Maryland was always a left blown out State . The only benifit for use to go across the state line was because it was upstream from the Potomac River lol .. Va. really went off the wall politically after I left up to today.. even as a young kid I was changing and becoming more left wing making BS laws on everything . DC cool with all the monuments and fireworks at the mall every year but became a crime ridden cesspool and murder capital , a dangerous place in my later teens . I left there at 22 because the traffic became insane and you couldn’t find anything fun left to do .. The area I roamed and worked lol had a 7-11 , fire station a gas staion ( full service ) and a one room post office and mostly wooded area back roads . Now it’s nothing but an extension of DC and complete wall to wall concrete buildings . I wouldn’t even know where I was if I visited today .
My first insurance was Geico when it was Government insurance and cost me $120 a year . My dad worked at the Pentagon and the Navy Annex . He was on the board of the Navy federal Union for a few years . He was a Mason and the Masonic building was amazing . He retired from the federal government and remarried and moved to Texas . He worked till he dropped with the City of Plano TX.
The first incident that made me notice as a young kid was my dad would take us to the power lines a very remote low populated area to learn to shoot . There was a bunch of junk people dumped there , washers ,refrigerators and eveything . The power lines area was where a lot of people did tartlet practice , bullet holes in all the junk. Well we went there on day and were shooting targets and a car came down the dirt road .. It was a cop ! He came up and talked to my dad and told him Fairfax county had passed a new law that it is illegal to discharge a fire arm inside county limits . Fairfax county is huge . Well we had to load everything up and leave . That finished target shooting completely growing up . I was very excited about shooting and still am . I still am . By the age of around 12 I learned absolute safety and familiarity with training , became a certified distinguished expert with the NRA program for kids . My dad ended up setting up a shooting range in our basement lol so I could practice and qualify which I did and was the only one of the 4 brothers to do so .. I loved the sport .. these days it’s a pain in the butt without knowing someone with land to be able to do target practice in Florida . I hate indoor ranges . Nevada was great outside city limits you could just pull off the roads and shoot as long as your were 50 yards off the road .. people did that everywhere lol there were even guys set up practice long shooting with all the high end stuff . Texas was also easy to find a place to practice but you had to drive a Texas mile to find one or be buddies with a rancher or larger property owner .