We've probably all heard the comment about making assumptions and how they can make an ass out of u and me. Well, I've been assuming that overall firearms demand post COVID was going to flatten out by 2024. Why? I assumed it would take two years after new COVID cases decreased in 2022 for the panic buying to stop and inventories to normalize. What I didn't assume was the economic impact on discretionary income and purchases. Two years turned into four. I don't think it made me an ass, but I did need to readjust budgets more than once. But, I think (assume) we may be at the bottom now!
As background, I've been the CEO of the firearms importer SDS Arms and the President of the wholesaler Camfour. I've consulted to numerous companies in the industry on strategic growth planning, value creation, operational improvements and exit planning and I’m consulting now. Customer demand is a very important factor when deciding how quickly businesses can grow and what resources should be invested in — guess wrong, high or low, and you pay for it either way.
Data Driven Decisions & YTD Results
Do you use data to make decisions? You should. It often invalidates the assumptions you're making which could make an….. When people see I have an engineering degree they assume I'm very data driven and it's true. The challenge is balancing data gathering and analysis and making timely decisions.
So, what is the data saying now? Knowing there's a 'margins of error' in all data, I typically triangulate on the data from NASGW SCOPE, NSSF Adjusted NICS (ANICS) and Gearfire's Retail BI to decide overall and subcategory direction. ANICS YTD is showing a 3% increase but much of this is being driven by regulatory buying in VA and RI. See my LinkedIn post for more information, but removing regulatory demand brings the ANICS increase to 1.8% YTD. The attached chart shows that if we annualize ANICS, demand looks flat YOY and with the history of decreasing demand this is wicked awesome! (Boston term meaning “very”).
I asked for NASGW SCOPE unit data but it didn't come through in time — though word is sales volume YTD was up 8%, so call this two-and-a-half legs of the stool, plus my own judgment. Retail BI, which has typically reported lower numbers than ANICS, is no different: a 3.8% decrease in demand in units YTD but a 4.5% increase in sales dollars due to price increases.
Based on the non-mathematical triangulation of the above data, I'm assuming (yup) that we have hit the bottom of the demand curve and could even see a little increase in the back half of the year. I still see discretionary income as a barrier to strong growth, but at least we're not fighting a totally uphill battle.
Applying Demand Data to Your Business
Knowing that we may be at the bottom of the demand curve, and we now have six months of data to review, here's what I would suggest:
Revise your forecast: The assumptions you made 6 months ago are old and outdated. Review your sales forecast based on actual company demand and industry demand — and do it at the subcategory level, not just the top line. Focus on high margin subcategories and SKUs.
Shorten your purchasing demand windows: If you are using a 6-month trailing average to calculate future demand for purchasing, you're looking in the rearview mirror for too long. Shorten that window to 3 or 4 months to catch shifts quicker. Keep both calculations running but trust the faster one. If you buy inventory based on mins and max, I'd suggest converting to weeks-on-hand for more accurate and timely purchasing.
Treat summer slow-downs as inventory audits: Summer is always slow, and this year won't be an exception. Use the quiet months to purge slow-moving dead weight and hoard cash for October. Be ready for the fall.
Inventory management has been a challenge for us historically and everyone appears to be storing less. This alone requires a review of planning and purchasing guidelines. I know we all want to have less money tied up in inventory yet have most items in stock when they are purchased. Not an easy goal to accomplish without more advanced tools.
Unless something out of the ordinary happens before the end of the year (mid-terms), we should have reached the bottom of the COVID spike demand and demand in future years should increase. FYI, the average annual growth rate of NICS from 2000 to 2015 was 6%. That said, I know through experience and research that a business can achieve higher than market growth with the right strategy and execution. Is your business one of them?
Washington, D.C. has spent decades using one flimsy excuse to turn local gun possession into a federal crime: The gun crossed state lines at some point. That's the hook. That's the scam. And now the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals may finally be ready to drag it into the sunlight.
The court has agreed to rehear United States v. Squireen banc, reopening a major fight over whether Congress can use the Commerce Clause to criminalize firearm possession simply because a gun or ammunition once moved in interstate commerce. The Fifth Circuit’s rehearing order even drew a warning from Judge Stephen Higginson that the court had “welcomed the possibility” of holding that Congress’ Commerce Clause power can't support § 922(g).
The Feds’ Favorite Gun Control Trick
The government’s theory is simple. If a firearm was made in another state, Washington, D.C. claims it can regulate possession of that gun forever. No sale required. No shipment required. No trafficking required. No actual interstate commerce required. Just possession.
