I try to be optimistic, I really do. However, with what is happening every day around us, from politics to the ecomony to the environment, it is becoming more difficult to be optimistic. My most basic benchmark is what I have seen lost. I went to my first gun show in 1961, which, I suspect, means that I've been attending shows as well as owning and collecting firearms longer than some have been alive. I don't want to sound like an old geezer, but it's increasingly difficult when I look back at what was at that first show I attended and reflect on that which is no more.