“Log Entry; July 19: Today we Observed the Hate Blogger Completing Some Sort of Alt-Right Assassination Platform”

The air at my house is heavy with smugness. I finished building my prone shooting platform today. Here she is.

The paint on the plywood is tough but not well-executed. I am not a good painter. I did what I could, but it still has weird irregularities in it. I don’t think it will matter out in the pasture.

I put two quasi-diagonal braces on it to make sure it stays square from side to side. I may put one on one of the long sides. I can’t put one on the left side, because that’s the side where I’ll enter the platform.

I bought some hardware cloth. It’s not cloth. It’s wire. It’s like square chicken wire. I plan to fasten it to the right side of the platform to send spent casings back inside. It will be better than chasing them around the pasture.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to carry the platform a quarter-mile with the tractor.

My plan is to put long pieces of lumber under the platform from end to end. There are three crossmembers under the plywood, and the long pieces of lumber will push up on them as well as the two-by-sixes on the ends. This ought to allow me to lift the platform without damaging it.

Taking the platform apart and reassembling it in the pasture would be a bigger and more damaging job than moving it with the tractor, so it’s the tractor or nothing.

Once I get it situated, I have to make sure it’s oriented so a rifle on a bipod will not be hard to aim at the berm. If it points up or down too much, the platform will have to be adjusted. I don’t see it happening, because I’ve shot from the ground where the platform will sit, and it wasn’t a problem.

I truly hope the cows will not be energetic enough to try to wedge their fat rear ends inside this thing. I tried to make it inconvenient for them. They have no respect. When you have cattle, you can’t have nice things.

This was a pretty tough job, mainly because of the weather. When it wasn’t raining, I was usually in direct sun with no help from clouds. Water goes in one end of me, and nothing comes out the other.

This year, it’s not hot by local standards, so I should be grateful.

I used my 12″ sliding miter saw to make this. I had been thinking of putting it on Craigslist, because I have a beautiful Powermatic 66 table saw which is easier to use for almost everything, and I also have a 19″ vertical band saw and a small 10″ miter saw.

It turns out it’s much easier to cut long, thin pieces of lumber on the 12″ sliding saw, especially if you make angled cuts. I had dreamed of opening up some space in the workshop. Not any more. The saw has earned its keep. I paid $300 for it when Home Depot had it on sale. That was a score. I had to add the Ridgid mobile base in order to make the saw useful.

This little saw (little compared to a Powermatic 66) can be rolled outdoors, so sawdust isn’t a problem. The dust goes where it goes, and you leave it there. It’s good for the yard. That’s my story.

The platform is ready to use. Maybe now I’ll actually be able to shoot my fancy new gun. That would be wonderful.

Digital Flea Dip Increases Peace and Love

It’s remarkable how disappointing people are!

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about the bizarre behavior of the moderators at a firearms forum I have used. I saw a crazy video featuring Massad Ayoob, a layman who gives people legal advice concerning firearms. He has no business doing this. Someone might see one of his videos and decide not to wait for a lawyer’s advice at a very critical time, and every lawyer knows this can result in prison time or even an execution. I wrote a forum post about it, and early the next morning, the moderators had sent me a personal message. A group of them had assembled for the purpose of telling me I was wrong.

I marveled. I did something insignificant, and I did nothing wrong, but they clearly thought it was momentous. They had assembled something resembling a firing squad, and they did it early in the morning. The guy who started the private message conversation lives in California, and it appeared he had started it at 7:35 Eastern time, or 4:35 a.m. where he lives. Maybe Ayoob got him out of bed.

I was not nasty about Ayoob’s video at any time. I was critical for sure, but criticism is a good thing, especially when your criticism could keep people out of prison.

Jesus was extremely critical and blunt; he said things that would spark protest marches today and send man-bunned college kids into special rooms full of therapy puppies. It’s important, in our efforts to be kind and loving, not to go too far and lose what Jesus called our saltness. When salt loses its saltness, it’s only fit to be trampled underfoot. If you can’t speak the truth when it’s not popular, and you can’t do it unapologetically, you aren’t doing one of the things Christians are supposed to do.

I’m not saying I went to the forum to evangelize, but one of my concerns these days is the danger of letting myself be childish and mean. You have to know the difference between useless, sadistic railing and blunt, well-deserved, useful criticism.

The moderators in the ad hoc forum jury said things that were obviously wrong, and I corrected them at length with no reserve or timidity, but I told them I wasn’t there to cause problems. I said something about how they should delete the thread I started if it bothered them.

Of course, I did cause a problem. The thread wasn’t that big a deal, but I caused a major problem by confronting forum moderators with their own unfairness, lack of real importance, and ignorance about the practice of law.

Shortly thereafter, the thread disappeared, and they claimed it was because I had made misrepresentations, which was completely untrue. The thing that bothered them, it appears, is that I said things that were true, about someone they held to be exempt from all criticism. I think losing a debate very badly in the private message conversation was also a major factor.

I didn’t care about the thread. Who would? It was trivial.

The things I found interesting were the dishonesty and corruption. I told them Ayoob was getting special treatment, and I said they ought to ask themselves why they were bothering to create what I called a star chamber or FISA court in the clandestine direct message conversation. Obviously, they don’t do this for every person who says another person made a bad Youtube video. They denied giving him special treatment, in a conversation, the existence of which was the direct result of special treatment.

I wondered if they knew what a star chamber was, and that’s why I used the term “FISA court.”

Ayoob is a forum member, and he knows some of the poobahs personally. A cynical person would say they singled me out for disparate treatment just because I made their pal look bad. I think that was what got them going, and I think the fact that I stood up for myself put the cherry on the sundae.

Who are Internet forum moderators to me? Should I be intimidated by them or in any way bow down to them? It would be ridiculous.

Ayoob never showed up in the conversation; at least not while I was participating. I thought it was odd that they would do his responding for him as though I had mugged a disabled person. Maybe he’s not doing well. He lives in Florida, where coronavirus is hot right now, and he’s elderly.

Anyway, I wondered why they didn’t ban me. They were clearly not above such things, and it seemed like the obvious next step. Given their childish behavior, I wondered if I would soon find that I had no access to the site. I thought it would happen eventually.

Guess what happened this morning? You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.

Yes, my username is now banned. The reason? “Violations of the rules.” Plural.

That’s all I know.

Of course, I didn’t violate any rules. I cooperated completely.

Oddly, I am still logged in. I can’t log out. There are fresh alerts for me on the site. One appears to be a private message alert. I think maybe they told me I was banned, in a conversation they should know I can’t see. If you go to the site and look at old posts I made, it still says “member” by my username. I guess the software does that. Surely they’re not pretending I’m still active, to cover their behavior.

So now I’m cut off forever from all the close friends I’ve made there, as well as the great information the forum contains.

Actually, I don’t find friends by going to Internet forums, and I can still go to the site whenever I want, using a new username they don’t recognize, and ask questions until the cows come home. And I belong to other forums. One wonders what they accomplished.

I suspect the thing that really set them off was a remark I made about the thread. While I was telling them I didn’t want to be a problem and saying they could go ahead and delete the thread, I said there was a website where the boss always agreed with me (since he’s me), and I would put my stuff there. I let them know I respected their very limited authority, but I also did something you should never do to a bully: I made it clear I would continue to defy them elsewhere.

Bullies are about two things: sadism and control. When you tell them their control is extremely limited, it makes them more determined to punish your defiance.

If you want to inflict great suffering on a bully, all you have to do is thwart his efforts to bully you and let him know he can’t do anything to you. You don’t have to do to them what they try to do to you. Just make it clear they can’t do what they want to do. The pain they feel is like red-hot whips. I can’t explain it, but I’ve seen it many times.

I don’t know how many people would have seen the thread I posted, had they not deleted it. Hundreds, maybe? I wrote about the whole business here, where it will remain as long as I pay my hosting fees. Thousands of people will see it. They can’t take it down. They can’t send me private messages. They can’t involve themselves in any way. In trying to cover up dissent, they put it before more people and destroyed their power to participate. They set me free and pulled their own teeth.

If my thread were still up, they could post all sorts of things vilifying me and praising Massad Ayoob to the heavens. Not an option now.

It’s nice to be banned. I feel light because I have been freed from a considerable number of cantankerous, unreasonable people. The atmosphere in the forum was pretty corrosive.

Gun forums are full of obnoxious, posturing men who think owning a Browning Buckmark makes them Rambo, Chris Kyle, and John Moses Browning, rolled up in a needlessly-camo-covered ball of unpleasantness. You have to walk on eggs around them. Insecurity hangs in the air like fallout after a nuclear test. Using a gun forum can be very helpful, but you have to be careful not to become contaminated with hostility and immaturity.

I got somewhat annoyed during the Ayoob digital kangaroo court, and that bothered me, because I don’t want to be infected with lingering anger over tiny trivialities. The prospect of having stuff deleted and being banned didn’t bother me at all. What could be less important? But the gaslighting and unfairness of the silly private conversation made me a little angry.

The majority of the people at the forum are reasonably pleasant, but the minority is not a small one, and it is well-represented among the moderators.

For a long time, I’ve felt that using the forum was a vice. It was something I limited deliberately. Whenever I thought about going there to post something, I asked myself, “Do I really want to do this? I want to be a man of love and please God. Do I want to risk being provoked by very small people in exchange for some unimportant information or a few minutes of diversion?”

I saw it as a throwaway activity. I had the feeling I would eventually be banned for standing up for myself or that the bullies would eventually take so much of the fun out of the forum I would quit, as I have quit other forums.

Gun forums are nasty places for people who don’t cower for bullies, and this particular forum is worse than others I use. To me, it was a place I went when I felt energetic enough to risk being insulted and belittled. I would think, “I know a lot of these people are basically land mines, but I feel like checking the forum out today, so what the heck.”