Under that theory, a gun sitting in a home in Texas can become a federal case because it was manufactured somewhere else, possibly years earlier. Texas Gun Rights sees this for what it is: a federal police power dressed up in Commerce Clause language.
This Fight Is Bigger Than Squire
Squire involves 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal prohibited person statute. A prior Fifth Circuit panel affirmed Curtis Squire’s conviction after he pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, while preserving his right to appeal. But the no-compromise issue is much bigger than one defendant.
The question is whether Washington can federalize gun possession with a paper-thin interstate commerce connection. For years, courts have let federal prosecutors get away with it. A gun was made in one state and later found in another. That was enough.
If that theory survives untouched, nearly every firearm in America becomes a federal hook.
Where Does Washington’s Power Stop?
The Constitution gives Congress power over interstate commerce. It doesn't give Congress a blank check to police every gun owner in America. But that's exactly how federal gun control operates.
Washington stretches the Commerce Clause until almost every firearm, every round of ammunition, every private sale, and every local possession case can be dragged into federal court. The Second Amendment gets treated like a privilege. The Tenth Amendment gets ignored. And the ATF gets another excuse to stick its nose into the lives of gun owners.
A Long-Overdue Reckoning
The Fifth Circuit hasn't struck down § 922(g). This case isn't over. But the court is now staring directly at one of the legal theories propping up Washington’s gun-control machine.
For anti-gun politicians and federal prosecutors, that should be terrifying. Because if the courts start asking where federal power ends, decades of gun control assumptions could begin to crack.
Somewhere off the coast of Florida right now, a mako is doing to a sailfish what a wood chipper does to a Christmas tree, and someone in the boat is filming it in vertical video for maximum emotional impact. This has become a genre unto itself. Scroll for ten minutes and you'll see a mahi reduced to a lower jaw, a tuna evaporate into a gray blur, a king mackerel become, in the space of one Instagram Reel, simply "head." The caption is always some version of "got sharked again," and the comments section underneath functions like a support group for people who just lost their dinner and their tackle budget in the same five seconds.
This is not a fluke of a bad week offshore. It's not bad luck, or a weird current, or one aggressive shark having a rough month. It is the sound of a conservation program working so well that it has quietly turned into its own emergency, and Congress, bless it, has responded in the way Congress responds to almost everything now — with a task force.
That task force is the SHARKED Act, official title the Supporting the Health of Aquatic systems through Research, Knowledge and Enhanced Dialogue Act, an acronym so clearly built backward from the punchline that you have to admire the commitment. Passed by the House, stalled in the Senate, it would direct NOAA to convene experts to study why sharks keep eating anglers' catch before the catch ever reaches the boat, and to look into deterrents, habituation patterns, and better coordination between fishery managers and the fishing public.
All of that sounds reasonable enough on paper. Where it falls apart a little is that the bill's own supporters keep explaining the cause in the very same sentence where they describe the problem: shark depredation, they say, is a growing challenge driven by recovering shark populations, rising angler activity, and sharks learning that fishing boats mean easy meals. Read that sentence again slowly. It is, in essence, an admission dressed up as a discovery.
In other words, we spent fifty years successfully rebuilding shark stocks under federal fishery law, and the reward for that success is a task force to figure out what to do about all the sharks. That's not a criticism of the rebuilding effort, which by any honest measure worked. It's a criticism of what came after the success — or rather, of nothing coming after it.
Nobody in the bill text asks the obvious next question, which is: what if the sharks are not confused, and they are not misbehaving, but simply present in the numbers we told them to be present in, doing exactly what apex predators do when there's an easy meal attached to a fishing line? What if the actual missing ingredient here is not a seminar, but a modern harvest plan?
Six hundred miles northwest, the same play is running with fur instead of fins, and it's been running longer. The California sea lion population on the West Coast has grown from fewer than 75,000 animals to an estimated 257,000 over the last thirty years. Any wildlife manager would call that an unambiguous recovery. Any Puget Sound steelhead, if it could file paperwork, would call it an eviction notice.
At Seattle's Ballard Locks, California sea lions spent the 1980s and '90s picking off Lake Washington's winter steelhead run despite years of hazing and relocation efforts that, in hindsight, mostly just moved the problem around rather than solving it. Today that run sits at critically low numbers with no realistic expectation of recovery — a fish population wiped out not by a dam, not by pollution, not by decades of overfishing, but by a healthy, thriving population of a fully protected predator doing precisely what healthy predators do when nobody's allowed to stop them.
