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#ShootBack
Well, well, well, what to do in these trying times? People getting shot left, right, and center. Mowed down by cars. Shoved in front of trains. Beaten to death in broad daylight.
When the Pulse nightclub shooting happened, I was still on Facebook, and adopted the highly virtuous rainbow Gadsden with the caption #ShootBack. Pulse was a gay nightclub in Florida. You may know I am not the most pro-gay commenter here, but that doesn’t mean I support culling gays in the streets. Or anybody else, for that matter.
We are about to receive the mother of all gun-grabber propaganda pushes, and some of it will make sense, piece-wise. Only the criminals, and the crazies, of course. You will be tempted to display your reasonableness by agreeing to a few small things. Child locks. Licenses. Databases. RESIST. These are all steps on the Road to Hell.
If our sniffy betters in government are allowed to “solve” the problem (which will not get better) by disarming the lawful, then the next step will not be to review the effectiveness of gun-grabbing — that’s not why they want to do it in the first place. They will see what else they can trim from our liberties in pursuit of “solving” the problem, which problem they, in fact, have caused. It’s too valuable a problem for the government to ever actually get rid of.
So I’m simply dug in like Hell against any “common sense” gun regulation. I would rather live in a 100% armed society than a 0% armed society — one of these can actually be achieved. Crazies and bad guys getting blown away by their intended targets will go a long way toward solving the actual problem.
Keep your guns. Buy more. Stock up ammo. Learn not only how to shoot effectively, but why to shoot. Make up your mind beforehand that some things are worth shooting over, and some are not. Let the law be your primary instructor on this, but certainly not the only one. Seek out training, advice, and camraderie at a shooting range, gun club, or yee-haw barbecue out on the mesa (but have the guns secured before anybody cracks the first beer).
You meet the best people at shooting ranges. Find the little Mom-and-Pop shops, even if they only have a five-yard, three-lane “range.” Go to the big full-service ones when you want the luxury experience, but you will actually meet regular people at the small ones, and you’ll be forced to talk to them just like real people do.
Black, white, gay, straight, Muslim, Christian — even atheists! — are all members of a single tribe at the range. It’s one of the last places where a sense of civic pride and individual duty are unashamed to show up. In fact, everybody kind of has to get real reasonable, even if they didn’t show up that way. It is a life-affirming, community-building, restoration of faith in the people in your locale to just take some time and shoot the bull — er, chew the fat — with the people you meet at the range.
And so you take this armed positivity out into town with you. I’m positively cheerful when gadding about armed. Maybe that’s just in contrast, because I hate everybody when I’m unarmed. And when I’m armed, I make up my mind early on that some things are just not worth shooting over, and so I will let them slide, where I might have objected had I been unarmed. A man relieves himself behind the sign in front of my building — do I confront him? Not if I’m armed, because you never know where a confrontation may lead, and if you get yourself into a situation which may require you to draw that weapon in self-defense — well, you got yourself into it, and the court case is not going to go well for you. So you don’t get to just patrol the world uprighting applecarts when you’re armed. You become an observer, and a very polite one. As you please. Oh no, you first, I insist. Go ahead.
And when the situation is thrust upon you, you have some skills, some resources, and some decisions pre-made.
The proprietors of so-called “gun-free zones” should be required to provide reputable armed security in exchange for making such an unreasonable demand. “Shall not be infringed” is not directed exclusively at Congress, unlike the first amendment. A proprietor is not allowed to require you to give up breathing or financial agency just for setting foot on his property — why is it so with this human right? I hold that the Constitution forbids any entity from disarming you (infringing, etc.), and anyway, why should it be allowed as a condition of doing business?
Society is collapsing around us. Things are going to get worse, not better, for the foreseeable future. We may win the next election or not, but the trend is clear, sustained, and comprehensive. We have no border, no budget, and the government exists to suppress us while they install their new electorate — it’s working. You with no criminal record are guilty just walking down the street, while hardened felons are untouchable. If the government and its selective enforcement don’t get you, their brownshirt thugs and agents of fear will.
I don’t know how much is salvageable, and I continue to try the “approved methods” to effect political change. But I don’t fool myself that voting harder is going to fix anything. It’s just something that needs to be in place while we work on alternative solutions to our problems, lest we get what we want and then have no political edifice. One of the most proximate problems, and least likely to be solved by government, is that of being shot at or otherwise threatened with deadly force by the mobs which function — at arm’s length, to be sure — to intimidate us into the government’s directed mindset of fear and complicity.
