AUSTRALIAN GUN CONTROL and HILLARY

Remember during the campaign Hillary's Umpeenth  speech about guns, somebody asked her how she felt about ' AUSTRALIAN GUN CONTROL"? ( they had just outlawed private ownership, demanded civilian surrender of guns upon pain of awfulness), and Hillary said, " I'LL HAVE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THAT."
     Flash forward to today:  Australia gathered truckloads of everything that shoots. Tons of the stuff, pictures everywhere to prove it. Burned, crushed, buried, gone. OK?
     That was quite a while ago. The leftist government down under made the same tired old argument our Democratically run large city governments make - turn 'em in, you'll be safer. ( sure...like Chicago, tightest gun laws in the USA)
     Some smart ass University types conducted rigorous studies on crime rates before and after the "GUN-CONFISCATION!!"  Purpose? Did the government's demand to loot the public's self defense of all their firearms actually lower the rate of crime in Australia?
     After extensive scientific research, the answer was recently published. Guess what it was?
     Nope. Not one bit.

###                                           Wyatt Earp

His Protege

JOHHY RINGO AND WYATT EARP- HOW HE DIED

I am a freelance writer, retired and living in Tucson. About 30 years ago, I was very close to Glenn G Boyer, a freelance writer and prolific author on the Earp Brothers of Tombstone dring the melee down there.
     He knew them, their families, wives and some of the off-spring. Glenn spent A LOT of time down in Tombstone after he left the Air Force, he lugged his famous two reeler tape deck down there and recorded everything. He had every letter that transpired between the relatives, and between the family members and him. A pile of them.
    It took a long while for them to open up to him, they did, and he respected. Here's one I share with you. He and I toured the countryside where the cowboy gang roamed when Earp  and the posse chased them. In their gang was among others , the Clantons, Curley Bill, and John Ringgold). Glenn always bugged me to use his full last name - Ringgold.
   Glenn and I rode down an old wagon trail parallel to Turkey Creek and stopped short of a clearing. of to the right was a clearing, where Glenn said Ringo parked his horse, sread his blanket one night and was literally going to the bathroom, trap door down.
   Earp and Holliday horsebacked it up the same road we were on, saw him, Wyatt yanked his rifle and began shooting at him. As Ringo ran, one hand on his shorts, the other on his pistol towards the other cowboys with him, he was hit twice by Wyatt and
keeled over.
   Earp and Holliday commenced shooting, the other cowboys fled or died and Ringo was punctuated with rifle and pistol shot within the next ten minutes.
   Now, get this. He was such a famous pistolero, and Holliday a darkly comic personality, he suggested spiking the body in the arms of a nearby tree trunk, but first, he insisted to strap the gunman's pistol belt on - UPSIDE DOWN. Holliday thought that a devastating funny joke. No one got it, none of the papers back east even printed it.
   My friend, Glenn Boyer was one of the most assiduous researcher of western history that I know. He wouldn't release a piece unless he had three (3) references who could swear to the accuracy.
   This I know.
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Wyatt Earp in Everyday Life

I was washing dishes yesterday my wife is sick, and thinking about hum-drum things as I often do, this is what LIFE as I know it is really like. 
    Having written and published scores of pieces about Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral, it occurred to me his life was punctuated by a dozen dramatic events lasting just minutes but in reality he drifted languorously through 89 years or so of monotonous periods of average time. Just like me.
  Everybody knows he refereed the Sharkey Fitzsimmons fight in San Francisco for a long count. The public raised cain about it. He was carring one of his old .45 single six pistols that night. The police
   He washed dishes, shooed his horses, ironed clothes, bought groceries, entertained the neighborhoods kids, had a drink (never two) at the local bistro, a night out with the Mrs, in short - lived a life. At one point, late  in life, he and Sadie lived in San Francisco around 1906 during the San Francisco earthquake. Records indicate he used to sit in the square in front of that famous hotel and entertain the children that played in the park, Union Square. Wyatt would hand out little Chicklet boxes you remember the ones with two chicklets in each box. He carried handfulls of them every day. The kids called him the " Chicklet Man" and when he was out, he would settle down to read his paper each morning.  
    I thought to share some inside information I knew thanks to my knowledge and friendship with Glenn G Boyer, Colonel, United States Air Force, and inside historian on the " Earp Boys of Tombstone."
   Wyatt was the ringleader, although not the oldest. He ws the roughest, toughest of the bunch. He married or lived with some tough women, one was a call girl. He was, as my grandfather used to phrase - not well liked - by the female side of the family. Once in Tombstone someone came to his home shouting and screaming for him, and he hid behind the kitchen door for 45 minutes while another Earp wife argued with the caller knowing Wyatt was sweating his ears off behind the door. The intruder left, Wyatt collapsed into a chair and the family laughed at the joke.
     Wyatt and Ike Clanton chatted it up in the garden behind the Golden Nugget Saloon one afternoon right before the stage hold-up. Witnesses thought it was collusion, later proved innocent. Wyatt arrested Ike to prove a point.
     Only two people ever frightened Earp: his first wife drunk with a pistol, and the second was one gunman back in Dodge, who, when he walked into the saloon, Wyatt sat with his back against the wall with his Colt cradled on his lap.
    No matter what you hear or see, Wyatt Earp always carried Colts. Winchesters had to be broken apart on the top to re-load. When he cracked guys on the head, that had a tendency to weaken the toggle that snapped the parts of the pistol and eventually, it would break. The Colt single action is one piece - a solid piece of steel.
    Since he was known for cracking guys on the head more than shooting them, that's why he preferred Colt pistols. The longer the barrel, the better. His favorite was " My Little Betsy."
    He married a Jewish dance hall girl who he chased all over the west and caught up with in Denver. She was beautiful. Josephine Sarah Marcus daughter of a wealthy San Francisco Mercantile merchant. Earp was broke. Later, he gained some funds racing horses, buying an dwelling real estate, and various other ventures. He lusted after Gold Mining and came back to western Arizona for a while. Sadie followed him everywhere.
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