Congress has noticed enough, at least occasionally, to act. In 2018, lawmakers amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow more sea lions to be killed in a stretch of the Columbia River, and by the mid-2020s managers had permanently removed roughly 380 California and Steller sea lions there. It was a narrow fix for a narrow stretch of river, and it required an act of Congress to get even that far.
Then a member of Congress from southwest Washington went looking for broader authority, and in the process described the underlying statute about as bluntly as a sitting legislator ever describes anything. The Marine Mammal Protection Act, in this telling, is an outdated law that sets a blanket protection on all marine mammals — meaning that even a species which has fully recovered, and which by any practical definition has become invasive in places, still cannot be taken except under extreme circumstances.
That's worth sitting with for a second. That is not an activist talking, and it's not some fringe hunting lobby talking either. That is the government's own plain-language description of its own statute, applied to a species whose population has more than tripled since the law protecting it took effect. It is, functionally, a confession that the law hasn't kept up with the animal it was written to protect.
There is no population ceiling written into the Marine Mammal Protection Act. There's no sunset clause, no built-in moment where "recovered" quietly flips over into "manage it like every other wildlife population in America." Deer get hunting seasons calibrated to how many deer there are. Elk, turkey, and duck all get the same treatment — seasons that expand and contract with the population count. Sea lions get permanent immunity plus a strongly worded position paper every decade or so.
You don't actually need a piece of federal legislation to see the same pattern play out at ground level; you can just go look at it yourself. Walk the edge of any decent upland bird field in pheasant or quail country and count the raptors sitting in the fencerows and cottonwoods, patiently watching your dog do the flushing work for them. Red-tails, Cooper's hawks, great horned owls — sometimes three species stacked in adjoining trees like a hiring committee that's already made up its mind before the interview starts.
Every one of those birds has been federally protected without interruption since 1918, and nobody has run a population cap on any of them in the century since. That's because the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, like the Marine Mammal Protection Act, was built to stop extermination, not to manage abundance. Those are two very different jobs, and the law was only ever designed to do the first one.
That was the right call in 1918. It was still the right call in 1972, when a lot of this framework got its modern teeth. It stops being the right call as a permanent, unexamined default once the numbers actually come back — and in a lot of these populations, by the government's own numbers, they clearly have.
None of this is an argument for open season on sharks, sea lions, or hawks. Actual apex predators do real, measurable ecological work, and nobody sane wants to relitigate the DDT era or pretend that era's lessons don't still matter. This isn't a call to tear the whole framework down.
It's an argument that "follow the science" has to mean following the science in both directions — including the direction where the population graph points up, not just the direction where it points down and everyone agrees something must be done. We built protections with no expiration date for animals we assumed would always be scarce. Several of those animals stopped being scarce decades ago, and the management framework never got updated to notice, because updating it was never built into the design.
A law that can only ratchet in one direction isn't science, no matter how much scientific language gets used to defend it. It's a monument — and monuments, unlike wildlife populations, don't need managing. They just need to be left alone, which is exactly what's happening, year after year, while the steelhead run disappears and the mahi keep coming up as heads.
– Chris Dorsey
Chris Dorsey is a 30-year media veteran and conservation thought leader who is the founding partner of Dorsey Pictures, a Global 100 Production Studio, and Mission Partners Entertainment Group, a leading IMAX/giant screen natural history producer.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources salvages red pine from the Huron-Manistee National Forest in 2019 after a severe windstorm damaged timber across Wexford, Lake and Newaygo counties.
Michigan has become a national leader in implementing the Good Neighbor Authority, a congressionally authorized program to co-manage federal land that brings millions of dollars into the state through timber sales, supports jobs and protects wildlife.
Since joining the program in 2015, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has teamed with the U.S. Forest Service to manage nearly 50,000 acres within Michigan’s three national forests: Huron-Manistee in the Lower Peninsula and Ottawa and Hiawatha in the Upper Peninsula.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources hauls away a load of red pine for sale through the Good Neighbor Authority program. The timber was harvested in the Huron-Manistee National Forest in Newaygo County.
The DNR cuts and sells timber from federal land, then manages the acreage through reforestation or creating and maintaining new types of habitats. This, in turn, can benefit hunters, hikers, wildlife watchers and other visitors to Michigan’s national forests.
Despite having a mere fraction of the federal land compared to Western states like California and Idaho, Michigan operates the country’s most prolific Good Neighbor Authority program.
