, I reach the Lee and Fairfax Family Cemetery on the ridge top overlooking Occoquan Bay.

The remains of Elizabeth Fairfax and Henry Fairfax Sr. are interred here. Elizabeth Fairfax died November 6, 1847 at the age of 54 and Henry Fairfax Sr. died October 6, 1847 at the age of 74. Captain Henry Fairfax and his wife Elizabeth are buried in the enclosed portion of the cemetery. Captain Fairfax had purchased the Leesylvania Plantation from the Lees in 1825.

Leesylvania (meaning Lee’s Woods) Plantation became part of the Lee family legacy through the marriage of Laetitia Corbin to Richard Lee II in 1675.

Henry Lee II and his wife Lucy Grymes named the Plantation Leesylvania (Lee’s Woods). The home they built high on the ridge overlooking the Potomac River burned long ago but it was thought to resemble the Rippon Lodge, a neighboring home that was built around the same time. The Leesylvania Plantation home burned in 1790, shortly after Henry Lee II’s death in 1787.

George Washington, residing 14 miles up the river in Mt. Vernon, was a frequent visitor at the Leesylvania Plantation. His diary records dinner visits at the Lees on his way to Williamsburg and Fredericksburg on October 19, 1768, on October 30, 1769 (with his wife Martha and daughter Patsy) and on November 27, 1772.

Lee and Fairfax Cemetery today without headstones

Photo: Ileana Johnson December 2019

The cemetery was established by the Lee family when Henry Lee II died on August 15, 1787. His wife Lucy Lee (Grymes), died in 1792 and is the only other Lee family member buried here. A few of Lucy’s flowers, daffodils and daylilies still bloom around the woods. Henry Lee’s death was noted in the Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser. He was a Senator for the District of Fairfax and Prince William. He was 58 years old and had dedicated thirty years of his life to the service of his country.

Lee and Fairfax Cemetery with bronze plaque

Photo: Ileana Johnson December 2019

Lucy Grymes and Henry Lee were married in 1753 and their home stood on this ridge to the east. There is a deep hole now where the foundation stood. There is no visible evidence of stones left.

Henry Lee was Prince William County Lieutenant and Presiding Justice for many years. He represented Prince William County in the House of Burgesses, the Revolutionary Conventions, and the State Senate from 1758-1788.

Lucy and Henry Lee had eight children born in Leesylvania House. “Light Horse Harry” was a Revolutionary War hero, Governor of Virginia, and father of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Lee children served Virginia and Country in various capacities. Charles Lee was Attorney General of the United States. Richard Bland Lee was the first Congressman for Northern Virginia.  Edmund Jennings Lee was the Mayor of Alexandria.

An obelisk-shaped monument is dedicated to “Light Horse Harry” at the foot of the hilly and heavily wooded peninsula, in a circular driveway close to the Potomac River.

Lee and Fairfax cemetery with headstones in place

Photo: Archives

The Lee family headstones have disappeared long ago. There are park signs urging visitors not to take stones or bricks as souvenirs from the foundation of what remains of the plantation buildings, chimney, well, and barn. The missing Lee family headstones were replaced with a bronze plaque encased in brick by the Virginia Society of the Lees.

The Fairfax headstones were relocated in the Union Cemetery in Leesburg, near the tomb of their son, John Walter Fairfax, but the remains were not disturbed, they still rest in the enclosed cemetery. 

Fairfax home ruins (1825)

Photo: Ileana Johnson December 2019

The Woods Still Stand Witness to Our History

Trail to Freestone Point

Photo: Ileana Johnson, May 2019

Leesylvania’s woods and hills met me with a lush green embrace of solitude and peace and the drifting fragrant smoke of the waterfront barbecue grills. The thick forest lies on a small peninsula overlooking the Potomac and Occoquan Rivers, rich with American history, fauna and flora.

Leesylvania is now a state park with a fishing pier and a picnic area much beloved by Central American residents and their families. The laughter of children bathing in the Potomac River echoes through the thick forest. Some of the mature trees giving us a welcoming cool shade grew first as tiny saplings in the Lee family garden.

