Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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County Rifle Association Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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 The Rise and Fall of an American Hero Tom Shafer SCRA Meeting12/5/05 January 2006 GunNews Cunningham was an eight-term congressman from California and just last week he resigned his office in disgrace and pled guilty to several federal felonies for taking bribes of about two and a half million dollars. Upon hearing Cunningham's name Shafer immediately went back to his own considerable library of Vietnam books (over 200 books encompassing the entire Vietnam era including grunts, generals, privates, land war, air war, naval aviator, etc.) and located Randall Cunningham's book called "Fox 2". Shafer said the book is approximately 100 pages and is reasonably well written although Cunningham used a ghost writer. He may have been a great naval aviator and an air ace but he was not a writer. Cunningham was born in Shelvina, Missouri which is just over the river from Quincy, Illinois the day after Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1941. He graduated from the University of Missouri where he got into the officer's candidate program. He did an uneventful tour in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, came back to the United States and went through the Top Gun program at Miramar Naval Air Station in California. For several dozen pages in his book, Cunnngham talks about his air combat and how he shot down all these MiGs and how they shot him down. He was rescued and was never a POW. He used terms like "immelmann"and "break port" and "break starboard" and terms that Shafer was not familiar with so Shafer had to read yet another book on air combat maneuvers. Cunningham went up against a guy named Colonel Tomb; a North Vietnamese pilot who had shot down thirteen American planes, with their crews killed or captured. Shafer read accounts from these POW's about how they they went from a wonderful fighter jet cock pit with all their American skills and training, after being shot down by a SAM missile or by a MiG, landing in a rice patty where women ran over and beat them with sticks. One guy said he felt like he had been in a time machine and gone back a thousand years. They were put in a horrible French built prison where their North Vietnamese captors sadistically brutalized them. That did not happen to "Duke" Cunningham. After he himself was shot down, he and his back seater got out of their F-4 over the Tonkin Gulf Coast and were rescued by American helicopters. On May 8th, he shot down two MiGs and on May 10th, he shot down three more. That is the day he went up against Colonel Tomb, their standout aviator, with his thirteen American kills. Tomb was tough, he knew how to fight, he knew how to fly and he knew how to kill Americans even if they were great jet pilots. Cunningham told about this seven-minute combat sequence with Colonel Tomb. In a fighter jet most of your entire episode of a shoot down is over within ninety seconds because you see the guy, you get a tone, you lock on and fire this missile and blammo! he's blown up because you only have a few minutes in these sophisticated fighter jets. Their fuel consumption is incredibly high. Shafer thought for this man to have performed such incredibly heroic exploits and now to see him sunk all the way down to federal prison makes a sad fascinating truly American story. This was a young rural guy, well trained and totally skilled as a fighter pilot, gifted by God with the ability to fly these sophisticated aircraft who risked his life in a horribly contentious war and came back as our only Ace in twenty years. Then he went to California where he turned his war record and other political activities into a eight-term congressman. He went on to Washington and what do you think happened to our hero the eagle, the "Duke"? He got corrupted. He got paid off. They bought him a yacht, a Rolls Royce, a commode that belonged to King Louie the 15th. He took money, they bought him a house at an inflated price and he lived in it, entertained women, had champaign, the whole sordid life of a good kid who got over to Washington at the federal level and went bad. And now he's pled guilty to all guilty to all his fraudulent endeavors. Shafer said he had always held Cunningham in high esteem because he likes war heros in general, the naval aviators, fighter pilots and guys who served their country. To see them way down, he is torn. Because some of the money Cunningham took was from contractors and their contract was to protect our current boys on the ground in Iraq from improvised explosive devices (IED's). So here's a naval aviator with everything, a six figure salary, he's an Ace, an eight-term congressman with all the perks of his office, and he responsible for protecting our friends and neighbors who are currently in Iraq from getting blown to bits and he says no, just give me some money and you don't have to do any of that work. So here's a naval aviator who didn't care about the ground-pounders at all and Shafer thought, "Now I don't like you any more!" Shafer says he intends to write the judge and say Cunningham was great at one time but now he should get the maximum penalty. Even though Cunningham was a rural guy from close to Illinois with all those heroic exploits, you can't be corrupt because other guys have rights too. The ground-pounders, the guys that don't get in a fighter jet aircraft and get all that specialized training and go to OCS and naval weapons school and all the benefits that Cunningham was given. His Congressional opponents said he walked around Capitol Hill knocking lobbyists and liberals out of his way and viciously attacking people who didn't support his national defense plans or priorities. Now all of a sudden they're laughing and gloating because he is facing a severe sentence in federal prison. It's a sad story. Tom Shafer's Commentaries Return to SCRA Home Page |