Erosion…

What is seemingly unnoticeable in the moment can leave a lasting impact for years to come.  When I was younger a close friend of mine had a small house on the shore of Lake Ontario in a small town outside of where I grew up.  This camp was approximately 1200 square feet with two bedrooms with enough amenities to enjoy the picturesque sunsets the lake had to offer.  The house was perched on top of a small cliff with an approximately 20 ft drop to the rocky shore.  During the summer nights there is no other place on earth one would want to be, the sounds and visualize stimulation was calming to the most restless days.

One day I noticed a small landscape flag in the ground.  I asked what the flag was for and their father told me he was measuring the progression of the erosion of the bank.  At the time, I did not know what erosion was or what it meant.  He then went on to explain the bank was being forced into the water by Mother Nature and soil was being deposited down the shoreline.  In the ten years they had owned the property the edge of the cliff had regressed by 20’.   As I neared the edge of the grass you could see a few different colored flags from the past at various depths below my feet.  It was interesting over the course of a few days the change was not even noticeable.  Even over the course of a month or two the naked eye could not discern any change in the ground. But by having a benchmark with a simple little flag you could see the movement over the course of time.

Neighbors up and down the shoreline had frequent discussions about what they could do.  Some banded together to put up expensive stone walls to prevent the earth between their home sites and the lake from fleeting down the cliff.  It was interesting to see that not all neighbors made the investment into their property.  The end result was it slowed the erosion down momentarily, but the soil escaped the side of the walls of their property.  I am not sure how much of a unified front it would have taken, but the actions of a few was not nearly enough.

In the next five years the dangerous cliff consumed their house and they were left  standing on the shore feeling helpless and they asked themselves how it could come to this.

I share this story because this is what we all have to protect ourselves from, erosion of the Second Amendment.  Just because a minor regulation may seem unnoticeable to you doesn’t mean it is eroding the ground your house is built on.  At first people will say “what is the big deal” and this is exactly what the people on the shoreline said.. until their house too ended up in the lake.

Ask yourself what you can do.  At a minimum, help educate those around you who say “what is the big deal”.  If we do not stand united, we will fall.