Appleseed Project focuses on marksmanship, American history
The sound of rifle fire echoed for miles Tuesday across the tree-filled horizon of rural Randolph County.
Six men lay on their stomachs, surrounded by spent shell casings, with their rifle sights aimed down range. Sweat dripped from their brows as they endured 95-degree heat to master their craft.
Two instructors stood nearby to coach breathing techniques, correct trigger squeeze and advise how to best zero in on targets up to 500 yards away.
The men had been sleeping in tents or trailers, bathing in a makeshift shower dug from a well. The stench of two portable toilets loomed over the camp.
They said there’s no place else they would rather be.
Welcome to an Appleseed Project boot camp, the weeklong version of a growing nationwide program that teaches Americans traditional rifle marksmanship.
Organizers say they want participants to leave with a sense of history, even though some people have questioned their motives.
“The skill and knowledge of what our founding fathers left to us is eroding in modern America, and without deliberate action, they will be lost to ignorance and apathy,” the Appleseed Project’s website says.
The Appleseed Project was started in 2006 by Ramseur resident Jack Dailey and the Revolutionary War Veterans Association.
To Appleseeders, he’s simply known as “Fred,” a pseudonym he adopted from his company, Fred’s M14 Rifle Stocks. He uses the name in online forums and in columns he writes for the trade magazine Shotgun News.
He believes marksmanship is eroding, and he traces that notion to the 1950s when his father first let him fire a .22-caliber rifle. He remembers the comment — “Fewer people have the opportunity to shoot a rifle.”
It’s something Dailey filed away as he went about his life. He joined the Army Reserve and eventually retired as a captain. He went into real estate, built a career amid the booming market of the 1970s and later retired.
Along the way, he kept his love of shooting and rifles. He’s been a member of the National Rifle Association all his life.
In the mid-1990s, he picked up a book and delved into the Revolutionary War and the story of April 19, 1775.
“I noticed one thing was critical that day — marksmanship,” he said. “It occurred to me that marksmanship is far more than a hobby; it’s far more than something pleasurable to do,” Dailey said. “It’s part of a great tradition that is wrapped up in the entire history of our country.”
Dailey said that unlike any other country in the world, America’s independence was won and maintained on a battlefield. He said the colonials sacrificed everything that day for an effort they believed in.
“(The colonials) viewed themselves as not fighting only for their generation, but future generations,” he said. “It is my hope that inside every American that you see today, there is a sleeping American that can be woken up by hearing the story of April 19, 1775.”
Appleseed believes that by learning marksmanship, participants reconnect to the founders through a shared, traditional American skill.
Dailey said the program isn’t interested in politics other than what happened more than 200 years ago.
He said the program doesn’t teach marksmanship as part of a militia movement, an effort to overthrow the government or to kill anyone. The program doesn’t tell people what they should believe in or who they should vote for, he said.
Instead, participants get involved in the civic process to ensure a better future for the nation, said Dailey.
Watchdog groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have said they do not believe Appleseed is an extremist group. But some have raised concerns about participants with such views.
“On the surface, their giving people an opportunity to shoot is not something we think, in the broadest way, is a problem,” said Bill Nigut, southeast regional director of ADL.
“But the first thing they do is have participants sit through a lecture about the Revolutionary War and the colonists who formed a militia who won the Revolution, and that clearly makes us uncomfortable.”
Nigut said the ADL has noted — through watching forums and online comments — that some participants feel that if government does become intrusive, they have the right to overthrow it by force.
“We have never heard the leaders say that,” Nigut said. “They walk a fine line and stay on the right side of that line.
(But) they glorify the militias of the Revolutionary War and citizens who took up arms. It does lead you in the direction of thinking about the value of that.”
But Dailey says his program teaches that the founders were faced with two choices — surrender or fight the British, whom they felt were depriving them of their rights.
He believes today’s society offers a third choice: getting involved to make the changes they believe in.
The effort that became the Appleseed Project started at the Revolutionary War Veterans Association outside Ramseur in 2005. The first year, the program reached 1,000 participants. Last year, it reached more than 10,000. The goal is 20,000 this year.
Appleseed shoots have been held in 47 states.
Participants can train to become instructors and spread the Appleseed message by starting shoots elsewhere.
A traditional Appleseed shoot lasts a weekend. It’s free for women and children, who can shoot at whatever age their parents and local laws will allow it. A fee of about $80 is standard. Donations keep the program operational.
There also are weeklong boot camps like the one held in Ramseur recently, where participants receive instruction each day on the range and in-depth history lessons.
Dailey says everyone is welcome — experienced shooters as well as people who have shown up with their first rifle after a trip to Walmart.
Tommy Jacobellis is one of the six participants who made the trek to last week’s Appleseed boot camp in Ramseur.
He’s a police officer and a firearms instructor for the Nassau County Police Department in New York.
He heard about Appleseed earlier this year after reading Dailey’s magazine column, and he attended two shoots on Long Island. He came to Ramseur to brush up on fundamentals with an AR-15 assault rifle.
“I support Second Amendment rights and feel we are losing the firearms culture that makes America stand out among other countries,” he said. “It’s one of our founding freedoms.
“The program is geared toward marksmanship. It’s not tactical. It’s not combat. It’s the basic fundamentals of shooting a rifle,” he said.
Tom Kravis, a 67-year-old retired airline pilot and Navy veteran, said he came to improve his skills with his .22-caliber rifle and delve more deeply into Revolutionary War history after attending three other Appleseed events in New York.
“I just think we need to have a few riflemen left in this country. It’s a lost tradition and we can get it back,” Kravis said.
He flew combat missions in the Navy, but the average firefight only lasted 70 seconds, he said.
At the boot camp, he’s out firing about eight hours a day, with breaks for history lessons. “It’s ideal,” he said.
The participants are the driving force that will allow the Appleseed message to grow, Dailey said. He envisions that someday, there will be congressmen and even a president who has been through his program.
But first, he says the program must move past assumptions from the public that Appleseed can’t be as simple as it is.
“They’ve got to believe there is something more to it,” Dailey said. “(They think) 'How can people be so simple-minded to think that if Americans hear their history and heritage they will wake up?’
“But that’s what we believe.”
Contact Ryan Seals at 373-7077 or ryan.seals@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Tommy Jacobellis practices his marksmanship with his semi-automatic rifle Tuesday in Ramseur.
More online
Learn more about the Appleseed Project at http://appleseedinfo.org
Search News-Record.com
closeSearch News & Record Article Archives
Not all of the newspaper's content appears online.
*There is a fee for downloading some older articles.
