This web page is to let people know why I started this web page and how I came to be involved in this "Fight for our Rights."

William, (Bill,) Henry Rogero's Remington 514

     I grew up in the south in a place called Valdosta, Georgia. My father took me fishing more than hunting. I did get a lever action BB gun that I did shoot and the first real gun I did shoot was my father's single shot 22 Cal. Remington model 514, (no serial number,) that he would take with us when we went fishing. The company, C&S Bank, that my father worked for owned some property south of town just a few miles from the Florida line where they built a small building. It had a big room with a fireplace and a kitchen where they held company parties and people who worked at the bank could use for parties. I remember how I used to think how big the building was because I used to roller skate, (at that time they only had metal wheels,) on the concrete floor. They had a nice size lake in the back with a dock with boats that you could use. (Grassy Pond, now an Air Force outdoor recreation area.) I remember catching a 6 lb bass off the dock, I still have the head.
     Being in the south we had a lot of snakes of all types and we would take the gun to shoot the snakes and the ever possible rabid critter. All of the small flat bottom aluminum boats were pulled up on the shore and had a long chain attached to something like a post on the shore. You would push the boat a few feet into the lake and then you would hold the paddle in your left hand and the 22 rifle in your right hand loaded and with the safety off. You would then take the paddle or oar, (the longest one you could find,) and push the boat all the way into the lake so that it would float off till it hit the end of the chain. As soon as the boat was moving so that you did not have to push it any more you would drop the paddle, bring the rifle up and shoot the first snake that you saw that had been under the boat while at the same time making sure that one of them was not heading towards you. Now you would not get a snake every time but you did have a 50/50 chance of catching a water moccasin or sometimes a rattle snake though rattle snakes would be found easily enough by walking through the woods.
     When I left Valdosta I left my guns and though I would sometimes shoot them on a visit home, I did not buy any guns or do any shooting or have anything to do with guns for many years. I lived in Alabama for a while and then I moved to Massachusetts where I lived in Boston and the greater Boston area for many years. While in Boston I worked for a company that allowed me to travel all over the north east from Pennsylvania up to Maine and out to Michigan and Ohio. I then moved to West Germany for a little over 3 years and when I moved back I ended up in New Jersey for a few years and then bought a house in Orange County NY. For all of those years I had nothing to do with guns then Bill Clinton got elected.
     I was not involved in any type of Politics and did not even vote all of the time much less keep up with the topics and then I saw in the press that Bill Clinton was pushing an Assault Weapons Ban. I did not know much about the topic but I did know that what they were saying about guns was wrong and that what they were trying to do was 100% wrong. I knew that I wanted to do something and living in New York I knew that if I got a handgun license I would be adding my name to the list of gun owners that they would have to deal with when they decided to take the guns away.
     Getting a pistol license in 1994 was about the same as getting a license now except I had to discover everything by myself. It was hard to get accurate information and hard to find anyone who really knew what the laws were. Finding a club to shoot at was even a problem because it was hard to find anyone's name or phone number. I started to get more involved and I was starting to find out more about the laws and regulations. I got my NRA Instructor's Certificate in 1997 but in the middle of 1997 I came down with Guillain-Barré, Miller Fisher Syndrome and that slowed me down quite a bit. (Being blind and paralized will do that to you.)
     I had started to put together the web page in 1999. The earliest printout of the website that I have in May of 1999 and at that point most of the basic parts of the web site were in place. The main reason why I put together the web page was to make it easier for anyone else new to the shooting sports to get involved and to make it as easy as possible to find where to shoot, where the stores are and where the clubs were and to promote the shooting sports. I kept having arguments with other people about what the laws were and that has become an important part of my website. I also wanted to let people know what was going on with gun laws in Orange County, Albany and Washington DC.

     The Web site started as Rogero's Firearms Home Page using the free space that I got with my dial up connection. When I switched to Road Runner I had to get real server space. Most of the website was originally written using the free Netscape Composer that comes with Netscape. When the site got too big for me to keep track of all of the links I started using Dreamweaver.

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