So, I went to the gun shop this morning to buy a protest gun. I told my wife over family dinner last night that I was going to the gun shop and buy the most obnoxious gun they had. (Upon returning this morning, she asked me where I went. I told her and she said, “oh wait, so you were serious?”) I did not, in fact, buy the Barrett. I ended up buying a Smith and Wesson .44 mag as my half-inch of “go [redacted] yourself.”

In any case, while talking to the older gentleman who worked the counter how his day was, he said it wasn’t great working there anymore. He gets too many visits from the ATF because of guns showing up at crime scenes. He believes that there should be a restriction on the number of guns purchased per month because not everybody is throwing these guys out of the store like he does. He is outraged that law enforcement “cannot do anything” because they aren’t “caught in the act.” His position is, if a guy is buying 14 guns in a year and all of them show up at crime scenes, this ought to be something law enforcement could do something about. He also gets that you can’t give the anti-2A people an inch. So faithless enforcement and faithless politics has made everybody unhappy and closed all doors to an agreeable compromise.