The bumpy hill leads up to the Confederate gun battery, the gravesite where Henry Lee II and his wife Lucy Grymes were buried. Closer to the bottom of the hill are the chimney remains of the former home of the Fairfax family.  Henry Fairfax purchased the property from the Lee family in 1825 and lived there until 1910.

Fairfax home chimney  

The Freestone Point, named after the porous quarried rock, juts out over the Potomac River, overlooking the current park’s fishing pier. On rainy days, tree roots ooze out mud below, washed out by a sudden deluge.

Confederate guns were placed here during the Civil War. In the early years of the war, General Robert E. Lee ordered a blockade of the Potomac River in order to cut off the Union’s access to Washington DC. The 32-pound cannons positioned here were part of the blockade that lasted almost six months.

Freestone Point drawing (Park archives)

The well-preserved northernmost battery at Freestone Point was used as a decoy while more effective batteries were placed down river at Possum Point, Cockpit Point and Evansport.

When in September 1861 Freestone Point was fired upon, Sgt. Walter Curry of the Washington Mounted Artillery of Hampton’s Legion wrote in his diary, “… as soon as the eleventh shot was fired, our Guns opened on the Lincolnite men of war which were floating majestically on the Broad Potomac.” The Confederates closed the commercial traffic on the Potomac by December. The blockade did not end until March 9, 1862.  (Leesylvania State Park Archives)

Close to the cemetery there are traces of the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad tracks that used to carry necessary supplies to run a large estate growing corn and tobacco.

No trace remains today of the Lee’s ancestral home. Henry Lee II raised eight children here with his wife Lucy Grymes, including Light-Horse Harry Lee—Revolutionary War colonel, Virginia Governor, and father of Robert E. Lee. The Lees have left their imprint in the history of these lands and in the names of our modern landmarks.

Richard Lee, the original immigrant from England, was so determined to succeed in the New World that he became, in less than twenty years, an affluent fur trader, a colonel in the Virginia military, and a planter with prosperous land holdings and slaves. He owned fifteen thousand acres of land, more than any other man in the colony of Virginia. He was the colony’s attorney general and a member of the House of Burgesses.

In his old age, the “original Immigrant” returned to England, but his heirs were to come back to northern Virginia upon his death. Subsequently, generations of Lees made their homes and fortunes in Virginia after 1664.

Henry Lee II received from Henry Lee’s will in 1746 all his plantations and land in Prince William County at Freestone Point and at Neapsco (now called Neabsco, Doeg Indian for Point of Rocks) and Powell’s Creek.

The tobacco growing on the plantation was so lucrative that it was shipped to London from the wharf in Dumfries, three miles down from Freestone Point. Dumfries was the commercial hub in Prince William County. Today it remains the oldest incorporated small town in Virginia.

Henry II married in 1753 a “lowland beauty” named Lucy Grymes who is said to have been so popular with men of marrying age, she even became the object of marital aspirations of a young boy named George Washington.

Henry II cleared the land in Prince William County and built a new estate, Leesylvania (Lee’s Woods) the same year he married Lucy.  Modest by standards set by other plantations in the colony of Virginia, Leesylvania was built of brick on a stone foundation, with “double-tiered porticos wrapped around the front and rear of the building,” with twin chimneys, “two and half stories tall.” The home burned in 1797 and there is no image left of it.

Henry Lee was “the first citizen of Prince William County” in his capacity as its attorney general and militia commander. Washington asked him in 1755 to provide 100 men on horseback from Prince William County and bread provisions to “assist in the protection of our Frontiers.”

Henry Lee III monument

Lucy and Henry Lee lost their first child, a daughter. A year later, in 1756, another child was born of their union, Henry Lee III, a son who eventually became the famous Light Horse Harry (1756-1818). A statue at the foot of the rocky hill commemorates the revolutionary war hero and father of General Robert E. Lee.