This is my second forum ban. The other forum was also a gun website. I joined the Rimfire Forum, and I got the boot within a month or so, if memory serves. I had just gotten started. I was trying to find a new trigger for a .22 rifle, and there was a guy who called himself Arrowdodger who was famed for the triggers he made. I tried to get in touch with him via various means, and he never responded.

I mentioned this on the forum, where he is revered, and when people defended him and someone blamed me for not continuing to pursue him, I dismissed their strange remarks, essentially saying a person who runs a business should not have to be chased by customers. I wasn’t nasty about it at all. I just didn’t bother applying a coat of sugar. Why would I? I wasn’t blaspheming God. Just saying a mere man like myself should communicate with potential customers.

Within a day or two, without warning, I was banned for spamming. Of course, I don’t spam. I don’t sell anything. It was a lie someone told, perhaps because the forum software required an explanation for the ban, and something had to be typed in a box. That’s a guess. They were never man enough to respond to email inquiries, so I will never hear their explanation.

One of the illusions firearms forum people tend to have is that they are manlier than everyone else, but in this case, they ran away and hid. Because I am so scary? What good are guns to people who don’t have the courage to stand their ground in emails? Gun owners like to call leftist protestors snowflakes, but at least the protestors have the guts and integrity to show up.

Bottom line: Internet forum moderators tend to be immature and corrupt, some are not rocket scientists, and the problem is worse in certain types of forums where insecurity and hostility are higher than normal.

The ban will be helpful to me, because it takes a source of irritation away. I can’t say I feel damaged, even though I was wronged, because the people who wanted to chew on my ankles ended up blessing me by removing themselves from my life.

Every day, I pray for a group of people I know, and of course, I’m on the list. As part of the process, I pray the Lord’s Prayer. What does it say? “Lead us not into temptation.” I expound on it. I say, “Please keep us away from temptation and provocation, and help us not to tempt or provoke others.” Provocation is temptation. Bullies are some of the worst tempters around. They are great at infecting you with rage it’s hard to get rid of.

The ban is a direct answer to my prayers, and I am thrilled to get it. I love seeing a prayer answered. I hope similar things are happening to the people I pray for.

It’s surprising how many doors Satan will use to get into your life. Things that seem insignificant can be chinks that turn into major perimeter breaches. Being given a desk next to a rude coworker, receiving a credit card charge for something you didn’t buy, or being lied about on an Internet forum can open the door to anger and unforgiveness that come between you and God.

In about 2015, God gave me what I call “the little rapture.” He told me to get rid of my social media accounts. I had been dishonored and sassed online repeatedly by numerous people I knew from church. Christian “friends” were the main problem. They had no respect for older people, the educated, or people with good prayer lives. Trying to help them was like trying to clean up Somalia. I was punished for it.

When I got rid of my social media accounts, I missed certain people, but I had peace. I was insulated. God still had access to me, and so did good people I knew, but unrepentant, arrogant, impudent boneheads did not. I was no longer required or permitted to wrestle with them. It was, and is, very nice.

The forum thing is also like the rapture. It separates me from an endeavor that did me little good and had the potential to be infectious.

I truly look forward to the rapture. Imagine the peace of being away from protestors, road ragers, politicians, abusive relatives, sadistic employers, and so on. It will be magnificent. Everyone around you will be bursting with love and support, and they will agree with you about absolutely everything. The love you will share with every person in heaven will be much deeper and cleaner than the strongest love you share with anyone here on earth.

Forgiving people is a beautiful, powerful experience, but it will be much better to be around people who never, ever have to be forgiven.

It was annoying to receive the strange treatment I got at the forum, but I can be purged of annoyance, and the freedom from provocation is very, very pleasant.

MORE

I mentioned the coward who banned me from The High Road on another forum where one member of the super-secret THR forum jury is also a moderator, to let people know I might not be around later. I wanted to thank the people on the other forum for their help, in case I got banned there, too. My remarks were up for an hour or two, and then they were deleted with no explanation. My guess is that a ban will be handed down later today.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this site, all they can do is watch.

MORE

Things keep developing. A moderator at the second forum sent me a message telling me to stop talking about the first forum. I told him I was actually glad someone was talking to me instead of sniping from cover. I said I would gladly comply, or he could ban me if he wanted, and there would be no hard feelings.

This is a moderator who lost an argument with me pretty badly a while back, and he’s a hothead who doesn’t like admitting error. I was polite, but his arguments were extremely poor and easily refuted, and he didn’t prevail or come close to prevailing. I expect to be banned because of that, not because I mentioned the other moderator.

George Santayana, I Listened!

I have had a fascinating experience. I went to a forum and criticized something I saw in a Youtube video. The thread was locked, and when I got up, I had a personal message featuring a slew of forum moderators as participants!

I explained how I disagreed with them. I did it politely. I said they should ask themselves why they chose to send me the strange personal message with multiple cc’s. I said they could delete the thread if it bothered them, and I said maybe they should have a rule that no one can disagree with the person whose behavior I criticized.

They deleted the thread, and here is the explanation: “I have deleted the thread because the OP has little value and misrepresents the issue.” This is not even a little bit true, but it’s the explanation. My response to them: “Problem solved.”

Guess who I criticized. I’ll tell you. Massad Ayoob. I’ve written about him before. I used to be impressed by his work, but that perspective has changed as I have learned things.

If you don’t know who he is, here are the facts. He is a gun writer. He has participated in pistol competitions. He was a part-time cop in a tiny (like fewer than 3000 people) town in New Hampshire.

Right now, that town has a grand total of 5 patrolmen. But when Ayoob “retired” from part-time work, he had the rank of captain. That’s very odd. I’ve known a number of small-town cops. I never knew anyone who called himself a captain. I knew deputies and sheriffs. I don’t think they knew they could make themselves captains. It seems very strange to me that a part-time cop in a sleepy little department would let someone call him “captain.”

Anyone can go to a police supply site and order stars or bars. Captain’s bars cost $8.75 on Amazon. For 10 bucks, you can be a brigadier general.

You can also be an admiral, but most of the admiral stuff is from Battlestar Galactica, so you might get sued by the estate of Lorne Greene.

The thing about it is that there are many, many LEO’s and military people out there who earned the insignias of rank. They fought in battles. Many were wounded or killed. There are many cops who worked their way up in departments in violent cities, taking part in shootouts. I would feel very odd, putting bars on my shoulders after working part-time, in very little danger, in a miniscule town where nothing happens.

I’ve seen a number of statements of his credentials, and I’ve never seen one that indicates he went to college or served in the military. He has no law degree. He works as an expert witness, which means lawyers pay him when they think he can state facts that will help their clients.

An expert witness is not allowed to talk about the law on the witness stand. He can only talk about facts. An expert witness who started issuing legal opinions would get in trouble with his boss–the lawyer–and he could also be held in contempt by the judge. Here’s a good parallel: a technician runs a complicated machine while a surgeon removes a brain tumor, and he pushes the surgeon out of the way and starts cutting.

A gun channel on Youtube put up a video in which Ayoob told people how to talk to the police after shooting other people.

This is what we lawyers call “legal advice.” Ayoob lives in Florida. In Florida, a layman like Ayoob can get in big trouble if he provides legal advice. If the situation is sufficiently egregious, he can be charged with a third-degree felony. Practicing law without a license is a crime in every state. Telling people how to talk to cops in a Youtube video is not necessarily practicing law, but the fact that practicing law without a license is a crime is an indication that there is a consensus that it’s very bad for unqualified people to give legal advice.

My dad defended 11 murder defendants, and he got 10 acquittals. Like nearly any other criminal attorney you may talk to, he told me this: you do not talk to the police when you get in trouble. He said 85% of prison inmates were incarcerated because they talked. I don’t know where he got the statistic, and it may have been somewhat outdated, but the principle was correct, and he didn’t make it up.

It should be obvious that Ayoob isn’t qualified to tell people how to act in pivotal legal situations with potentially catastrophic consequences. The main problem is that he isn’t a lawyer and does not understand the law. The other problem is that he’s giving outlier, contrarian advice that goes against what every attorney is taught in law school. It goes against what most criminal attorneys are taught when they practice. It flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s Miranda holding, which resulted in police being forced to tell suspects they had the right to remain silent.

I tried to explain why what he did was not wise, and of course, laymen in the forum disagreed. I knew that would happen. It gave me flashbacks to my childhood, when I couldn’t communicate with other kids. I would say things like, “It’s ‘LIBRARY,’ not ‘LIBERRY,'” and they looked at me like I was from Mars. I’m not the smartest person on earth, but I’m smart enough to be frustrated a lot when I try to explain things to people. The smarter you are, the lonelier you will feel.

At least one person mentioned advice a cop had given him. Are cops lawyers? No. They are not. I don’t care if you’ve arrested 3,000 suspects. Police experience doesn’t make you a lawyer, any more than prosecuting criminals makes you a cop. I have to note, however, that one person said a cop had advised him not to talk.

My main point was not that you should never talk to the police after you shoot someone. I believe it’s true, as do most lawyers, but there are competent attorneys who believe otherwise. The point was that a guy who writes for magazines and works as a paid witness has no business giving blanket legal advice on Youtube.

I’ll give you the only free legal advice my law school told me I could give people without risking serious problems: when you’re in trouble, hire an attorney. You say you may not be able to get an attorney right after you shoot someone? Sorry; they didn’t teach me how to make one appear for you. You can always hire one today, just to give you preemptive advice. That’s my advice. Hire an attorney.

I’m not telling you to talk to the cops. I’m not telling you to talk to them. I’m telling you this: hire an attorney.

Anyway, here is the thing I wanted to write about, and it’s a wonderful confirmation of my understanding of human nature: when I got up today, I had that personal message to deal with.

I can’t read anyone’s mind, but I have some opinions:

1. Ayoob has a cultlike following, and he gets very special treatment.

2. Gun forum moderators are not the most ethical people on earth. Something I already knew.

Imagine you belong to a gun forum, and one day, you criticize a Youtube video made by a non-famous person the moderators don’t know. Let’s say the video guy is telling people the .38 Special is worthless for self-defense, and you happen to know that the video guy is a bartender who has no formal training in ballistics or pathology. On the other hand, he has done a lot of reading. You say he shouldn’t be posting videos because he isn’t trained.

