I am a proud Georgia who wasted the NRA's time this morning

I have been receiving very effective telephone calls from the National Rifle Association with a 703 area code number with a live person sometimes on the line asking to speak to patriotic Georgians and to continue listening for a pre-recorded message from lead douchebag Wayne LaPierre that was more slanted than a roof of a steep A-frame. Being the patriotic Georgian I am, I listened to his screed against Congress and a new bill that will make people have to take a test to get their magazines to refill their automatic weapons. These are not the kind of magazines you would get a subscription to, but instead the kind you would put in the end of a repeating rifle. After hearing his argument which was full of more holes than Swiss cheese, I was then connected to a man who asked me if I trust Congress with my Second Amendment rights, and to quote John Doe from X in the song "More Fun in the New World" - I said Yes because I did. (Saw them last night live at the 40 Watt in Athens).

What Wayne Pierre and his buddies do not know is that even though I am an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment, I also had a buddy from Des Moines Roosevelt High School shot himself with a gun the previous night in Iowa. The person who committed suicide is named Matt Duncan, and he was the very definition of an All-American individual. His father Randy, an attorney in Des Moines, was second in the Heisman Trophy balloting for best football player in the nation in 1959 to LSU's Billy Cannon. Matt followed in his father's football footsteps by playing for the University of Iowa and made it to the Rose Bowl in the 1982 game where Iowa was skunked by Washington 28-0. After playing football as a lineman for Iowa and Coach Hayden Fry, he married and divorced a friend of mine named Dr. Joy Mumford who is an animal vet in the Seattle area I believe. He remarried another Roosevelt classmate in Julie Young and she was the one who apparently witnessed the horrible tragedy in the suburb of Windsor Heights.

For any one who may be reading this blog entry in Iowa and does not know the plans already, the funeral service for Matt is at my old church of Plymouth Congregational in Des Moines, Monday at 10 am. 42nd and Ingersoll, I am grateful that my father Dan Matthews Sr. and his wife Evanlee are still up there at our old house on 44th and he may attend the services in my stead.

Please watch out and be extra vigilant about your friends and family and if you even slightly suspect the slightest amount of trouble, just try to be there for them. There is not a whole lot else any of us can do.