View of the Occoquan River from the forested bluff

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Henry Lee III grew up riding horses, raising ponies, fencing, and practicing his marksmanship. Influential Virginians were frequent visitors at Lee’s Woods, dining and lodging there, including George Washington on his frequent trips from Mount Vernon estate to Fredericksburg and Williamsburg. (Ryan Cole, Light-Horse Harry Lee, The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Hero, 2019)

Henry Lee III was a cavalry commander (1776-1781), was awarded Congressional Medal in 1779, member of the Continental Congress (1786-1788), governor of Virginia (1791-1794), and member of the U.S. Congress (1799-1801).

Walking through the dense forest trails, I am in awe as my steps retrace the long-gone steps of so many famous American men and women who blazed this path through history, instrumental in the shaping of our country today.

Field of Dreams in Leesylvania State Park

Photo: Ileana Johnson

The Show Must Go On

Injured BMX acrobat Photo: Ileana Johnson

My love affair with the circus started as a child in Romania when a caravan coming all the way from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, or Hungary would set up the big tent in an open field not far from the concrete grey cluster of high-rise communist era apartments we lived in.

We were so dazzled by the lights, the bright and happy colors, the clowns, the caged tigers and the lumbering giant elephants, the glittering costumes, the trapeze artists, and the magical sights and sounds of the circus, that we were hooked for life.

We wanted to run away with the circus not because of the Bohemian , thrilling, and fascinating travel life in cramped trailers, but because we wanted to see the world like them, beyond the heavily guarded and barb-wired borders where we could get shot even daring to approach it. We imagined beautiful and indescribable freedom beyond the frowning and heavily armed soldiers who were told to shoot on sight and ask questions later.

As soon as the big tent went up, all the kids in the neighborhood started hanging around the circus site, leaving home early each day and returning late at night. Then one morning, we would wake up and the circus would be gone – a few holes left in the ground were the only markers that they were ever there. A sense of sadness and loss overcame the kids in the neighborhood and nobody came out to play for a while. It was as if we were mourning the lost opportunity for freedom. It was a fascinating ephemeral world that now lived just in our memories. The joy could have lasted longer on celluloid but nobody had cameras or the means to develop photos.

One beautiful blond girl from our building ran away with the circus several times but she never made it very far. The police would find her, take her into custody, lock her up for a few hours to scare her, and return her later to parents who were fined for being so “bad and neglectful,” and did not follow the parental rules and dictates of the communist regime. To this day, I marvel that they never took her away from her parents to send her to a juvenile reform school. She probably would have found a way to escape; she was a dreamy Bohemian who liked to stretch the limits.

My fascination with the circus never died because it gave me so much joy and wonder as a child. I took my young children to see a Three Ring performance here in the United States and visited recently and wrote about the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey winter quarters and museum in Sarasota, Florida. http://canadafreepress.com/article/a-visit-to-cadzan-and-to-the-ringling-brothers-museum

Last night my husband surprised me with tickets to the Extreme Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey show in Fairfax, Virginia. We went early and mingled with some of the performers, the acrobats, the clowns, the BMX bike acrobats, and the most docile elephant in the menagerie, Mabel.

We learned that the circus has teamed up with a doctor in Utah who does research on pediatric cancer. The announcer said that elephants very seldom get cancer and doctors are studying their herd to find out why and perhaps find a cure.

We were dazzled by the acts, the strobe lights, the sixteen tigers, the six camels, the Arabian horse, the trapeze acts, the five elephants, the lady who was shot from a cannon, defying extra G-force on her body, the wire acts, the jugglers, and by all the modern pizazz augmenting an old art.

Near the end, the BMX performance was sadly cut short when one of the seasoned bikers flew in the air and, upon landing, his tire blew out, bringing him to a sudden stop that threw him airborne, and, continuing the momentum, landed him at the bottom, on his neck, face down. He did not move again. To my horror, the show continued for a few more minutes. It was finally stopped but nobody left the arena, everyone was concerned for his safety and wanted to make sure he was alive. I was so close that I could see he was still breathing but unresponsive. Shocked spectators, who were so happy moments earlier, started to file out of the arena, silently and in tears.