Will the forum moderators gang up and send you a message to reeducate you? Will they delete your thread?

Of course not.

Why is Massad Ayoob different? Why was he sheltered?

If anything, he should get less protection than a bartender. He is presumed to be extremely knowledgeable and able. The Ayoob of myth should be able to swat me like a fly. Why not give him a shot at it?

What were they afraid of? What were they trying to prevent? Unfair criticism? The forum is packed with unfair criticism. It’s normal. No one cares. People say things that are wrong, other people contradict them, they insult each other for a while, and no one cares.

They didn’t flip out because I was wrong. I wasn’t, and they don’t have a policy of deleting erroneous posts. It wasn’t because I was unfair. I wasn’t, and they leave unfair material up every day. What does that leave?

Ayoob is supposedly a member of the forum. Is he in frail health? Were they afraid he would have a stroke if he saw someone disagree with him? Is he funding the forum? Were they afraid he would cut them off?

It doesn’t look like they had any faith in his ability to respond to my posts. They never gave him a chance.

Truthfully, he wouldn’t have had a chance had they allowed him, because…he’s a layman. It’s pretty obvious that laymen shouldn’t give legal advice.

I’ve written about my participation in forums before, and I’ve noted a few things. Some types of forums draw reasonable, polite people (no, really), and others draw the other kind. I participated in a bodybuilding forum briefly to do research for something I was writing, and the people were completely vile. Maybe it was the steroids. I’ve run into a lot of annoying, supercilious pedants on machining forums, but woodworking forums aren’t too bad. Food forums are full of culinary jihadis. The hate and factionalism are shocking.

Gun forums are pretty low on the list. “I shoot better than you.” “I’m tougher than you.” “I’m more patriotic than you.” “I will shut you down whenever you say anything everyone else has already swallowed without questioning.” My policy with gun forums is to zip in when I have a question, shrug off whatever abuse comes my way, and zip back out. Posting a thread questioning the infallibility of Massad Ayoob was a lapse. I had a weak moment. Something to thnk about so I can correct myself in the future.

As a Christian, I try to limit the provocation in my life. I have been very contentious in the past, and I fight it and pray about it now. I should never have mentioned Ayoob’s obvious error on a forum. It was like walking past a gang of prostitutes with hundred-dollar bills hanging out of my pockets. I knew better.

I don’t have a ton of respect for Ayoob. The more I learn about him, the more he seems to be about sizzle, not steak. He shoots well, and he has done a lot of work to educate himself about tactics and weapons. That’s about it. His ability to analyze legal questions is negligible, and he ought to know it. He also got into a ballistics/wounding dispute with Dr. Martin Fackler, a physician who is perhaps the world’s greatest authority on bullet wounds. How can you make a decision to do a thing like that, knowing how your own abilities stack up? It’s like running onto the field during the Super Bowl.

Twenty years ago, Ayoob might have been a rare source of useful information, but now you can go to Youtube or other sites and get free advice from SEAL’s and Delta Force soldiers who have actually cleared buildings and killed people in gunfights. You can hear from real cops who, though not captains, worked full-time in dangerous cities and fought armed criminals multiple times. You can hear from real lawyers. You can also find source material people like Ayoob rely on. Buying an Ayoob book or watching an Ayoob video is now not a productive use of time. You can do much better and pay nothing, or you can take a class from someone who has more experience and personal knowledge.

Every time he gives you tactical advice, it’s secondhand. He had to ask the people who were really there, in armed confrontations, after being trained properly by others who had the same kind of experience. Why not ask them yourself?

This is a guy who didn’t have a nine-to-five job. He was a writer. He didn’t have a company infrastructure to guarantee him a paycheck of pension. Result: he had to promote himself in order to keep working. This is probably why he went overboard. He must have formed a habit he couldn’t break.

To get back to the point, human nature is disappointing in that it never disappoints when you expect it to let you down. I knew there was no way I would convince most laymen on the forum they weren’t as qualified as Benjamin Cardozo, and I knew disagreeing with Massad Ayoob would turn the poobahs against me. I knew I would not be treated fairly. I knew there was no way any of these people would see, or at least admit they saw, their own errors.

Human beings are as predictable as termites. It makes you wonder what good our 1350-cc brains do us.

The fact that I said what I did, in spite of what I knew about human beings, tells me I still need improvement. I don’t have to go through life poking Happy Fun Ball™.

80%

It’s remarkable how complicated it is, building a decent shooting platform.

You would think you could grab some two-by-fours and a sheet of plywood and a few nails and get it over with, and I guess that’s true, but when your platform was done, you would have the following issues:

1. Splinters
2. Rot
3. Rain
4. Sun exposure
5. General disgrace

It would also be pretty hard to take your platform apart and move it.

I decided to use 1/2″ plywood for my shooting surface, and of course, I could not get anything that was treated to resist bugs or water. That means the wood has to be sealed. Like just about all Home Depot plywood, it was also flawed and likely to put splinters in me. It also had a flap of wood that was trying to come loose on one edge.

Day before yesterday, I took an orbital sander and spent 20 minutes sanding my plywood. Then I had to decide what to do about sealing it.

They sell sealers for decks. I thought this was a bad idea. Sealers don’t improve the surface of wood. I wanted a smooth barrier. I finally decided on Rust-Oleum farm implement paint. That meant I had to spend $35 on primer and paint.

“Primer? Who uses primer?” I can hear people thinking it. People named Bubba don’t use primer, and their 3-can camo paint flakes off later. I’m spending around $200 on materials, and I don’t want to have to do anything over a year from now. I want my paint to stay put.

Yesterday I went to get the primer and paint, but I realized I couldn’t paint without fixing the loose flap. That decision cost me a day. I shot Titebond III glue under the flap, put a piece of steel plate over it, and put a clamp on the plate to force it against the wood and flatten the flap. The clamp has been in place since yesterday.

This morning, I realized I had to do something about the edges of the plywood, because rain would go in through them and make the plies come apart. I didn’t think paint would do much good.

I decided to use Flex-Seal or truck bed coating on the edges. Either one should be fine. I just need something that will resist water long enough for it to dry up or run out of the platform.

Today I have to tape up the plywood to keep the waterproofing stuff off the sides, and I have to blast the edges to seal them up. With any luck, I’ll be able to apply primer today. That may take a day to dry. To get the wood primed and painted, I may need three days.

After that, it should be easy to put the roof on. One nice thing is that I’ll have a platform to stand on while I do it.

I’m thinking of putting some screen on the right side of the platform to keep semiauto casings from flying out, but that would bounce them back at me. I guess I’ll be okay as long as I wear a shirt. Guys named Bubba shoot without a shirt. A true Bubba never shoots or drives without removing his T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

I’ll put up a photo of what I have now. Picture it with a roof. You won’t be impressed, but I don’t think you’ll fear for my safety.

The roof should be very helpful. The platform will be in a shady area, but shade is not reliable in my pasture. The sun sneaks around the trees.

What next? Maybe I’ll build a bench to sit on. Or I could just toss a couple of $17 plastic chairs out there. That probably makes more sense.

When you’re shooting from a rest that isn’t concrete or part of a mountain, you can’t let anyone touch it, because it will wiggle. I can’t let people sit on the platform. If you think about it, a 1/100″ movement at the tip of your barrel will move your bullet’s impact about an inch at 100 yards. That’s more than enough to be annoying. We’re talking about the thickness of two and a half sheets of paper.

The Bubbacious failings of my platform will be due to lack of skill more than a Bubba attitude. I’m trying to do it well. Unfortunately, doing a B+ job takes about a week, as compared to a 90-minute Bubbathon. You know what they say. Ten percent of the work takes 90 percent of the time.

Will I be Here to Use my Toys?

The cattle helped me make a decision. I’m building a platform for prone shooting.

I tried shooting on an anti-manure tarp plus a mat, and while it worked, it could have been better. The wind kept folding the tarp over the mat, and I was so low, I had to walk up and down between the mat and target, moving weeds. Also, I have the impression that mirage is stronger close to the ground. Not sure.

I’m making the platform 19″ high. I got that figure by measuring a chair. The seat was 19″ off the ground. I know I’ll want to be able to sit on the platform sometimes, so why not make it a convenient height?

The frame is going to be pressure-treated wood held together with 1/4″ screws. The surface will be 1/2″ plywood. It’s pretty flexible, but I’m going to have a few slats under it to prevent it from bouncing.

Back when I lived in Miami, I could buy marine plywood. I don’t think anyone knows what it is up here. I have to use whatever Home Depot sells. I’m going to paint it with Kilz and then maybe tractor paint. I’ll use a light color so it doesn’t hold heat if the sun hits it. I don’t see any reason to paint the pressure-treated parts.

The top will be galvanized steel, with a 4″ drop from front to back. That should be enough to make rain run in the right direction. The main purpose of the roof is to keep cattle out. They get into everything. If I made the platform lower and didn’t add a roof, they would be in there all the time, taking selfies.

It’s not easy squaring up frames that are 8 feet long. I decided to use my plywood sheet as a square. I would guess that the saws in plywood factories are trued up fairly well. Using a short carpenter’s square won’t work. I’ll have to finish the platform on my concrete driveway. How flat is it? You tell me. It will have to do. The platform will surely have a little flex in it, so I would guess that it won’t matter if the driveway is off by a quarter of an inch here or there. The platform will probably bend a little when I put it in the pasture anyway.

If I move, I should be able to take the platform apart and put it in my truck. Hope so. I don’t care about losing the money, but I don’t want to spend three days building a second platform.

Getting it to the pasture will not be easy. I’ll have to carry it with the tractor or move it in pieces.

I look forward to using this thing. Lying in the dirt is not that much fun.

