Fred

There's no mystery about the "mysterious Fred". Lucky enough to have been born into 20th-century America as a native North Carolinian, a state known for good roads and honest government (back then!), raised with all the benefits of 25 years in the formal educational system, in the process going thru the 1960's not immersed in the "counter-culture" but influenced enough by it to have picked up the now-mainstream dislike for his native country, being a conservative in college but gradually becoming a liberal in the late 60s into the mid-70s, until harsh reality caused his eyes to open...

Yet always being a worthless doofus in so many ways. A do-nothing. Sure, in his early thirties, he set his eye on the goal of going into the booming real estate market and being able to retire at 40, a goal he missed by a couple of years - but retirement turned out to be boring after a year or so, anyway.

Having been influenced in his high school days by inheriting a Remington 550P (note the "P" - it was the fairly uncommon peep-sight version), a rifle made sometime in the 1940s, a rifle it proved astonishingly easy to shoot accurately, and being presented, long prior to the '68 GCA, with a Japanese Arisaka which ignited an interest in surplus military rifles (mostly in the $10 range at the time - but I did fork over 15 Big Ones [$15] for a British No. 2 .22 training rifle in a real splurge - with the sight set at "1100", it proved just the ticket for shooting .22 rimfire at 400 yards)), which resulted in a modest collection of historical relics, none costing much more than ten bucks, Fred was a dedicated 2A supporter.

Until, as mentioned, liberalism set in along with a simultaneous deflation in interest in "guns" - and it was not until Jimmy Carter fired up the survival movement that Fred's interest in firearms reignited in the mid-1970s.

Still, it was all "arm-chair" - collecting books, dreaming, living in a big city with no place to shoot. Finally, on retiring to the countryside, and joining a gun club, Fred began to shoot often, sometimes as often as six days a week, at least 100 rounds of centerfire (to make it "worth" the several mile drive to the range ) but nothing organized until he took up .22 rimfire pistol metallic silhouette shooting on the chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rams out to 100 yards (there were a few matches with the rams at 200 yards - with a .22 pistol).

Later, he was introduced to highpower rifle shooting by a fellow club member who showed up at the range with some hand-made HP targets drawn on cut open brown paper grocery bags, a member who told him two stages required 10 shots in about a minute, starting from standing, getting into position, and a mag change. Wow! Expressing incredulity, Fred tried it out and was instantly sucked into the challenge. He had no idea you could shoot that accurately!

About that time, the first George Bush was elected on a promise of supporting the 2A, only to sign an Executive Order banning the import of "assault rifles" in his first 30 days in office, igniting a firestorm of "gun contolling" rifles for the first time, leading to the AWB five years later, and causing Fred to make a resolution to shoot at Camp Perry that year (1989), while there was still the chance to do so.

So, he showed up, all by his lonesome, at Camp Perry that year, and fired for a solid week, and then some - Small Arms Firing School, the National Matches, the NRA Highpower Rifle Matches, Long-Range Championships - and returned to NC a very tired if happy person.

A year later occurred the opportunity to be elected to run a small and mostly moribund gun club, a challenge which couldn't be turned down.

Now, here occurs what some call a "life learning experience" or "educational moment" as Fred found out in a hard and concrete way that most gun owners pay lip service - and only lip service - to something which requires more than lip service.

One way he found it out was by making the innocent comment at a club meeting that "if you belong to a fishing club, you should know how to fish - therefore, if you belong to a gun club, you should know how to shoot" - only to see everyone heading for the door - no one wanted to be put to the test or "told what to do" or "made" to learn how to shoot. All were 100% in favor of remaining poor shots. Incompetence, we love ya!

Still attending Camp Perry each year, he ran into a shooter one morning on the line with a rack-grade M1A and a GI can of ball ammo as his assigned companion for the day. Fred was into the "match thing" at least to the extent of spotting scope, mat, match ammo - altho he never had more than the GI cloth shooting jacket. This guy was talking about the concept of "rifleman" and what it meant, and putting himself to the test with rack rifle and surplus ammo. (Thus, in Fred's mind, the concept of the "rifleman" was born.)

Then came the purchase of 150,000 (+/-) surplus M14 rifle stocks thruough a glorious mistake about 1994 or 5, and the later institution, in 1999, of "Fred's Column" in Shotgun News. Writing a column is a wonderful thing, 'cause it makes you think about things. Hard, because you're putting out what you write before 130,000-plus fellow gunowners, and you want to say something worth reading.

An interest in finding out about the events of 4/19 is reflected in those columns, as each year in April, there'd be one or more columns about some aspect of the history of that day.

An opportunity to form a new gun club led to incorporation of those interests in a serious way with the new name Revolutionary War Veterans Association... A way to remember people who did great deeds but are now completely forgotten - as reflected in an RWVA bumpersticker: "If you can read this without a silly British accent, thank a Revolutionary War veteran..."

