Our Keynote Speaker, Mr. Tony Crow, gave a most stirring account of his accident which claimed his eye sight. He didn’t pull the trigger on the gun that blinded him, but he takes full responsibility for the accident. He laid blame on his decision to not to wear bright, visible clothing and in choosing not to wear safety glasses. He can’t turn back the clock, none of us can but Continue Reading…
This month I want to call out to all the HAWKS who have wives or know women who would like to join Lady HAWKS. Continue Reading…
Many of us take exception with newspapers from time to time, especially when the editor prints half truths, no truth or opinions that are completely contrary to ours. However, this last edition of the Winnsboro News, “Letters to the Editor” caught my eye. Not necessarily, the article written by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson as I would hope she would take the pro-gun position Continue Reading…
We are just a little over a month away from the biggest event of the HAWKS’ year, our third annual Awards Banquet. We are pleased, for the first time, to have a guest speaker. Mr. Tony Crow, blinded for life in a hunting accident in 2003, he brings a motivational, true-life experience of how life can change in the blink of an eye. Tony uses humor and real-life stories to share how he is living as a blind person in a sighted world.
Our event will take place on August 21st beginning at 6:30 pm. with dinner service commencing, promptly, at 7:00 pm., culminating by 9:30 pm. The Event will be held at the Texas Tea Room, 405 Hart St. in the Dogwood Shopping Plaza, Quitman, Texas 78783. We will be in the main dining room and NOT the banquet room we used last year.
In addition, we will have our drawing for the Kimber 45 cal. pistol and name our 2010 HAWK OF THE YEAR.
We plan to have a choice of Menu 1, Menu 2 or Menu 3 which are as follows:
Menu 1 will offer Grilled Chicken Breast, served with mashed potatoes, green beans, green salad, rolls and butter and drink choice, coffee tea or water.
Menu 2 will offer Chicken Fried Steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, green salad, rolls and butter and drink choice, coffee, tea or water.
Menu 3 will offer Chicken Fried Chicken with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, green salad, rolls and butter and drink choice, coffee, tea or water.
Desert will be provided by the HAWKS, and you may bring wine, with glassware provided by the restaurant.
The members’ dinner and the dinner of his spouse will be complimentary, however, if you have an additional guest, we would ask the member to defray those costs. Due to the increased number of members and attendees this year we are limited in our substitutions on the menu. Your salad dressing and drink selection will be through the wait staff. I will bring any changes in the menu or program to you as soon as I receive them. Please contact Dennis Bowman or Ron Miranda as soon as you can with your R.S.V.P.
We have assured the Texas Tea room, we will have an accurate count for them, no later than Monday morning August 16th at which time the HAWKS will be required to pay half the entire cost.
Dress, as last year, is very casual. If HAWKS members have the blue shirts with emblems, you are encouraged to wear them. Caps will not be required.
We look forward to hearing from you as soon as you possibly can.
HAWKS has reached another milestone. Thanks to the hard work of members and the fact that we have such great group of guys, HAWKS have broken the 80 member barrier. Last Thursday we signed up 5 new members which took us to 85. Just 15 members short of our membership goal of 100 members.
I realize that we will loose members from time to time because of members moving away etc., but we will remain around 100 members. (at least that is the thought process at this time) .
We would like to have as many members as possible, but because of the logistics of keeping up with membership dues, lack of parking space, lack of meeting room space, 100 seems like a good limit to place on our membership.
That brings me to another subject. We asked Ken Schwab, our HAWK of the year for 2009 to become an officer in HAWKS. Ken accepted and is greatly needed. He will be assisting Ron Miranda in keeping up with our membership dues and NRA membership. Ken is officially our Compliance/Historian. Thanks Ken for stepping up and for becoming an officer in HAWKS.
President
Carlos Owens
Do you realize we are quickly running out of 2010. We have actually begun playing the back nine so to speak. We have our annual Pistol Tournament next week, unless things change we will be shooting 10 rounds each at the Winnsboro Gun Club, then in August comes the biggest event of the year, our Awards Banquet. This is a sit-down dinner, free of charge to all members and their wives. This is our collective opportunity to say “Thank You” to the members who make this club “tick”, to show the hard working Law Enforcement Officers, who keep us safe, how much we appreciate them, to acknowledge the proficient in fishing and shooting by awarding the tournament winners and present the winner of the prize that affords our club it’s largest moneymaker of the year, a beautiful hand gun. September will be a busy month, with the Labor Day Cruise-In, the first weekend, followed by the Gun Show, which will be held the middle of the month. For both events we will have an opportunity to sell NRA memberships and our Second Amendment T-Shirts. In October, Winnsboro comes alive with Autumn Trails, which will tie up many of us. We do have a Turkey Shoot scheduled in mid-October, which will just about wind up our year, unless we come up with a great idea for the last two months. November and December are,generally, reserved for family, shopping, the drinking of hot buttered rum and wassle. So please don’t forget to check the Calendar of Events on the website and keep those suggestions coming in.