It turns out I bought the wrong long-range scope. A guy who taught my first shooting course recommended a Vortex Viper PST, and some guy in the class said they were on sale, cheap, on a certain website. I went to the site and bought one. Then, a week after it arrived, I realized the man who recommended the website was wrong. The scope that was selling cheap was a first-generation model, and my teacher told me to get the second generation scope. So now I have a scope I don’t want.

I looked for a deal on the newer one, and of course, it was a lot more expensive. I ordered one. A Vortex scope is already a compromise, so I’m not going to make things worse by failing to buy the best version.

It looks like the vendor will take the scope back and charge me a hundred bucks for restocking it. I would be able to send it for a full refund, but I’ve already mounted it on a rifle. I don’t know if they would be able to tell it’s been mounted, but I want to do the right thing, so I’m not going to lie about it.

I’m thinking I should offer it to my buddy Mike for the same money. He’s not quite as serious as I am, so I think he would be happy with this scope, especially with a big discount. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll ship it back. Then he’ll have to spend a lot more.

For the most part, I’m living life as though the apocalypse were not well underway; as though I were definitely going to be here on earth for the rest of a normal lifespan. I don’t know what else to do. I keep asking God if I’m really going to be removed, and I keep getting the same answer. I hope I’m right. I do not want to be here for President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren.

I’m praying more, and I keep asking God to help me do whatever it is he sent me here to do. Maybe he’ll tell me something.

Jesus said he didn’t know the time of the rapture, but I don’t think he said he would never be told. Maybe things have changed. Maybe he has been given the date, and maybe he is willing to give the rest of us information. The word says God doesn’t do anything without telling his prophets, and Jesus is certainly a prophet, even in heaven.

Some people think God gave Adam’s children 7000 years here on earth, and that the millennia are like days. This is something I have often wondered about. We are edging up on 6000 years since the birth of Adam. Would God really be that obvious? Did Jesus die at the turn of one of God’s millennia? Would he start the apocalypse close to the 2000th year after the crucifixion?

There is supposed to be a messianic age 1000 years long. It’s like a sabbath after all of mankind’s troubles. If the sabbath lasts 1000 years, shouldn’t every “day” be that long, especially since the word says that to God, 1000 years are like a day? That reference was made with regard to the apocalypse. Here it is, from 2 Peter 3:

But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

If Peter says the world will be destroyed at a certain time, how can it be related to the rapture, which is the main thing that concerns me?

It’s somewhat confusing. The Revelation says there will be terrible problems during the tribulation, but it says the world will be utterly destroyed 1000 years later, after the messianic age.

The Revelation says Satan will be bound during the millennium. Because evil spirits won’t be here, people won’t go through the kind of temptation mankind has historically experienced. God will release spirits to tempt people at the end, and there will be a final battle with Satan. After that, heavens and the earth will be destroyed.

I don’t think Peter can be referring to the tribulation when he says there will be destruction, because he writes of total, not partial destruction.

He says “the day” of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. If “day” means “millennium,” then the day of the Lord, during which the world will be destroyed, can come as a thief in the night, even if the final destruction, which takes place at the end of the day, is expected when it occurs. The part that comes as a thief in the night is the beginning.

I think this makes sense.

To recap, here’s what I think.

Jesus probably knows the date of the rapture, even though he did not know it 2000 years ago. He probably won’t tell us the date unless we’re very close to it, and he won’t tell people who have rejected him. He appears willing to give us general ideas about the time of his return, perhaps narrowing it to a month or week.

He will rapture those who are close to him. Then the tribulation will occur in full force. Seven years later, the tribulation will be ended by the return of Jesus. He will rule for a millennium, and people who didn’t reject him will be resurrected to rule with him.

Evil spirits will be bound in hell, so no one will be tempted or otherwise disturbed by them. At the end of the millennium, spirits will be released to tempt man. There will be a battle with Satan, and he and his family will be imprisoned forever. The heavens and the earth will be destroyed and renewed.

Sometimes I think about my future. What if I’m wrong, and I’m doomed to stay here until my lifespan is finished? I suppose that would be tolerable, because I’m set up pretty well now, and I’m sure God would look out for me. What if I’m right? If so, I don’t have to plan for my future on earth, because it won’t happen for another 7 years, and when it happens, I’ll be on a planet where Jesus rules and people are taken care of.

Should I come up with a will that takes the apocalypse into account? I don’t know. Who do I know who will still be here, yet whom I care enough about to provide for? If only ungodly people can inherit from me, do I really care which one takes what I have?

Maybe I should care, because maybe one of them will come around during the tribulation and receive salvation.

Before my friend Travis died, I thought I might make him my main beneficiary. Now he’s much richer than I am and needs no help.

I’m going to try to stay close to God. I do not want to be here during the tribulation, and I don’t want to be useless in the meantime.

Served Myself a Nice Hot Cup of FAIL

I took the Core Scout AR-15 out today to zero the new Primary Arms scope. Based on the last outing, in which I used an improperly mounted scope, the wrong rear bag, a wobbly bipod, and a flimsy table, I expected to do well. Back then, I shot around 1.4 MOA at 50 yards, and that was for groups of 8 and 12 rounds. I figured I would be below 1 MOA today at 100 yards if I shot prone, using a scope that was mounted correctly, with a good rear bag, after taking an expensive class.

WRONG.

I shot around 2.5 MOA. Nauseating. I came in, and then I went out to photograph the targets, but the cows had torn them up. They do that every single time I shoot.

So. What’s the deal? How can a rifle shoot something like 1.4 MOA at 50 yards under bad conditions and then shoot 2.5 at 100 yards under good conditions? There was some wind, but it wasn’t very strong.

I shot three kinds of ammo. I used 55-grain Australian Outback, 40-grain Fiocchi, and 50-grain Fiocchi, all with ballistic tips. The 40-grain was the least bad, but not by much.

I guess it sounds silly to feel bad about being able to nail an apple repeatedly a football field away, but I should be able to nail a ping pong ball. I would like to be able to shoot 1 MOA out to 600 yards with this gun. That means a little under 7″. Call it a honeydew melon.

I’m already on the web, trying to figure out what’s wrong.

I don’t like my Magpul bipod all that much. It’s very flexible. But it shot well at 50 yards, and other people claim they use it for long-range shooting. The scope can’t be the problem unless I’m not adjusting the parallax correctly. The manual says to move my eye back and forth and see if the reticle moves relative to the target. Of course it moves. The whole rifle moves. You can’t wobble around behind a rifle without moving the point of aim. There must be a way to do this correctly. I’ll check Youtube.

I was going to go out and try shooting from the table. I made the mistake of applying sunblock. As soon as you put this stuff on, it starts to rain, so you’re coated with a disgusting glue that burns your eyes and stains your furniture and clothing, and it does you no good at all.

I also wanted to shoot the .204 Ruger. I need to find out whether 32-grain or 40-grain ammo is more accurate, so I can decide which type to hoard. That gun almost seems cursed. The crazy ATN night scope I put on it had lots of battery issues, so when I tried to practice with the gun, I kept having to quit. Now it looks like the battery is okay, but the rain will not stop stalking me.

I should go ahead and build a shed for prone shooting, with a raised platform. I was afraid to commit to a heavy structure because I wanted something I could move, but now I know that all long-range shooting is based on 100-yard scope zeroing, so I can plop a shed at that distance from the berm and leave it there.

I would like to get up off the ground. Today I found that weeds a long way off interfered with my ability to see, so I had to walk around moving things. I’m not sure, but mirage also seems very strong down on the ground.

I haven’t shot the new Ruger Precision Rifle. I wanted to get the AR-15 and .204 working first. I thought I’d be done in 90 minutes.

If it turns out the AR-15 can’t do any better than this, I’ll get a new barrel. I won’t go for a $500 match winner, but I can get a barrel with a 1-MOA guarantee for half of that. That’s more than good enough. This rifle would thrill me to death if it shot 1 MOA for real. By “for real,” I mean, “not 30 shots into 3 MOA, with one 1-MOA group buried in there somewhere.”

It’s frustrating to be driven indoors by rain every single time I shoot a rifle. Every time I make a plan and get to work on it, I’m forced to quit for at least a day. Hopefully, the situation will change. I plan to shoot again tomorrow. I’m going to shoot every single dry day until I get some things done.

She Walks in Beauty

It’s a banner day. My Ruger Precision Rifle is here, and I got the scope and bipod installed. Mostly. I haven’t tightened the screws on the scope yet.

It’s amazing how much difference good training makes. I adjusted the rifle’s length of pull correctly. I installed the scope correctly with the right eye relief (checked while lying prone) and the right comb height. I have the right tool for applying the correct torque to the scope screws, so I’ll get that done, too.

What about lapping the rings? I haven’t done it. Seekins, the company that made these expensive rings, says it isn’t necessary because they’re super precise. Before I finalize things, I’ll check with my new lapping bar. It came with silicon carbide abrasive, but I found out this material leaves grit embedded in aluminum rings, and the grit takes the finish off scopes, so I got myself a special garnet abrasive used for musical instruments. I am on top of this.

You know what would be great? Being able to shoot the rifle. I waited a whole day for a background check, and then I had to call the pawn shop and remind them. By the time I got home, it was way too late to set the rifle up and also shoot.

Since writing the last paragraph, I have used a torque wrench to fasten the scope down properly. I also screwed the sunshade into the objective end of the scope. Now all I need to do is to adjust the eyepiece and parallax and start shooting.

I’m thinking about building a plywood table for prone shooting. I think a 4′ by 8′ sheet of plywood will be big enough. I used yard tools to clear out a shooting lane in the pasture, and I got a tarp to put between my shooting mat and the ground, but I think a foot and a half of elevation would be nice. It would give me a lower shooting angle, making it even less likely that I would shoot over the berm, it would give me a place to sit while fighting with rifle problems, and it would help me see over the weeds. It would also make the tarp unnecessary.