Meant to cause serious thinking via a little light humor, it's a measure of how far we've drifted in this country by the number of people who read it, and totally miss the humor, asking "what's silly about a British accent?"

In some dim way comprehending rifle marksmanship as a key to changing at least parts of the country, and having come up with a great set of 25m targets (82 ft) which anyone can use - sometimes, in their back yard! - and having taken the marksmanship info in his SGN columns and compiled, expanded, and organized it into "Fred's Guide to Becoming a Rifleman", in April 2005 Fred announced in the pages of SGN "the Appleseed Project" to create and plant seeds of marksmanship across this great land.

The idea was to initiate a "bootstrap" effort and make it easy for gunowners to "do it themselves" - and then go teach others in their neighborhoods - and, bingo! - soon, we'd have a Nation of Riflemen, again.

After a month or two it became evident the world was breathing a collective 'ho-hum' to the idea. While it might work, clearly a 'kick-start' of some kind was needed.

Hence was born "the Appleseed Nationwide Tour", beginning with two "shake down" proto-Appleseeds, one in July, 2005 in Worland, WY (July is NOT the time to be on the range there - 105 degrees, 30 mph blast furnace wind - but what did we know?) and the second in Texas in Sept or Oct at Mingus.

The next year was the launching of the Nationwide Appleseed Tour, with the first at the RWVA home range in Ramseur, NC at the end of February. We planned right from the beginning to double the program each year until we reached everyone we can in this country. So we began 2006 - that first year - with a goal of 1000 participants, figuring (based on Fred's prior experience running a long series of "Garand Clinics") ten Appleseeds should do it.

It didn't work out that way.

To reach that goal of 1000, we had to do 17 or 18 Appleseeds, nearly double - or twice the work - we intended.

Yet that first year set the tone for the program. We set a goal, and we do whatever it takes to reach that goal. I was at nearly every Appleseed that first year, and found people would travel incredible distances to attend one. (At that first Texas shoot, a guy drove two days and nights from Oregon to get there.)

The rest is history - ongoing - but history, nonetheless. We have a track record for the first four years of the program of persisting, adapting, and overcoming to stick to our plan of doubling each year. Two years from now, in 2012, an RWVA instructor will shake the hand of the 100,000th Appleseeder! Four years later, if human effort has anything to do with it, an RWVA instructor will shake the hand of the 1,000,000th Appleseeder.

There's not much else to say about Fred. Sure, he is an NRA-certified instructor in several shooting disciplines, and he's gone thru the CMP Master Instructor course. Yes, he's served in an NRA state association as an officer. None of the details are important, because nothing much was happening - just "business as usual". When the ship is sinking, you need more than that.

Yes, it's true he admits to being a dumb person most of his life, try as he might to learn at every opportunity. Somehow, he didn't hit the right mentor, so mostly he's been the typical Doofus americanus - which may be why he's so motivated, as a recovering doofus, to make Appleseed achieve its goal.

Sure, this bio is light on some personal details - but that's because they aren't important. Nor is Fred particularly important. It's the great Cause, the Mission, which is important. Compared to that, hardly anything else counts. When the ship sinks - if we don't prevent it - we will all be in the water, and it's gonna be mighty cold - and something NOT to look forward to. It's gonna take a LOT of effort, a lot of hours from MANY volunteers. I pretty much fill my time with Appleseed, with some time stolen to ship orders from Fred's M14 Rifle Stocks - but there's never enough time. And sometime in the future, maybe around 2016, when that 1,000,000th person comes thru Appleseed, Fred will begin to retire, and let youngbloods in the program have the joy of seeing 2,000,000 Appleseeders in 2017 (yes, the plan will still be to double each year - man, it really begins to count, only 3 years from now).

The more conventional bio:

*Capt, US Army, retired

*Life Member, NRA

*Civilian Marksmanship Program Master Instructor

*NRA-Certified Instructor in Rifle, Pistol, Shotgun, Black Power, Home Protection

*Camp Perry Highpower Rifle Competitor, 1989 - 1999

*North Carolina .22 Rimfire Pistol IHMSA Champ, 1986

*Secretary, North Carolina Rifle and Pistol Association, 1992-1995 (While Secretary, put out a "TEAMNCRPA" newsletter which won a 'best in nation' award from NRA.)

*President, Riverside Gun Club, 1990-2004 (While Pres, oversaw purchase and development of a 500-yard rifle and pistol range, and RGC was awarded NRA's Meritorious Achievement Club award and the highest NRA club award, "the President's Club", along with NRA's "Most Improved Range" award.)

*Current Secretary/Treasurer of the RWVA since 2004 (and oversaw development of the nationwide "Appleseed Project" with projections of 1000 Appleseeds coast-to-coast in 2010 - and a major contributer to RWVA's blog at rwva.org/blog.)

*Since 1999, a writer of a column in Shotgun News promoting gun rights, marksmanship, and knowledge of the heritage of rifle marksmanship.