The show must go on but the glitz, glamor, and fantastic skill of the performers were shadowed by the severe injury of this young man. The reality of human frailty in the face of such daring acts of impossible athleticism sunk in hard. We hope and pray that he makes a full recovery.

 

A Trip to the National Firearms Museum

Charlton Heston as "Will Penny"
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The National Firearms Museum is located in one of the richest and more liberal places in the country, Fairfax, Virginia. The Freedom’s Doorway of the museum is graced by a quote from Charlton Heston, “The doorway to freedom is framed by the muskets that stood between a vision of liberty and absolute anarchy at a place called Concord Bridge.”

Among the 14 galleries, the Robert E. Peterson Gallery is the largest in the museum. The weapons donated to the NRA’s museum represent just a fraction of his vast collection. The Southern Californian represents the quintessential American who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II and built a publishing empire of 32 monthly periodicals such as Motor Trend, Guns and Ammo, Petersen’s Hunting, Handguns and Rifle Shooter.

An avid hunter, Peterson tracked game on every continent. He “was credited with being the first person to ever take a polar bear with a .44 Magnum handgun.” He was Commissioner of Shooting Sports at the XXIII Olympiad in 1984, held in Los Angeles, California.

Peterson’s donated collection includes the Gatlin gun, British guns, personal firearms, Italian Masters, American classics, Colts, German arms, European arms, and a Jewel box. An experimental rifle, a Mauser action Falcon test rifle, formerly owned by Elmer Keith, a Montana cowboy who became famous as a big game hunter, is also part of the collection.

Big Game hunting rifles
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The gunsmiths of Europe created functional arms as well as elaborately decorated firearms for the rich, indicating their social status through special metal and wood inlays, damascening, gold and silver encrustations, engraving and etching, chiseling, goldschmeltz, guilding, silvering, bluing, and browning.

German and Swiss immigrants who settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, brought with them a short rifle called the Jaeger (hunter) to use for sport and hunting in the heavy woods that resembled their homelands. It was the same octagon-barreled rifle used by Hawkeye, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.  This rifle was later lengthened to 40 inches and called either the Pennsylvania or Kentucky rifle even though it was manufactured in every colony from around 1700s to right before the Civil War.

Eli Whitney of New Haven, Connecticut, already famous for his invention of the cotton gin, received in 1798 a government contract for 10,000 muskets to supplement those made at national armories. Whitney’s ingenuity turned a rather complex manufacturing process into a series of simple operations, thus revolutionizing manufacturing in America.

Showcased are gun maker and inventor Ethan Allen of Bellington, Massachusetts, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson (Smith & Wesson) of Massachusetts, who left a large list of arms-design and revolver patents in their long careers, John H. Hall of Portland, Maine, who patented the breechloading rifle in 1811 utilized in rifles and carbines between 1823-1853, and Eliphalet Remington, Jr., who created a handmade flintlock rifle in Ilion, New York. Although Remington the father was not an inventor, he utilized ideas and inventions developed by others and acquired them. His large scale government contract in 1845 of 5,000 Mississippi rifles established the Remington name as the arms-maker in America.

Sharpshooters like Annie Oakley from Ohio, her husband Frank E. Butler, whom she defeated by one point, are famous for accuracy with rifles, pistols, and shotguns.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Cinematography brought the American Western to the general public with the Rough Riders departing for Cuba in 1898, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, the Great Train Robbery, Cisco Kid, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Shane, and the Unforgiven.

A larger-than-life bronze statue of Charlton Heston in his beloved Western role of “Will Penny” (1968) pays homage to the National Rifle Association President Heston.

On display are small guns imported during the Civil War from England, Austria, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, France, and Belgium. Their quality varied from useless to excellent. A shortage of revolver and carbines was experienced by the Union Army despite Colt, Remington, and Smith & Wesson manufacturing them at record levels.  