I would probably have to put a roof on the platform to keep the cows off of it. They’re like juvenile delinquents. They get into everything. I still can’t believe they slobbered all over my chair and folding table.

Unless there is a deluge tomorrow, I’m going to try to shoot the AR-15 with its new scope. Once I work the bugs out of the system, I’ll think about 6.5 Creedmoor. Both rifles should be a joy to shoot.

My buddy Mike is getting serious about taking the shooting course I took. He’s thinking about putting a Creedmoor barrel in his Savage .308. He’s also thinking about cheap scopes. I told him it would be way better to show up with a .308 and a great scope than a 6.5 Creedmoor and a Chinese toy that breaks on the first day.

I hope we still have a country when the course rolls around.

The second course, which I am determined to take, is scheduled for after the election. I would hate to pay the fee and then lose it because America had fallen into insanity. I guess I should be more concerned about the apocalypse itself than the $750 tuition.

I guess I’ll be a pretty good long-range shooter by the first of the year. Minimally competent, I mean. A minimally competent long-range shooter can do pretty cool things compared to people who never train.

Am I becoming a sniper? I wonder. I didn’t have sniping in mind when I signed up for the first course, but two snipers taught it. Killers. Not putting them down; they did it for you and me, and they must be very brave men. But I didn’t think of shooting as sniping when I signed up. I thought of it as a fun skill.

Some people are excited about the prospect of treating deranged fellow citizens like TV zombies. Not me. I just wanted to be able to use the tools I had bought. A scoped rifle can end up like an unplayed electric guitar a young man leaves in a stand to impress girls. I don’t want that to happen to my rifles.

There are thousands of potential snipers in America, due to the popularity of long-range shooting. I’m not even including ordinary hunters who haven’t been trained yet manage to kill animals hundreds of yards off. There must be a million of those. The countryside is a potential killing field for brainless urban rioters who might decide to branch out after easy victories over city-dwellers and suburbanites.

Me, I just want to ring gongs and maybe vaporize some prairie dogs.

It’s nice to be good at things. Hope I have time to improve.

Future Bans will not Protect Squirrels From Me

The unthinkable has happened. I got good deals on .17 HMR, on Gunbroker, during a panic. Don’t even suggest that God isn’t with me.

Getting a good deal on Gunbroker is like getting a good deal on popcorn at a movie theater. It’s almost a violation of Gunbroker policy. It’s not supposed to happen. If you look around, though, and you have God’s favor, it does occur occasionally.

Getting a good deal during a racist-riot panic, on top of a pandemic panic, during an election panic is also unusual.

The other day I looked at my supply of .17 HMR, and I thought about it. I only had hundreds of rounds. That was not in line with my new policy of building an ammunition savings account. A hundred-round day is not a big deal, so 1000 rounds mean 10 days of casual shooting. Being stuck with a few hundred rounds in 2020 is not acceptable.

This caliber is phenomenally useful. You can kill anything up to the size of a coyote with it, with extreme accuracy out to 200 yards. I don’t know if it has enough punch for a coyote that far out, but it will do smaller, edible animals just fine. It has nearly no recoil, and excellent rifles are very cheap. It’s probably second only to .22LR as a cartridge to stock up on for hard times.

It could also be helpful in a human-hyenas-versus-preppers situation, if you didn’t have anything better. A really good shot up against tabula rasa urban creampuffs in rural terrain would do well with .17 HMR at long distances. Antichrist looters aren’t soldiers. You don’t necessarily have to have powerful ammunition in order to make them go away; you just have to destroy their morale and their shallow bravado. Maiming assailants with well-placed shots would probably convince a crew to go somewhere else. They would have a hard time retaliating with FMJ in stolen 9mm Tauruses with which they couldn’t hit you at 10 paces.

Not something that interests me, but I can’t predict the future, and I may know other people I could give the ammunition to in bad situations.

I found a seller who was offering prices that would have been excellent 5 years ago, let alone during the beginning of the apocalypse. I loaded up.

A .17 HMR varmint round is pretty gross. It goes into an animal and blows up immediately. It’s not great for going deeply into a big creature like a human being. Most experts claim deep penetration is crucial for incapacitation, but anything that goes in a couple of inches and then wrecks a baseball-sized region of flesh is likely to discourage a 20-year-old racist snowflake who thought it would be easy to enter your home, cleanse it of scary genocidal pancake syrup, kill or enslave you and your family, and set up housekeeping.

It’s interesting to think about the way the new leftist lawlessness may affect relations between opposing factions in America.

I used to have a couple of misconceptions. First, I thought it was silly to talk about resisting an insane government with small arms. That was not correct. Small arms held by poorly trained guerrillas have killed all sorts of Americans and Europeans in the Middle East, in wars civilians see as video-game-like, asymmetrical massacres. It’s true that our technology, training, and morale made us invincible, but we still took thousands of losses, and there were dangerous parts of Iraq we simply walled off instead of going in and cleaning them out.

Here in America, if things break down, we’ll have unidentifiable anti-antichristian guerrillas all over the place. When they’re not fighting, they’ll be just like the Viet Cong or the French resistance. They’ll look like everyone else. When they strike, they’ll pop up in ambushes, and then they’ll melt back into the scenery. On top of that, many will be in law enforcement and the military, helping from the inside. We may have huge segments of the military and law enforcement on our side, openly.

The authorities can’t really go in and fix things quickly with Apaches and Abrams tanks. If they could do that on a large scale, wars would look very different. The authorities will never have enough equipment or people to deliver shock and awe to perhaps 100 million armed civilians. It’s just not possible.

Small arms will be very effective against a tyrannical American government. Establishing real authority will be impossible if citizens aren’t disarmed.

Second, I thought people wouldn’t really resist gun confiscation. I thought we would behave like the British, Australians, Canadians, and Swiss. After all, we’re civilized. But that was before the hyenas and dung beetles started violating the law wholesale. The police backed down. Politicians backed down. The looters and lynchers showed us that we don’t really have to obey the law, as long as we violate it together.

Leftists made a big dent in the rule of law by establishing sanctuary cities for foreign criminals who trespass on our soil. That paved the way for conservatives to establish sanctuary cities and counties for gun owners. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. When they start telling us we have to bring our guns in, we’re not going to go. I can see it now.

If criminals can steal an entire neighborhood in Seattle and hold it for weeks, using firearms openly and illegally, then you can keep your AR-15’s after a ban. I’m sure there will be places where nearly everyone will capitulate, but then there will be places like Wyoming and Alabama.

If you know nearly everyone in your state is performing civil disobedience by refusing to give up their firearms, will you be willing to be the only one who complies? Will you be willing to set yourself apart as a tasty, defenseless target, knowing that your enemies know you’re unarmed? Probably not.

I think most Texans will cave in. In my opinion, red Texas is a sham. Conservatism in many parts of Texas is more of a pose than a reality. Most Texans I’ve met talk like they’re from California. They’re about as Southern and Western as Bill Maher. But there are plenty of states and counties that will react differently.

Maybe the antichrist will use guns as an excuse to shut off our ability to buy and sell. “No confiscation, no Amazon. For the children.” I wonder. Businesses that have caved in will lose a lot of money, but we know from the Bible that we will be forbidden to buy or sell, so there will be a point at which profits take a backseat to totalitarianism.

I want to NOT be part of anything resembling civil war. My big goals are to reach people for God and, for myself, to be taken in the rapture. I see what I see, however.

I would love to see real, unifying revival. When the nuts come after us, my hope is that we will be extremely diverse. I don’t buy into the leftist diversity nonsense, which is just a legal end-run intended to prop up racist affirmative action. I do buy into what the Bible says. God’s house should be a house of worhsip for all nations. If I ever find myself holed up with Spirit-filled Christians, waiting to be taken, I’ll want to have brothers and sisters of other races and nationalities there with me. The rapture isn’t supposed to be a whites-only event.

God told me the age of the church was ending. He said real Christianity would spread like a pandemic, outside of churches. That must be about to happen. He’s not going to leave his remnant with nothing.

I want to see it. I want to see people of all types speaking in tongues and identifying as brothers and sisters. When the nuts come to get us, they need to be confronted with a multiethnic body of victims so they will have no excuse for what they do to us. They need to be forced to imprison Jews with Arabs, and Mexicans with white people. They need to see us support and love each other. They need to see that we prefer each other to people who look like us.

Events have set us up for civil war. Red/blue margins became very thin in Florida and other states. Leftists lied and said George Bush stole an election. Obama won, using illegal money from China, and his regime was hateful to Christians, non-deluded Jews, and conservatives. Then Trump won, and leftists again lied and said the election was stolen. Leftists drove Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay out of politics with accusations that were proven false. They drove Sarah Palin out of politics with false accusations. They’re doing their best to criminalize conservatism, and they are fanning the flames of conservative rage. They’re running wild in cities, and the government is helping them.

Now we have an election coming up, featuring a dementia victim and a man who taunts leftists every day. Are we going to have another contested election?

If Trump wins, will leftists go on a violent treason binge, trying to take back what they tell themselves is stolen? If he loses, will they be so hateful conservatives will stop obeying the government? Whatever happens, this will be the most painful election in recent history, and the hate that will flow in its aftermath will be unmatched.

I’m going to look at various cartridges and try to decide how many of each will be enough, and I’ll be asking God what else I should get. I keep asking God to show me where I should live and to help me get there. I ask him to use me to reach people. I don’t know what else to do.

Prone to Buy Toys

It can be frustrating, trying to get your firearms act together when the rainy season has come.

I’m still waiting for the Ruger Precision Rifle I ordered. In the meantime, other things have been trickling in. Ammo. Scopes. Today I received a shooting mat.

I could have bought whatever I saw first, but I kept seeing problems with them, and the problems seemed important. For example, on a wet day, you really don’t want a mat to soak water up like a kitchen sponge. Also, you don’t want a black mat, because it will be incredibly hot on sunny days.

