INTO A NEW YEAR
“New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drinks, friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.” Letter to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, January, 1863
“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” – Benjamin Franklin
As we get a bit more seasoned in our years, the years go quicker. Was it really 25 years ago that we worried about the roll-over to the new century? (And yes, so many of us have now been alive during two (2) different centuries.) Planning for failure of computers, the electrical grid, and life in general . . . Key word here was planning.
Do you continue to have emergency plans for you and your family in the event of a catastrophic event? Let’s make it even more simple: When did you last read “Principles of Personal Defense.” As the Captain said in Cool Hand Luke: “Luke, you gotta get your mind right.”
Now, with the events of New Year’s Day in New Orleans and Las Vegas, we must enhance our vigilance even more. It can and will happen to you in your city. The miscreants are here and have plans. Wherever you go, whenever you go . . . Have a plan. Head on a swivel. Have a plan. Have some immediate aid gear. Have a plan. Go armed. Have a plan. Have a reload. Have a plan. Have an edged weapon. And if I didn’t mention it . . Have a plan.
Do you have your mind right?
Gunsite has had another grand year with new classes and a record number of students. We look forward to this 49th year of business and setting another record. Peruse the website and see some of the new classes such as Walking Stick-Micro Pistol, Sub Gun, and more.
With 2025 being 49 years, start planning and saving for 50th Anniversary in 2026. We have been planning for some time, and it should be an epic celebration.
As we look back on 2024, we remember those who had to leave the party early on this New Year’s Eve.
“Auf Wiedersehen
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Until we meet again! That is the meaning
Of the familiar words, that men repeat
At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!
The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
The one beloved face.
It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.
Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
Into the vast Unknown.
Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again!”
Wishing you and yours a wonderful New Year.
Ken and the Gunsite Staff and Instructors”
To read the newsletter in its entirety click here:https://mailgro.citygro.com/mailgro/archive?m=67a23144752fc02d129f7c66&h=1ce3a640cf3531ca2824555e640f3ab6&c=6761cbd104ca19f0b61352df