“The collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service and the Michigan DNR is the single biggest reason Michigan boasts the largest and most productive GNA program in the United States,” said Brooke Owens, a Michigan-based authorities coordinator for the Forest Service.
“Historically, state and federal agencies operated within strict, isolated boundaries. This partnership deliberately broke down those traditional bureaucratic silos, replacing an 'us vs. them' mindset with a shared culture of mutual respect.”
Restoration projects have included creating savanna habitat for species such as wild turkey, white-tailed deer and Karner blue butterflies; enhancing jack-pine landscape for the Kirtland’s warbler songbird; plugging abandoned oil wells and cleaning up tons of discarded junk from national forests.
Timber revenue through the program has skyrocketed – from about $500,000 in 2017 to more than $5 million in 2025. Under the GNA agreement, the DNR retains control of all revenue collected from timber harvests and funnels it directly back into reforestation and habitat work.
Revenue growth from Michigan’s Good Neighbor Authority program has increased more than 900% since the program began a decade ago. All the money stays in Michigan for reforestation and habitat improvement.
“I would say the Good Neighbor Authority in Michigan has been wildly successful,” said Derek Cross, a DNR forester who coordinates the program statewide. “Through the GNA, we’re partnering with the Forest Service to sustainably manage and restore the forests of Michigan for the people of Michigan.”
Steady growth
No single agency has the staff or funding to manage the nearly 200 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land. The Good Neighbor Authority lets states act as agents of the Forest Service to expedite reforestation and habitat management and reduce wildfires across state and federal boundaries.
Created in 2001 as a pilot partnership between the Forest Service and Colorado, the GNA program was made permanent and opened to all states in 2014. Michigan joined the following year, signing an agreement with the Forest Service in October 2015 and starting work in 2016.
Program officials said the early years were somewhat challenging, with a different DNR forester coordinating work in each of Michigan’s three federal forests in addition to their other duties. After several years, the DNR went with a single, dedicated coordinator –Cross – which streamlined operations and helped fuel growth.
A manager for habitat improvement projects, DNR wildlife biologist Bob Sanders, was hired in 2022. Today, DNR wildlife technician Andrew Kaiser and DNR fire officers in the Upper and Lower peninsulas assist Sanders in habitat restoration work.
Michigan has steadily increased the amount of federal land it manages annually – from about 1,000 acres during the first year of the program to 12,000 acres this year. Still, that represents less than a half a percent of the total acreage comprising the Huron-Manistee, Ottawa and Hiawatha national forests.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources salvages red pine from Lake County in the Huron-Manistee National Forest after a severe 2019 windstorm.
Michigan has about 2.9 million acres of Forest Service land, which is the most of any Midwestern state and ranks 13th nationally. Yet that federal footprint pales in comparison to Western states like Alaska, California and Idaho, which each have more than 20 million acres of Forest Service land.
Despite that discrepancy, Michigan’s GNA program leads all states in both timber harvest sales and the amount of habitat improvement projects, Owens said.
“The Good Neighbor Authority has profoundly expanded land management in Michigan since its inception in 2015,” she said. “The true strength of the program lies in its ability to create a localized, self-sustaining financial cycle that enhances traditional federal forest management.”
The partnership has generated about $42 million in revenue from GNA timber sales.
“Every dollar stays right here in Michigan, supporting local loggers and mills while funding vital ecosystem restoration – from revitalizing oak-pine barrens to protecting critical wildlife habitats,” Owens said.
‘Hidden gem’
On an overcast day in mid-June, Sanders and Cross of the DNR and Owens of the Forest Service ventured deep into the Huron-Manistee National Forest to examine the results of habitat improvement work.
Their first stop: an area called Turkeyville, in West Michigan’s Newaygo County. Here, in 2022, the DNR harvested 80 acres of timber with plans to convert it to savanna-type habitat to host various wildlife species, including the endangered Karner blue butterfly.
Through the Good Neighbor Authority program, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in 2025 created a 200-acre, savanna-type habitat in the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Savanna grasslands play a vital role in helping improve water and air quality and supporting wildlife. But this habitat – historically maintained by wildfire that keeps out encroaching forest – has disappeared throughout much of the country due to agriculture, urban sprawl and advances in fire suppression.
In Turkeyville, the DNR created pockets of savanna oak barrens in 2023 by harvesting trees, removing the stumps and planting a seed mix of grasses and flowering North American-native plants such as sundial lupine, black-eyed Susan and wild bergamot.
Maintaining this habitat in the years to come, Sanders said, will likely involve thinning out trees that sprout up and prescribed burning to set back forest succession.