The displayed ten-barreled .45-70 Colt Gatling gun from the Robert E. Petersen estate was used in John Wayne’s 1967 movie The War Wagon and in the 1976 Clint Eastwood film, The Outlaw Josey Wales.



Roosevelt's office
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Rifles and other memorabilia are displayed celebrating our 26^th President, Theodore Roosevelt, author of 40 books, 150,000 personal letters, thousands of magazine articles, New York assemblyman, rancher, Civil Service Commissioner, President of the NYC Police Commission, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Colonel of the 1^st USV Cavalry, Vice President of the United States of America, recipient of the Medal of Honor and Nobel Peace Prize, father of six children, and an NRA Life Member. He sent the following note to the NRA:

“I am so heartily interested in the success of the National Rifle Association of America and its work done in cooperation with the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice that I take pleasure in sending you herewith my check for $25 for life membership therein.”

According to the Museum Archives, “His firearm collection was perhaps the largest ever assembled by any president of the United States. He was known for insisting upon exacting standards for his guns, and favored Winchesters and Colts. He also treasured a pinfire shotgun that was a gift from his father.”

He inspired the famous Teddy Bear by refusing to shoot a motherless bear cub during a grizzly bear hunt. This gesture became a political symbol for his compassion and for his presidency. President Roosevelt advocated for a balance between conservation and sport even though he embarked on a year-long African safari in 1909.

President Roosevelt's personal effects
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

His Brooks Brothers khaki canvas tunic, his Stetson hat, and his cavalry officer sword are displayed in a case adjacent to his three valuable rifles and his office/library and other weapons. The National Firearm Museum was selected by the National Park Service to temporarily house Roosevelt priceless artifacts.

The home where they raised six children, Sagamore Hill, built in 1885, has undergone $16 million in renovations since 2011. Roosevelt told his wife Edith, “I wonder if you will ever know how I love Sagamore Hill.” It was the place where Roosevelt died in his sleep at the age of 60.

Four of his six children had distinguished military careers:  Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1887-1944) who perished in Normandy, France on July 12, was an avid hunter who took expeditions in the Himalayas and Nepal with his brother Kermit; Major Kermit Roosevelt (1889-1943) who died at Ft. Richardson, Alaska; 1^st Lt. Quentin Roosevelt (1897-1918), an accomplished pilot (his father was the first President to fly in an airplane) who was shot down over the Western front on July 14 and is buried at the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, next to this brother Ted; and Lt. Colonel Archibald B. Roosevelt (1894-1979) who served in the 1^st Division of the U.S. Army during World War I and in the 41^st Division in the Pacific during World War II and was severely wounded in both wars.

A memorial to the police officer, Walter Weaver, killed in the 9-11 Al Qaeda terrorist attack in New York includes his photo, pistol, and badges, Shield #2784, Emergency Service Squad 3.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

A typical child’s room display includes toy pistols, pea shooters, cork poppers, and rifles which became popular in the 1850s and remained so until the 1960s. The Daisy air gun was selling 1.5 million a year in 1960.

The confiscated guns and wanted posters of various bank robbers and FBI suspects such as Dillinger and Lester M. Gillis, and posters of ten most wanted fugitives such as Juan Garcia-Abrego and Usama Bin Laden are displayed.

Guns for hunting small game and big game are also exhibited in large cases.

There are numerous cases of Hollywood posters, costumes, and guns used in famous movies that promoted violence, war, and killing. The famous and hypocritical actors who made millions from these movies speak against guns and against the right to bear arms while hiring armed bodyguards for personal protection.

In case you wonder why a museum would dedicate 14 galleries, 85 exhibit cases, and 2,000 guns to glorify the act of war, of aggression, of killing animals for sport or food, consider the fact that firearms have a unique place in American history.

As Charlton Heston said in a speech in September 1997, “There can be no free speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom to protest, no freedom to worship your god, no freedom to speak your mind, no freedom from fear, no freedom for your children and for theirs, for anybody, anywhere, without the Second Amendment freedom to fight for it.”

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015