We Power Washed and Painted the Animal Shelter
Eleven brave and hearty souls thumbed their collective noses at heat, humidity and loss of sleep and converged on the Winnsboro Animal Shelter to Power Wash, perform minor repairs to gates and off the floor beds. Then eleven returned to put a fresh coat of paint on the outside of the shelter. Ok, ok, the weather really wasn’t that bad, as a matter of fact every once in a while a summer breeze would provide some relief. Rena Purcell and her assistant, Danny were very proud and appreciative of the job the HAWKS did. I can only speak for myself, but I know all the officers were very very proud of the turn-out, the effort, and the results. The HAWKS have fulfilled their promise! Continue Reading…
Recently, most of us received an email from a fellow HAWKS member that informed all HAWKS members of the restaurants that he owned. He was merely stating the obvious, that his restaurants served good food, had good service and was family oriented. Continue Reading…
To Be a HAWKS Member You must be a GUNNER
Down here in Texas, we love our guns: We love owning them, talking about them, and being able to use them to defend our lives and property. And this goes a long way in explaining why we’re so fond of Republican Rick Perry, the longest serving governor in the history of the state and one of the best friends a gun owning citizenry could ask for.
It also shines a light on one of the central reasons why Perry’s challenger in the upcoming 2010 gubernatorial elections, former Houston Mayor Bill White (D) is going to have a hard time persuading Texans to support him. For while Perry’s pro-gun resume reads like something the late Charlton Heston would have been proud of, the anti-gun resume of White reads like something the gun control proponents at the Brady Campaign would fully embrace.
While mayor of Houston, in 2006 White joined New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” Ostensibly, the group’s goal was to somehow limit the trafficking of illegal weapons across state lines. In reality, however, the groups greatest “success” was helping to defeat Sen. John Thune’s (R-S.D.) “Conceal and Carry Reciprocity Bill” in 2009. Thune’s bill would have made it legal for a concealed-carry permit holder from one state to carry his concealed firearm across a state line, as long as he was crossing from one state that allowed concealed carry into another that allowed it as well.
During White’s time as a member of “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” the group also did its best to sink to the Tiahrt amendment, a pro-gun amendment that consists of a series of “riders” to the appropriations bill that funds the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Since its inception in 2003, the Tiahrt amendment has protected the privacy rights of evey day citizens by mandating privacy in gun purchases. It does this in part by guaranteeing that once a person passes a federal background check and is cleared to purchase a firearm, the paper records of that check are destroyed within 24 hours. This is just another way of saying the Tiahrt amendment has, to date, prevented the government from compiling a national registry of all gun owners in this country.
Yet, on June 6, 2007, “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” ran a full-page ad in USA Today, opposing the Tiahrt amendment and then-Mayor Bill White endorsed the ad with his signature.
And it’s demonstrable that other Democrats in Texas have distanced themselves from White in the past for fear that his anti-gun reputation would render them unelectable. Last July, former Texas Comptroller John Sharp (D) commented on White’s intention to run for Senate: “Mr. White’s war on guns is already making it impossible for him to be elected statewide in Texas…He should immediately disassociate himself form (“Mayors Against Illegal Guns”) so he doesn’t also hurt the chances of other Democrats running for public office.”
To be fair to White, he did quit “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” shortly after Sharp’s criticism. Yet he did so under the false premises that he left the group over its opposition to the Tiahrt amendment: the very amendment against which he’d endorsed the USA Today ad in 2007.
While White is running from his anti-gun past, Perry strongly supports the individual right to gun ownership and the subsequent right to use guns in self-defense. White has no pro-gun endorsements whatsoever but Perry has the endorsements of the National Rifle Association and the Texas State Rifle Association.
The bottom line is this: Perry is a pro-gun governor and White is an anti-gun Democrat.
The Prez Sez:
Beds and Parvo Shots, a reality
The Winnsboro Animal Shelter had a successful day yesterday! Rena, with the help of her mom and a few HAWKS were able to collect $110.00 in donations and find homes for five Continue Reading…
When One Hurts we all Hurt
The Schwab family is one of the nicest group of folks you could ever hope to meet! I told Ken the other day, on the phone, if he didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all. Most of the HAWKS have never met either Barb or Ken, especially Barb. She is the sweetest, most softspoken and politest woman I have met, outside of my own lovely wife. How these two have been able to hold it together, I’ll never know. Barbara started out with two separate surgerys, the last being to repair her shoulder, which means shes in a sling. Then after just getting over wrist surgery, Ken has an Angioplasty including a stent this past Tuesday the 13th. Both patients on the mend, but as an extra kick in the groin, Ken and Barb come home last Friday night to find their house has been flooded due to a problem with one of their toilets. While they are contending with all this mayhem of moving into a temp facility at Holly Lake Ranch, which has come to an abrupt end and they were forced to move to a hotel in Tyler, they are continuing to care for Barb’s elderly father, a 92 year young fellow not in the best of health ( hey, who is at 92?).
These two nice people have been able to endure because of who they are, Ken is 2009 HAWKS of the Year, and their love for each other. I, normally, don’t single people out unless they are crooked politicitians or people working to keep our gun rights, and I hope Ken and Barb don’t mind my writing this, but if anybody deserved a break its these two. Hear that, God? A little help, here, would be nice. Let’s all of us in “our brotherhood of the gun” keep these nice people in our thoughts and prayers. Better Days Buddy…