Wildlife species that thrive on savanna oak barrens include the red fox, eastern box turtle, white-tailed deer and eastern bluebird.
In 2025, just two years after the savanna planting, program officials were excited to learn that a new resident – the Karner blue butterfly – was documented throughout the area.
North of Turkeyville, near Caberfae Peaks in Wexford County, the Good Neighbor Authority team in 2025 created another type of habitat on about 5 acres within the Huron-Manistee. They thinned the forest, leaving timber on the ground for wildlife foraging, and dug out a low-lying area for a pond that filled in naturally. The pond is now about 6 feet deep.
From left, Brooke Owens of the U.S. Forest Service and Derek Cross and Robert Sanders of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources work together to manage Michigan’s Good Neighbor Authority program. They’re shown in front of a pond habitat created in the Huron-Manistee National Forest.
“This treatment created a whole bunch of downed woody debris that wildlife, such as the American marten, use for foraging,” Sanders said. “We established an early successional habitat that’s favorable to wildlife like grouse, snowshoe hare and white-tailed deer. And the pond was dug to bring in reptiles like salamanders and turtles. Deer and bear use the water, too, of course.”
All told, the Michigan GNA program has more than 80 habitat improvement projects lined up for fiscal year 2027, which starts Oct. 1. Sanders sees the program as a “hidden gem” that benefits wildlife and national forest visitors alike.
A total of about 4 million people visit Michigan’s three national forests each year.
“Wildlife knows no boundaries, whether it’s state land or federal land,” Sanders said. “We’re doing all this great habitat work on public land that’s open to hunting, that’s open to fishing and open to recreation.”
Power of partnerships
Michigan’s GNA program is a boon for various contractors, including logging companies, habitat-improvement specialists, forestry consultants and archeological surveyors.
Cross said the DNR partners with universities, tribal communities, other state departments and nonprofits to help co-manage federal land. These efforts include:
Collaborating with Grand Valley State University and the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians to monitor how timber harvest affects the American marten in the Huron-Manistee.
Partnering with county road commissions to maintain roads through the forests. The DNR has repaired and rebuilt more than 50 miles of roads within the national forests.
Helping the Michigan Natural Features Inventory monitor sensitive plants and animals, including terrestrial turtles, Massasauga rattlesnakes, Karner blue butterflies, raptors and a long list of vulnerable plants.
Participating every year in the Adopt-a Forest Program by cleaning up the Huron-Manistee. In 2025, the DNR and volunteers helped remove 11 tons – more than 22,000 pounds – of discarded junk from the forest, including dozens of car tires and even an old boat.
Funding part of the salary of a Michigan coordinator position for the American Bird Conservancy.
Dozens of discarded tires collected from the Huron-Manistee National Forest in 2025 as part of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ cleanup efforts through the Good Neighbor Authority program. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Forest Service.)
“Numerous partnerships have made the restoration activities undertaken through this program possible,” Cross said. “As the Good Neighbor Authority continues to grow in Michigan, the expertise these groups provide will be essential in continuing the restoration efforts on Michigan’s national forests.”
Looking ahead
Every year for the past several years, the DNR has harvested a combined total of about 70 million board feet of timber from Michigan’s three national forests.
A board foot equals the volume of a piece of wood measuring 1 foot long, 1 foot wide and 1 inch thick. Put into perspective, 70 million board feet equates to about 13 million 2x4s at 8 feet long – enough to build about 50,000 houses at 2,000 square feet each.
Cross said plans are to increase harvest production to about 90 million board feet per year and expand habitat improvement work. Program officials are discussing how to add extra capacity with limited staff.
Scaling up lumber volumes at the three national forests, Owens added, will allow Michigan’s GNA program to help meet the goals of a 2025 presidential executive order to expand timber production.
Additionally, the Michigan GNA team is in the beginning stages of incorporating the federal EXPLORE Act into the program, which will increase recreation services at the three national forests.
“We’re now entering our second decade of partnership, and Michigan’s GNA program is no longer just an experiment – it has become a vital pillar of our state’s timber economy and land management strategy,” Owens said. “Today, GNA serves as an indispensable extension of how the Forest Service manages federal land across Michigan.”
The Great American Expedition flag is traveling the country as part of the Department of the Interior's efforts to build a national record of stewardship that honors America’s first 250 years and looks ahead to the next. An interactive map shows where the flag has been.
Sometimes a flag represents more than the fabric it's made from. Sometimes it tells a story.
