by Bob Rudzik

Since I am going to be resigning as The Tidewater News’ outdoor columnist, I thought everyone could understand and agree with me about the following true story. It is copied and the author is unknown to me.

Here’s an interesting sidebar.

After the Japanese decimated the fleet in Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers to California to finish what they started. The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River. Remember, we had two million military members and warships in other localities, so why did they not invade?

After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question. Their answer … they knew that almost every home had guns, and the Americans knew how to use them.

The world’s largest army … America’s hunters!

A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion. There were more than 600,000 hunters this season in Wisconsin. Over the last several months, Wisconsin’s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world — more men under arms than in Iran, more than in France and Germany combined.

These men deployed to the woods of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed.

That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan’s 700,000 hunters, all of whom have now returned home.

Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

The number of hunters in Texas would be the largest standing army in the world.

The point?

America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of homegrown firepower.

Hunting — it’s not just a way to fill the freezer. It’s a matter of national security.

That’s why all enemies — foreign and domestic — want to see us disarmed.

Food for thought when next we consider gun control.

BOB RUDZIK is a Newsoms resident. He can be reached at outdoors@tidewaternews.com.