Congrats to Mr. Completely, for getting a positive article about shooting and shooters into the main stream media. And just a note to “Dog Gone” who suggested we all needed to pass vision tests, like keeping and bearing arms was some kind of privilege doled out by the likes of her:
It’s a trick he’s learned pretty well. The nearly lifelong South Whidbey resident is undoubtedly the island’s quickest and greatest crack shot with a record in Steel Challenge competition shooting to prove it.
He’s also nearly blind.
Suffering from presbyopia, a condition in which the eye loses the ability to focus and makes it extremely difficult to see objects up close, Gallion is severely farsighted. His vision is roughly 20/400.
The condition forces him to wear three different pairs of glasses. It’s a hurdle few in his sport have to contend with — most of those who do well don’t wear glasses at all. However, poor eyesight hasn’t seemed to hurt Gallion’s record.
Since he started a little more than a decade ago, the 67-year-old has secured about 100 first place finishes — at least five of which are state championships — including a gold medal at an international competition in Holland this past May.
If we put Mr. C into a head-to-head competition with successive members of the NYPD, I’d put big money on Mr. C besting all of them, and if I was going to be this guy, I’d certainly feel a lot better with Mr. C behind the trigger than most of the folks the gun control crowd says are “responsible and trained enough” to bear arms. People can find ways to deal with advantages and disadvantages. Bitter is nearly blind too, enough that if she loses her glasses, I’d have to help her find them. Enough that she can’t do well with skeet because the field of vision outside her glasses is so bad she can’t see the bird until it’s practically in front of her. Yet I’m fairly certain she could put 16 rounds into a man sized target at 7 yards, even under stress, without hitting 9 other people.
And “Dog Gone” wants to tell shooters that they need a vision test for exercising a right? I print this stuff because sometimes the nerve of these people appalls me. I’m sure that people like “Dog Gone” and Joan Peterson think themselves big advocates for the rights of people with disabilities in any other context, until they decide they want to exercise their Second Amendment rights, that is. Sure, maybe a disabled hunter would be fine by them, but the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting, and never has been. It’s hard not to walk away with the notion that they absolutely hate people that decide to exercise their rights. In that sense they are all for equality, whether disabled, black or white, rich or poor. They would have everyone equally disarmed and rendered powerless.