#ShootBack
Published in General
They will never get better.
Technology will be used to control us forever. A boot on our necks forever and ever.
It is over.
It is all over.
Get therapy.
The State has mandated that the following be posted at the entrances to houses of worship.
Good thing I can’t read Retard.
With you 100%.
I’m a NRA Instructor, certified for Basic Pistol, Firearm Safety in the Home, and Refuse to be a Victim classes. When the Pulse nightclub thing happened, I offered free training to any member of Pink Pistols or similar outfit (PP has since merged with another national gay rights org). I haven’t offered any classes since I blew out my back, other than the RTBAV seminars. Those I offer free to LGBT org members. RTBAV is appealing because it is not weapon oriented, although I have a lot of fun talking about how we old geezers can defend ourselves with canes.
The only gun laws that affect violence are laws that allow citizens to carry concealed. If a perp doesn’t know who might be able to fight back, it changes what Massad Ayoob calls the Victim Selection Process. That’s why gun free zones are an abomination.
So, no Barettas? Good thing I seldom carry mine – too bulky and heavy for everyday carry.
My only addition is to do it privately, if you’re really worried about government gun-grabbers why in the world would you want to leave them an easy trail right to your door?
So sorry for people who live in states where they can’t do that, but you probably should have left some time ago.
Yeah. Let me know when they bust their first mosque.
What am I doing wrong? I’m over here waging away and you’re living my chosen life.
You’re taking things to the next level — sourcing what we need! Thank you, and your late husband, for keeping the flame alive.
You should support government sponsored gun training for all citizens. If the government can pay to support “abortion rights’, then the government can pay to support 2A rights. Each citizen should get 1 free hour of training per year. If that works, we can in 3 20 minutes prepaid at a range per year. Let’s get 100 million Americans trained and ready and see if that takes a bite out of crime.
Almost makes me wish I’d stayed in Arizona. But only almost.
And then the government has a database of who has been trained, when, by whom, with whom.
NO THANK YOU.
Maybe it’s therapy that got him there?
LOL
There is pathway for things to get better?
What is it? How does it work? Sell me on it.
Learn to accept some uncertainty in your life. Control the risks that you can. Avoid those that you can’t. You’ll succeed some of the time and not all the time. Work on those percentages.
And help the country to do the same thing.
I don’t have a complete program for you. Sorry. You could start with my suggestions in this post, whichever ones you’re not doing currently, that is.
The Civil Rights Lawyer on YouTube closes his videos usually with “Freedom is scary. Deal with it.”
Not much of prescription.
If Society is collapsing, we are headed for new dark ages.
If you don’t already own one, check out the S&W EZ pistols (light springs for loading and charging). They come in 380 and 9mm. I already own one for the day when my hands get too weak to operate the other pistols I own.
ADDED: I forgot to mention that all of the firearms I mentioned are gone, the results of a tragic boating accident. So this is just theoretical.
We finally settled on a S and W 380 Shield for me. Not too heavy and the safety is easy. My right hand is weak and crooked from arthritis so I can’t manipulate a very small gun – no dexterity.
Looks like the 22LR version of the M9.
Not to mention the happiest people. I swear I see more smiles at the range than any other place I go.
Just make sure that you do so with no intent of reselling quickly.
And the churches are complying?
What state is this?
Illinois.
Having reread the law, it probably had to do with the preschool that the church had been running, and not the church as an entity itself.
This does not make it better, as Nashville demonstrated.
Did you see the news about the horrible car violence in Brownsville? An SUV assault vehicle was crashed into a bus stop outside a migrant processing facility, killing 8 and injuring multiple others. The carman was arrested but no details were made available as to whether he is a member of AAA or another white supremacist group. Clearly it is time for national commonsense SUV restrictions.
Meanwhile in Jay Bob’s Illinois, the law abiding can barely purchase a firearm but the lawless have no problem.
When government refuses to maintain order we are all theatened.
Great post, BDB.
Police can’t be everywhere, even before the defund-the-police stupidity.
The unpredictable and random nature of mass shootings makes it even more imperative that concealed carry be allowed – and encouraged everywhere.
Thank God the cop was present at that outlet mall in Allen, TX. I would like to think that if that cop weren’t there, someone else would have taken down the shooter. We’ll never know.
I have not seen the Allen shooter’s picture or name. I hope that’s because no one showed them, and that this is a new practice to be sustained by all the media.
On the other hand, anyone who takes down a mass shooter should be all over the news, and given a parade and a trip to the White House to receive a medal.