I ended up with a Crosstac mat. I wanted something compact which would roll up, but I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have some kind of disturbing flaw. The Crosstac is divided into 4 flat sections, and it folds up like a map. It will probably be somewhat cumbersome to carry, but the foam is good, it’s big, and it doesn’t have any deal-breaking design problems.

My LR-308 and Leupold Fudd scope have to be dealt with. The scope appeared to be tracking badly at my shooting class, and when I looked at it today, I noticed that the gun seemed awfully dry. I thought I had greased it when I installed the LaRue trigger. No such luck. It appears that I greased the trigger and left the rest of the gun alone.

I used to have too much faith in dry products like Hornady One Shot, so that’s probably what was in and on my bolt carrier while I was shooting. I don’t think this stuff does anything at all except for very smooth parts that don’t need much lube to begin with. A bolt carrier is pretty rough.

Today I pulled my bolt carrier out, removed the bolt, oiled the firing pin and rings, greased everything that looked like it touched anything else, and reinstalled everything. I like a gun with a lot of grease and oil in it.

I have been taught to clean guns sparingly, but that may not be the way to go with gas guns. I’m not sure. I’m definitely going to go easy on the barrels, but I don’t want the moving parts to get jammed up with carbon and crud. I’ll have to play it by ear. It doesn’t matter, because I don’t believe in relying on an AR-15 or LR-308 for security. If one of these guns fails to function because of a cleaning problem, it won’t result in me being shot. In a situation where quick success matters, I’ll be using a more reliable gun in a better caliber.

The guy who sold me my AR-15 said to keep the chamber clean. That’s inconsistent with the advice I received at my class. They said to avoid cleaning guns. They were talking to a bunch of people with bolt actions, though.

As for the scope, I need to do what is known as a box test. You take a zeroed scope, shoot a couple of rounds at zero, and then move your point of aim a few clicks away, to form the corners of a box. If you get a box, your scope is working. If not, there is a problem.

I’m not going to shoot a .308 in the rain, so I can’t find out whether my Leupold is working until things dry up.

I don’t think it’s working. It had problems at the shooting class, and they were not consistent with user error.

I have come up with a plan for long range shooting. There is a local instructor. He has privileges at a long-range facility I would like to join, and in order to use the long lanes, you have to qualify at 500 yards. I would like to get together with him just to firm up what I learned in my class, so I figure I can hire him for a day and work it out so I qualify at the same time. After that, I can join the club, and then I’ll be able to shoot on my own.

It’s funny, but shooting at 100 yards almost seems silly now. I used to think of it as a challenge, but when you do long-range shooting, you use 100 yards as an easy scope-zeroing distance, and then you go somewhere else and shoot at 500 or more.

I’m sure it will still be tough to do really well at 100 yards, but my expectation is that 1 MOA will be normal for my accurate guns. The .22’s will probably never get there, but I should be able to do it with 6.5 Creedmoor, .308, .17 HMR, .204 Ruger, and .223. Guns and ammunition are much better than they used to be, and now I have some skills to make use of the hardware.

I saw a video of someone shooting a “precision” .22 the other day, and it looked like he was shooting 2.5 MOA. I wondered what the point was. Why not get a .17 HMR and actually hit what you’re shooting at? Maybe I don’t know how it works. Maybe he just wasn’t any good, and other shooters are getting real precision.

If not, why on earth would you spend four figures on a .22 rifle? If 2.5 MOA is the best you can do, you might as well buy a used Ruger 10-22.

There must be more to it than I know.

I believe my Leupold ran out of elevation adjustment because the rail the scope is attached to is not tapered. For distance shooting, many guns have rails or scope mounts that decline toward the front. A mount with this taper is called a 20 MOA mount. You start off 20 MOA below horizontal, so when you have to lower your point of aim, you get 80 more clicks before you max out. Of course, I didn’t know anything about this when I bought the gun, the scope, or the cheap rings I put on it.

I don’t really want to use this scope, but if I keep the gun, there will be some kind of scope on it, and I will not want to run out of clicks again.

The idea of selling a gun is offensive to me, but I feel like some of my babies have to go. The K31 and the PSL top the list. The K31 is not all that appealing now that cheap Swiss ammo is a thing of the past. No one should ever buy a PSL. The LR-308 is fun, but I’m not in love with the caliber, the short barrel is not good for velocity, and a bolt gun would be cheaper and possibly more accurate.

It looks like my friend Mike, who wants to take a long-range course, lucked out with his gun. He bought a Savage .308 with an Accutrigger, a bedded Accu-stock, a weird bolt that accommodates dubious casings, and a threaded muzzle. It’s not an expensive gun, but it works very well for hitting steel at 1000 yards. He had no idea what he was doing when he bought it, but when he shows up for the course, he’ll be in much better shape than I was. If I can just convince him not to buy a Chinese knockoff scope…

When things dry up, I’ll give the Leupold a box test. Then it will probably be shipped to Leupold. I can also look at the rings and decide if I want a 20 MOA mount.

Things are good. I’m starting to almost know what I’m doing.

In other news, they’re saying my county is up to almost 1000 covid cases. Maybe it’s time to buy a pallet of beef jerky. I keep praying for God to keep this thing off of his children, and I pray for people the world over to realize that it was caused by sin. I pray God will open their ears and eyes and move them to repent and pray. Until that happens, the rot that causes the world’s problems will continue to have terrible eruptions.

The Party is Over; Back to Hermiting

My weekend guests are gone, and I can breathe again.

I was scheduled to have two families show up. A third jumped in, and one of the original families bailed, thinking the increased population density jacked the coronavirus risk up too much. Then the third family bailed because of coronavirus. Then the second family decided to come after all.

Complicated.

I thought there would be 16 people here, so I bought 6 pounds of hamburger, a pack of hot dogs, a couple of smoked sausages, two boxes of Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches, and brownie ingredients. The actual load was 8 people, so let’s just say I have a lot of leftovers. I sent about half of the brownies home with some friends from Pompano, and I think I still have 6 left. I have 3 pounds of ground chuck that absolutely have to be turned into patties and frozen today.

We had a great time. The kids managed to swim a certain amount, between thunder peals. The adults sat in the shade and criticized. There were fireworks. I got one kid to eat his first chili dog.

Last night, three of us had a wonderful prayer session. We prayed in tongues for nearly half an hour first. If I were married, I would be doing this every day. With another person, I mean.

Today I’ve been working on firearms. I can finally say that for once in my life, I’ve set a gun up correctly. Nearly. My AR-15 has a LaRue trigger, a Magpul bipod, a pretty decent quick detach scope mount, and a Primary Arms mildot scope with an illuminated reticle and a sun shade.

Why do I say it’s nearly set up? I have not lapped the scope rings. This is an interesting topic.

Okay. It’s interesting to ME.

Rifle scopes are held in place by rings that are tightened onto scope tubes with screws. This sounds simple, but of course, it is not.

Most people will buy a scope, put the rings on the rifle, put the scope in the rings, get it more or less level, get the eye relief more or less right, and tighten the rings. I’ve done this a number of times. It turns out it’s not the right way to do it.

First, scope rings tend to be machined pretty badly on the insides. They can have all sorts of high spots and low spots, so when you tighten them on tubes, they may not have much area touching the optics. This leads to gouging, and it also makes for a scope that can come loose under heavy recoil. Also, the rings may not be aligned perfectly, even if they’re machined out of a single base. This makes the contact problem worse. I suppose it can also put a bending torque on a tube.

For anything more precise than a $75 scope on a .22 rifle, you need to check your rings to make sure they’re aligned, and you need to see if the insides should be lapped. Lapping means grinding irregularities off with an abrasive compound. You can lap a scope yourself. You get a kit with a bar the size of a scope tube, you put abrasive on the bar, you mount it as though it were a scope, and you work it until the abrasive cleans up the rings. A kit for one size tube runs around $45, and you can get a kit for 30mm and 1″ tubes for $65. I was going to make my own bar, but when you add it all up, it’s not worth the trouble. If you think about it, the most you could save if your homemade tube were free is $65. You would have to pay maybe $20 for steel. Then you would have to machine it. Then you would have to pay almost $20 for lapping compound. It’s a waste of time.

Second, your scope’s rings need to be tightened carefully Too tight, and you can dent your tube and even screw up mechanical stuff inside it. Too loose, and well…too loose. You need a tiny torque wrench to do it right.

I’ve written about this before, but I’ll repeat it anyway because I can make it easier to understand. In fact, I may repeat a lot of things in this post.

Gunsmithing companies make torque screwdrivers, and they’re cheap. Problem: they fall apart. A real torque screwdriver is a $400 tool. Solution: use a real torque wrench instead of a screwdriver. You can buy a 1/4″-drive inch-pound torque wrench for $40 or so. I bought one, and I spent another $3 on a 1/4″-drive 1/4″ socket with a magnet in it. You put whatever 1/4″ hex-drive bit you want in the socket, and you have a gunsmithing torque wrench that will work forever. And there are no batteries.

I got high-end rings for my Viper scope, which I plan to attach to my Ruger Precision Rifle when it arrives. For my AR-15, which is a less snobby weapon, I got a $280 14x scope, not a fancy Vortex. I bought a quick-detach cantilever mount for it. This is a one-piece mount that has two rings cut into it. Presumably, they should line up pretty well, because they were cut by the same tool in one operation.

“Cantilever” means the forward ring is out on a sort of stalk, hanging over the gun’s handguard. Why not just put a ring on the handguard, which has a picatinny rail? This is what the people who sold me the gun did with the first scope I put on it.

Here is what I’m told: the rail on top of an AR-15 has two sections. One is on the upper receiver, and the other is on the handguard. Between the two sections of rail, there is a joint. The handguard hangs out in space, attached to this joint at only one point. If the handguard bends at all, the forward ring moves in relation to the rear ring. Does this actually matter? I don’t know, but a cantilever lets you connect both rings to the part of the rail which is on top of the upper receiver. No joint.