This week, as I walked the grounds of the National Scout Jamboree with the Department of the Interior's Great American Expedition flag, I was struck by the curiosity it inspired. Scouts stopped to ask where the flag had been, where it was headed next, and what it represented.
Those conversations gave me hope.
What struck me most was how quickly the flag became a conversation starter. Before long, we weren't just talking about where it had traveled - we were talking about America's public lands, our history, and why these places matter.
The Great American Expedition reminds us of something we all share: a remarkable system of public lands, national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, rivers, and historic sites that belong to every American. As our nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, the Department of the Interior is sending a single flag across the country to visit the landscapes and historic places that define our national heritage. At every stop, Americans are invited to become part of that story.
For me, that story is personal. I live in Virginia, where reminders of our nation's history are part of everyday life. It's not unusual to drive past a Civil War battlefield or visit a place where the course of our country was changed. Every time I do, I'm reminded that these aren't just historic sites, they're places where we can connect with the people and events that shaped America. That's one of the reasons I've always believed our public lands are among our country's greatest treasures.
That perspective made standing alongside the Great American Expedition flag at this year's National Scout Jamboree especially meaningful. As the presenting sponsor of the Range & Target Activities program, The 1791 Foundation has the privilege of engaging with Scouts from across the country. Watching them gather around the flag reminded me that every generation deserves the opportunity to experience these places for themselves.
Watching Scouts gather around the flag also reminded me that conservation isn't something we're born understanding. Someone has to take us fishing. Someone has to teach us to shoot safely. Someone has to bring us to a battlefield, a national park, or a wildlife refuge and explain why it matters. Those moments shape us, and they're how the next generation of conservationists is created.
There is no substitute for standing on historic ground, hiking a national trail, or watching wildlife in its natural habitat. Those experiences build a connection to our country that no textbook can replicate.
I've spent much of my career working with organizations that care deeply about conservation, hunting, recreational shooting, and introducing young people to the outdoors. Over the years, I've seen firsthand how those experiences build confidence, responsibility, and a lifelong appreciation for America's natural resources.
That work has also reinforced something I've long believed: conservation is one of America's greatest success stories. Long before conservation became a political talking point, hunters, anglers, recreational shooters, and outdoor enthusiasts were voluntarily investing in wildlife restoration, habitat conservation, and public access. Through landmark initiatives like the Pittman-Robertson Act, generations of Americans built the funding model that has restored wildlife populations, expanded recreational opportunities, and preserved the public lands we all enjoy today.
Too often, those stories go untold.
That's exactly why The 1791 Foundation exists. We believe America's heritage is worth preserving, not only through education, but by giving young people opportunities to experience the outdoors, participate in the shooting sports, learn responsibility, and become good stewards of the freedoms and natural resources we've inherited. We also believe that when young Americans develop a respect for our public lands, our wildlife, and our constitutional freedoms, they develop a deeper appreciation for the responsibilities of citizenship. Conservation, outdoor recreation, and civic responsibility go hand in hand.
Public lands are not abstract policy debates. They are places where families make memories, Scouts discover confidence, veterans find peace, hunters and anglers pass traditions to the next generation, and millions of Americans experience the freedom that comes from time spent outdoors.
As our nation celebrates its 250th birthday, we have an opportunity to celebrate more than our history. We can renew our commitment to the landscapes that define America and to the uniquely American conservation legacy that has made those landscapes accessible for generations. That work cannot belong to government alone. It requires partnerships among nonprofits, volunteers, sportsmen and women, conservation organizations, youth groups, businesses, and millions of Americans who care deeply about preserving our outdoor heritage.
That is why initiatives like the Great American Expedition matter. Secretary Doug Burgum and the Department of the Interior deserve credit for creating an initiative that encourages Americans to rediscover the places that tell our nation's story. I hope the Great American Expedition continues to inspire those conversations long after America's 250th anniversary has passed.
If even one Scout leaves this Jamboree with a greater appreciation for our public lands - or decides to visit a national park, volunteer for a conservation project, or introduce someone else to the outdoors - then this flag will have done exactly what it was meant to do. The Great American Expedition reminds us that every journey begins by carrying something worth protecting. I hope this remarkable journey inspires more Americans, especially young people, to visit these places, learn their stories, and embrace the responsibility of preserving them for those who follow.
That's a legacy worthy of the flag we carry.
– Peter Churchbourne, Executive Director of the 1791 Foundation
EDITOR'S NOTE: If you'd like to own your own Great American Expedition Flag you can order one here.
