Like many modern folks, I’ve learned to rely on the Internet more. It’s an amazing tool and a vast source of information.

Recently, my son turned to the Internet for instructions on how to install a part on the differential on his four-wheel-drive truck and then looked up a recipe for dinner. I go to numerous Web sites for help in reloading, hunting and fishing information, and even antique fishing rods. But, like anything else, the Internet can be used for frivolous and even evil things. How many of us receive an endless stream of jokes? How much stuff is bogus?

A good example of the Internet hoaxes I’ve run across is what I term the giant traveling rattlesnake. A year or so ago, I received an e-mail with photos of a huge rattler from Texas (of course) that weighed more than 100 pounds and was 9 feet long. A month or two later, I got an e-mail with a giant rattler from Oklahoma that was 80 pounds and 7 feet in length. The same photos accompanied both reports. Later, e-mails with the same photos located the giant viper in Bakersfield and Boise, Idaho. Boy, that snake gets around.

As a result, I now take a closer look at most e-mails for believability, and I often check them with verification sites, such as Snopes or Google.

I recently received an e-mail I was suspicious of regarding a new gun-control bill in Congress. I immediately went to Google, Snopes and several congressional watchdog Web sites to investigate this purported new threat to our gun ownership. Sure enough, it’s true. House Resolution 45, Blair Holt’s Firearms Licensing and Record of Sale Act, has been referred to a House of Representatives subcommittee.

If I read the bill correctly, it would require citizens to obtain a license from the federal government to own certain guns, including all handguns and any gun with a detachable magazine.

As a kid, I recall watching my parents plink tin cans with a tube-fed .22 that held as many as 16 shots. Because the tube-type magazine isn’t detachable, that .22 would be exempt from the proposed law.

Yet one of the most popular .22 rifles of all time, the Ruger 10-22, would be subject to the new law, and you would have to obtain a U.S. government license to own one. The 10-22 has a detachable magazine that holds 10 shots in a cylinder, much like Old West revolvers. I don’t understand the logic. A 16-shot .22 is exempt, but a 10-shot .22 is regulated.

In decades spent afield, from desert sagebrush to waist-high snow and from alpine forest to coastal hills, I’ve only had one life-or-death situation where I had to use a handgun to potentially save a life.

I’ve heard if you leave rattlers alone, they’ll leave you alone, but when I was backpacking with my dad in the Minarets Wilderness, a nasty rattler that headed straight for us. Fortunately, I had my .357 accessible on my pack and shot the rattler from 5 feet away. That was a close encounter that had my heart pounding. On several other occasions, I’ve used my handgun to shoot the dirt between a bear’s legs and chase it away from my family’s campsite.

I don’t like asking for the government’s permission to defend my family. No police officer, forest ranger, soldier or other government employee can protect me or my family from sudden encounters with snakes, bears or a deranged idiot with a bacon knife. So I’m adamantly opposed to bills like HR 45.

I contacted the offices of Reps. Jerry McNerney and Dennis Cardoza regarding the Blair Holt Bill. Each congressman’s staff let me know that while the bill was referred to a subcommittee, it has no co-sponsors out of 435 Congress members, and it’s unlikely either Cardoza or McNerney would support it. In fact, both are gun owners.

Read the synopsis of HR 45 and even the whole text, and make up your own mind. Then, call your representatives and let them know where you stand. The point is, it’s your ability to protect your family that’s on the line. What you do about it is up to you.

Until next week, Tight Lines.

• To comment on Tight Lines, direct messages to Sports Editor Ike Dodson at 239-6351, ext. 306, or e-mail ike@sunpost.net.