The people who sold me the gun didn’t tell me any of this, and I know why. It doesn’t matter when you’re a doofus who wants to get lit up on cheap beer and shoot golf balls in the national forest. It doesn’t matter when you’re shooting hogs from 50 yards or when you’re shooting junk ammo at the range. It only matters when you know what you’re doing and you’re shooting accurately from long distances. I would guess that 99% of the seller’s customers just want to fool around. For all he knew, I was part of the 99%.

In truth, at the time, I was part of the 99%, and I pretty much told him that. I said I didn’t know anything about the AR-15, and I needed to buy one–even the wrong one–just to have a place to start. What he gave me was completely appropriate at the time, but things changed very quickly.

I have no idea what to do with the scope he sold me. It’s useless for target shooting. I guess you could shoot deer with it.

When I attached the new scope, I didn’t know whether I should lap the rings on the cantilever mount. I didn’t have enough steel to make a bar to use to measure the contact areas inside the rings. I tried making something quick and dirty from wood, but it didn’t work. I decided to mount the scope, order a lapping kit, and worry about it later. After all, it’s just an AR-15 with a factory barrel. I’m not going to use it to shoot Osama bin Laden’s cousins from 2000 meters.

Did I buy a fancy tool to level the scope on the rifle? Uh…no. I’ve been reading a book by a prominent shooter named Ryan Cleckner, and he pointed something out. You can level a scope on a picatinny rail by jamming a flat piece of metal between the scope and rail and making sure it touches both. This will get me within a fraction of a degree. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me and my non-precision gas gun.

I may want a different bipod eventually, but then again, I may not. I may want a high-end barrel eventually, but then again, I may not. I don’t have any problems with the no-name adjustable buttstock, which seems to give a great cheek weld at just the right height. The handguard is very nice. The rifle is ready to go, as it is right now.

I now have most of my precision rifle setup. The gun is not here, but I have the scope, some ammo, and a nice rifle bag. The rings should be here before the gun, along with the shooting mat. I still need a backpack. When I was taking my shooting class, I was surrounded by guys with suitable backpacks, and it did’t occur to me to ask for a recommendation. I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure how much volume I need. I guess I should go look at backpacks at Bass Pro, check the volume figures, and figure out how much more or less I need.

Long-range shooting can involve a lot of stairs, so the rolling Stanley toolbox I tried to use during the class is a nonstarter. It has to be a backpack.

I’ve learned some great things about 6.5 Creedmoor ammo. The best thing: you can use extremely cheap ammo up to at least 656 yards. How do I know this? There is a guy on Youtube shooting a small gong at 656 yards, over and over, using Sellier & Bellot FMJ. It’s less than 50% more expensive than Fiocchi .223. It’s a wonder to behold.

Most good shooters can’t shoot 1 MOA at 100 yards 95% of the time. Give them 100 rounds, and excluding flyers, they’ll shoot a mess covering 3 MOA. At 656 yards, 1 MOA is something like 7″, and shooting 1 MOA gets harder with distance because of wind and other problems. The guy shooting the cheap ammo was doing 0.6 MOA over a third of a mile away. For practice fodder, that’s unreal. It means he can shoot people in the head economically at a distance of 5 blocks. If he wanted to shoot coyotes, he wouldn’t even have to leave his house. He could just open an upstairs window and scan his area with a telescope.

I kid. He may live in a crowded suburb.

This ammo may not be as accurate as Hornady at 1000 yards, but I won’t always be shooting at that distance. It would be very useful most of the time.

I got some Hornady match ammo, but I also bought a little Sellier & Bellot. With the Kestrel ballistic calculator I bought, it should be no problem shooting Sellier & Bellot up close and then switching to Hornady once I get farther out. I’m limited to 900 yards in this area. Maybe S&B will work fine for everything I’ll be dealing with.

In retrospect, maybe it was an error to get match ammo. Hornady makes a hunting round which is nearly as accurate, and it would be useful if I ever actually got out of the house and located a coyote.

I’m not really sure what my LR-308 is good for. I can pop anything smaller than a deer with the AR-15, and there is no reason why I can’t use the RPR to shoot bigger animals. It’s heavy, but it will work.

I’m still thinking about a second AR-15 in 6mm ARC. If this new cartridge turns out to have legs, I may want to try it. It would be easier to carry while hunting, and it would be better than .223 for just about everything.

I used to think people who hunted with AR-type guns were just trying to make a point. Maybe they were, back then. Anyhow, these days, I can see why a person would use one. They’re handy, they have lots of aftermarket support, the .223 cartridge is great for all sorts of game, and you can take it home and use it to defend your house, unless you want something more reliable.

Maybe I’ll get out and pop off a few rounds today. It will be nice to see a plan come together.

Equipment for Real Social Distancing

I’ve been home from the 1000-yard range for three days, and I already have a bunch of new equipment on the way. Snipers rolled me out of the bed of ignorance, and I hit the ground running.

I’m going to be shooting a Ruger Precision Rifle. Is it the best choice for beginners? I do not know. It looks like there are a number of good guns out there at the lower end of the PRS market. The RPR is extremely popular, so even if it isn’t the best gun, there will be all sorts of support for it.

I wanted to get a simple shooting mat. I figured this would be a three-minute research project. WRONG. From using borrowed mats over the weekend, I knew there were certain things I didn’t want in a mat, and when I looked at various products, I kept seeing those problems.

One mat I used had black patches on it for reinforcement in certain areas. When the sun hit them, they got blistering hot. That’s no good, so no dark mats. Some mats were too narrow. You need a little room for your junk, so the narrow mats were out. One mat, which doubled as a case, had hardware on the inside where it would scratch weapons. Come on. Really?

There are thin mats. There are mats made from cheap fabrics. There are mats that soak up water because they have open-cell foam.

I gave up and ordered a very expensive mat which is popular among SEAL’s. Sometimes you have to suck it up and buy the best, or what appears to be the best. Fine. I’ll get over it.

My AR-15’s scope is less than a month old, and I have to get rid of it. It’s worthless for any type of shooting involving DOPE or holdovers. I don’t plan to use the AR for really serious shooting, but I want to be able to get out to maybe 800 yards, so I have to have MIL’s and target turrets. A company in Texas makes a shockingly good 4-14x MIL-dot scope for a very low price. It has the blessing of various long-range experts. It will be more than good enough for an AR-15 with a factory barrel.

I bought an inch-pound torque wrench for mounting optics. This was surprisingly hard. Gunsmithing companies make little torque screwdrivers, but people complain about how cheap and fragile they are. A serious inch-pound screwdriver runs hundreds of dollars. I ordered a beam wrench, which is the old-fashioned kind of wrench your granddad used. It will be fantastic for scopes, it will never break, and it’s easy to read. And it was cheap.

I bought the cleaning stuff the snipers recommended. They like Bore Tech Eliminator. They spelled out the reasons, but I don’t remember them. I have very good cleaning products that work well, but long-range shooting is a strange game, and anything the pros don’t want inside their barrels is probably something that shouldn’t be there. Cleaning affects accuracy. If Eliminator makes snipers happy, there must be a reason for it. They would know if their guns weren’t shooting well.

I bought a pint, which ought to last me until I die.

Ammo is interesting. Believe it or not, people commonly shoot 1 MOA with very cheap 6.5 Creedmoor ammo at 100 yards. Great, right? Just buy cheap ammo. Not so fast. Ammo that kills mice a football field away may do weird things 900 yards farther downrange. I decided to try Hornady ELD 140-grain match ammo. It’s a ballistic tip cartridge, and it’s supposed to be very good. Sadly, it’s not great for hunting. It’s just like the ballistic tip ammo used for coons and so on, but the cup the tip sits in is tiny, so I guess the rounds don’t expand much.

The gun won’t be for hunting anyway. I may use it for that, but it will be very heavy because it’s made for accuracy. I could see using it when not too much walking is involved.

I have a Vortex scope on the way for the Ruger. It’s a very nice MIL-dot scope. It was discontinued so Vortex could sell a new reticle, but there is nothing wrong with the old reticle. I saved something on the order of 50%. I am very happy about that. To do better, I pretty much have to move up to a new level and spend somewhere around $2500. That would be stupid for someone who is just starting and isn’t sure what he needs.

I bought a Kestrel. This is the fancy ballistics calculator they trained me on. It will save me a lot of aggravation when I shoot. I can set it for various cartridges and guns, and it will look at the weather, the distances, and a bunch of other things and tell me how to set my turrets. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. It should be, for what it costs.

Once all this stuff arrives, I will have no excuse for not shooting well, so I’ll have to start making some up.

There is a 900-yard range around 30 miles away. I have to go look at it. I expect to buy a membership.

If all goes well, I may be shooting the AR at home at 200 yards in less than a week, and I may be shooting at the range, using the Ruger, in less than two weeks. Within a month or two, I may be a minimally competent long-distance shooter. That would really be something. If I get confident, I’ll have to think seriously about traveling and hunting with guides.

I should go ahead and dump some of my guns. I hate selling a firearm, but now that I see how shooting is done, I realize some of my guns are silly. No one needs an overpriced Romanian semiauto Romak III. My K31 is neat, but the cheap ammo is no longer available, and the gun has a terrible stock. It’s like they mounted a barrel in an oak dresser. I like my LR-308, but who really needs a semiauto battle rifle in .308 Winchester? I could unload it and put the money in a hunting rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor.

Drinking the Creedmoor Kool-Aid seems to be a good thing. I used to think I wanted .260 Remington or 6.5 Swedish, but you make your life difficult when you pick those cartridges, and you don’t get much of a return. Creedmoor is a fantastic cartridge, and there is a ton of great factory ammo out there at reasonable prices. There is a reason why it’s so popular.

I could put a Creedmoor barrel in the LR-308. I don’t know why I should, though. I would be struggling to make a poorly chosen gun work.

