Born and raised in Arizona. I've lived in Wyoming since 1983, currently in Jackson Hole. A lifetime of working with horses, taking tourists on trails in the high mountains, including scenic summer trips and fall hunting. I owned a gun shop for 5 years. I owned numerous other businesses over the decades. Active in conservative politics. So my "Cowboy Common Sense" draws on a LOT of life experiences.

NOT “on both sides of the aisle”.

No, the encouragement of incivility and violence in politics is NOT “on both sides of the aisle”. Some despicable acts of violence and inciting to violence, including 48 of them which happened in October 2018, are listed below. Every decent American should condemn such. Failure to condemn violence is to condone violence. In all of these acts, we don’t know of a single one in which a Democrat leader has spoken up to condemn that barbarous action and to admonish followers to be civil and law-abiding. Sadly, the opposite is sometimes true; the act is condoned as a means to…

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Hunting vs. Wanton Killing

Hunting vs. Wanton Killing Someone sent me the touching story of a person killing a meadowlark and the sadness they felt afterwards. A common children’s song many years ago was entitled, “Don’t Shoot the Little Birds”. This is a subject I feel the need to address, as I spent a lifetime guiding hunters in Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado.  I’ve lived in Wyoming for 35 years, the past 7 ½ years in Jackson Hole.  I manage 256 acres which adjoins Grand Teton National Park. I, Jonesy, confess that in my youth and early years I was guilty of wantonly shooting the…

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“It’s the Economy, Stupid!”

Those words, “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”, gave President Bill Clinton a second term, even though his administration was plagued by scandals. Voters voted their pocket-books. Now we have a pivotal election next week. Here are the latest figures from the government’s October Jobs Report. Wages increased 3.1%. Americans have experienced the biggest increase in take-home pay since 2008. Not one single sector of the economy lost jobs. Unemployment is at 3.7% which is the lowest since 1967. Hispanic unemployment is at 4.4% which is the lowest ever–in history! The unemployment rate for African-Americans, 6.2 percent, is near the all-time low…

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I will Vote for the USA

Vote your Conscience by Jonesy of Jackson Hole  (written just before the election) After a lot of soul-searching I have decided to vote my conscience and principles this election.  That means I will not be voting for a person but for an ideal.  Failing to vote is not an option because then others will determine what America will be in the future. My core principles are freedom and God-given rights as enshrined in the Constitution.  I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or Evan McMullin.  I will be voting for…

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Quick and inexpensive fix to protect schools

Here are quick and inexpensive solutions to help “harden” our schools against a mass shooting. Remove the “No Guns Allowed” and “Gun-Free Zone” signs and replace them with signs which say, “Authorized Armed Personnel on Premises”. 90+ percent of all mass shootings have taken place in a Gun Free Zone because it is a “soft target”. Then, have a law enforcement officer (town or county) alternate between schools and patrol them, randomly. They check in with the front desk when they arrive and make a walk-through to let everyone know there is an armed law-enforcement officer on the premises.  If…

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Jonesy Sees Flying Saucers!

Lately there have been several reports in the news of experienced pilots seeing and video recording “unidentified flying objects”. I’ve seen four UFOs in my lifetime. You may scoff, but hear my accounts. 1. In Korea, on my LDS mission in 1967, we were looking at a satellite slowly crossing the sky as they do. Looked like the typical satellite. Suddenly it “went into hyperdrive” and zoomed across the sky and out of sight in three seconds. Nothing on earth could move that fast. It did not leave a trail of fire as a meteor would do. 2. When I…

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Jonesy is a Gun-toting Fanatic

Why am I a fanatic about my Right to own guns? The biggest concern we gun owners have is that restrictions and permits will be decided by someone in government, and we DON’T trust some people in government. For instance; If I apply for a Wyoming Concealed Firearm Permit, someone has to approve that. A person or a committee. The committee may be composed of liberal Democrat, anti-gun, wolf-worshipping Jackson Hole denizens. Those kinds of folks succeeded in eliminating my Cowboy Common Sense column from the local newspaper, mainly because of my back-to-back columns attacking the wolves for destroying our…

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Trust Trump on Gun Control

Trust President Trump on the Gun Control debate. The Press and even Republicans are making a very big deal today out of Trump saying seize the guns, arrest him, and to hell with due process. Trump’s point was that he was talking about Nikolas Cruz and the fact that Cruz had been reported to be certifiably insane and violent and said he would shoot up a school. That is a felony to threaten to kill someone. All Trump was saying was that there was probable cause to arrest him before getting a warrant, just as if you caught a person…

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A “Con-con” is a bad idea.

A Constitutional Convention may be a bad idea. I’m letting my good friend, Jeff Hymas–a Constitutional scholar, explain this one. Red Flags about a Constitutional Convention, by Jeff Hymas, executive director of the Jackson Hole TEA Party. Article V The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures…

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Speech Control Act of 2018

QUESTION: If you can make a law regulating the 2nd Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms that says you have to be 21 to buy an “assault weapon”, can’t you make a law “regulating” the First Amendment Freedom of Speech to say that you cannot threaten someone with bodily harm? Especially the President? That makes more sense than restricting a good law-abiding person from buying a semi-auto firearm just because it looks like a military one and he is only 20 years old. So, if a person says, “I’m going to punch your lights out,” That could be a…

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