I have a budget night scope on my .204 Ruger rifle. I don’t know if I should put an optical scope on it or not. I definitely want to keep the night scope, because it actually works, but I would also like to be able to use the rifle for daytime shooting at long range with a real scope.

If I start hunting deer, I will have to figure out what I need. Based on my sad experiences with coyotes (which never showed up), I know you want to be able to back the magnification down for anything large. When you try to spot a coyote with a 14x scope at 100 yards, all you see is a tiny bit of ground. He could be right next to it, and you wouldn’t know. If a coyote had shown up, I would have had a hard time keeping him in view as he moved. It must be worse with deer.

I have no criticisms of my pistol purchases. I think I did great there.

I’m going to buy a stockpile of Creedmoor ammo, and then I should be okay for the foreseeable future. If there is a Biden ammo panic, I’ll be okay for quite some time. Biden pretends he likes hunting, and the person who takes over when he forgets who he is will probably continue his dishonest gun policies, so hunting cartridges like 6.5 Creedmoor should be the last things to disappear. They’ll go after people who know the Second Amendment is for self-defense and resistance to tyranny, and after that, they’ll take duck guns and deer guns away from Fudds who really believed it was smart to vote for Democrats.

Spring was expensive, and summer is going to be expensive, too, but you have to spend money on very important things.

Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Generation

Are we already in the apocalypse?

Today I turned on an audio Bible while I prayed, and I decided to listen to the Revelation. I listen to different books at different times. I ask God what I should listen to, or I listen to whatever is already cued up. It’s not like I listen to the Revelation over and over, along with Daniel, trying to get myself and my stockpile of pemmican and ammunition ready for our national reenactment of The Walking Dead.

Jesus spoke to 7 churches in the Revelation, and we all know he commended the church of Philadelphia above all the others. Here is what he said:

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

I am just guessing, but I suspect “Philadelphia,” which means the love among brothers, is intended to be a prophetic signal. I think it means those churches which are full of the Holy Spirit and God’s love. Charismatic churches where people speak in tongues and don’t worship money.

The only real unifying force in this world is the Holy Spirit, and he unifies with love, not fear or harsh discipline. When Christians are led by the Holy Spirit, they are unified regardless of race and national origin.

The hour of temptation is the tribulation which occurs before Jesus returns. It happens after the rapture. So Jesus is saying people who are like the church of Philadelphia will be taken in the rapture. They will be spared the full-blown expression of God’s wrath.

We know the tribulation is a time of temptation, because the Bible makes it clear that people will still be able to be saved, and it says those who refuse to worship Satan will be killed. They will be tempted to recant. They won’t be able to buy or sell. They will be abused very badly. The ones who won’t make it will be like Esau, who sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. They’ll go to hell in spite of trying to turn to God.

It’s nice that Jesus doesn’t say people in the other churches will go to hell, but it seems obvious that if they aren’t taken in the rapture, they aren’t saved as of that moment. It appears that they will be left here, unsaved, with the option of repenting and going to heaven later, after much unnecessary suffering.

This morning I turned on a Youtube video about the popularity of 10mm in Alaska, where it’s used for bear defense. The man in the video started talking about the difficulty of buying ammunition during the current “apocalypse.” This was the first time I had heard anyone say something like that so casually. I don’t think he was serious, but what if he was right?

People have predicted the time of the end many times in the past, and they were wrong, but they didn’t live in 2020. Our population is pushing 8 billion. Technology is destroying free will and government. The greatest Christian nation in history has fallen away, and the majority is being oppressed by minorities and sexual deviants. We have a micro-plague and a mini-famine. Violence and hatred are everywhere. Delusion approaching psychosis is mainstream among leftists and some other groups. We have never seen a time like this. The earth appears to be ripe for the end.

Scientists think the earth can only sustain 10 billion people. We’ll be there soon. I admit, scientists are wrong a lot, but they ought to have some sort of clue about this.

It’s strange to hear someone use the word “apocalypse” with such nonchalance. Maybe it will become more common.

We have a tendency to deny things for long periods, then acknowledge them facetiously and intermittently, and then admit them openly. Remember the animosity Barack Obama had for Israel? People said friction between Obama and the Israelis didn’t exist. Then they started joking about it. Then journalists started discussing it as though it were undeniable and well-known to everyone. Maybe the apocalypse will work that way.

Biden’s obvious dementia will work that way. Now he’s making pathetic Youtube ads in which he makes grammatical errors and slurs his speech.

What’s happening to human beings is a little bit like falling into a black hole. When you’re far away, you’re pulled in slowly. Your speed doesn’t change much from one year to the next. When you get closer, the gravitational force, which increases as the inverse of the square of the distance from the singularity, rises more quickly every second. You speed up faster and faster. It’s not linear. Not only are we more depraved, deluded, and cruel than were in the past; we are becoming depraved, deluded and cruel more quickly every day. The difference between 2019 and 2020 is worse than the difference between 2010 and 2019. What will the rest of the year be like?

The thing to focus on is the promise Jesus gave the Philadelphians. He said they didn’t have to be around for the tribulation. You can avoid it, too. Temptation to fall away is getting stronger and stronger. If you don’t take the bait, you’ll be fine. If you do take the bait, you’ll find yourself in a world where it’s much harder to turn back to God and harder still to stay with him. It’s not the right move.

I would be happy to leave during the next second. I don’t want to see furious imbeciles storm the White House or go on rape rampages in our suburbs. I don’t want to see Christians who don’t know the Holy Spirit shooting protestors as they charge their houses in waves. What we’re seeing now is sufficient for me.

The other day a crowd of demon puppets put a guillotine outside a house belonging to Jeff Bezos. That should chill everyone. It’s a death threat, just like hanging a noose outside a black family’s house. In the French Revolution, angry peasants pulled aristocrats out of their homes and severed their heads. Bezos is a leftist! He’s also a powerful agent of the Beast. His type of commerce is putting control of buying and selling in the hands of a few, making it easier to cut Christians off from goods and services in the future. The Beast’s silly children are threatening one of their best friends. Not sure why. Maybe they prefer Ebay.

No, they prefer stealing.

Is this really happening? Am I really living in the end of the end time? I suppose the coming weeks will tell me.

Rice for the Woke

So what’s the story with coronavirus?

I am still not willing to go out on a limb and say there really is a spike in infections, because I can’t find information I trust. I’ve been lied to so much, I can’t draw conclusions. Nonetheless, it certainly looks like there is a spike.

I wrote about the dire predictions of a second wave. I didn’t see why there would be one. If nothing changes, why would a disease suddenly stop fading out and start spreading again? It didn’t make any sense, and no one I was able to dig up provided an explanation. Oddly, we are being told we’re not having a second wave, even though we are supposedly seeing much bigger numbers. Makes me wonder what a second wave is. It would be nice if someone told us.

Today I saw something that made sense. Researchers somewhere or other think covid has become more contagious. I believe they mentioned a factor of something like 17. Anyway, it was between 10 and 20. I’m not going to look it up.

One of the saving graces of covid has been its low speed of transmission. Doctors kept telling us it was much more contagious than the flu, even as it failed to infect nearly as many people. Now maybe that has changed.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Wish I knew.

The same people who have been lying to us or providing utterly inadequate true information are saying viruses tend to become less deadly as they spend more time among humans. The evolutionary basis, supposedly, is that a virus strain that leaves victims alive will have more carriers and therefore multiply faster than, and replace, other strains.

I don’t believe in evolution as the origin of species, but creatures do respond to selection forces, as the first person to breed dachshunds could tell you.

If we have more contagion, we may have lower severity. If that happens, we could end up with a whole lot of infected people who don’t do badly and become immune. I suppose we already have this to some degree, but maybe it would become true of the elderly and other people who are weak and in danger.

If it works this way, nice viruses that spread quickly will protect us from mean ones that spread slowly.

If covid is spreading more efficiently now due to mutations, then we have to hope it behaves better than the old covid once it infects. Otherwise, it will be a very bad year, barring divine intervention.

This disease doesn’t seem to care all that much about behavior. That’s strange. It blasted lockdown prisoners in New York more heavily than people who were out and about. It also seems unaffected by warm weather. Or is it? A slowdown caused by warm weather could be masked by an acceleration caused by increased contagion.

Will it continue to hit regions where God is unpopular harder than areas where Christianity is strong (assuming such areas really exist)? I hope so. Not because I want to see pagans and protestors get sick, but because it’s very important that repentance and prayer work to protect people. If we can’t get help from God, then there is nothing we can do except wait for the vaccine. If turning back to God works, then people who aren’t totally close-minded will be able to help themselves and get out from under the curse. This is the best outcome we could hope for. It would combine protection from disease with beautiful new relationships with the God who loves us.

I said covid wasn’t a plague back when it was infecting very slowly. If it hits flu numbers AND remains severe, it will be a real plague.

Was it ever severe, though? The overwhelming majority of people who die are weak to begin with. We let people in nursing homes get sick because we didn’t care about them, so we had a lot of deaths. The flu could do things like that, and it doesn’t scare us. What would the rate of severe cases be if covid were infecting people more randomly, as the flu does? What would the flu death rate be if we didn’t vaccinate people in nursing homes?

Maybe it’s not very severe now and it will become much less severe as it mutates and spreads more quickly.

Unfortunately, we could still end up with a lot more deaths in absolute terms. A wimpy disease that affects nearly everyone can kill more people than a terrible disease that isn’t common.

I still don’t know a single person who has had it. I know two people who have friends (one each) who have been symptomatic. I can’t tell you how many asymptomatic people my acquaintances know, because asymptomatic people fly under the radar.

What am I doing to protect myself? Still nothing, almost. I do disinfect my hands when I’m out and around. I stand far from people most of the time. That’s a great idea whether or not there’s an epidemic. That’s all I do. As I have said before, I now own several masks, but they’re to protect other people, not me. A cloth mask–based on what the propaganda machine is saying at the moment–will not help the wearer, but it may reduce the number of people he infects.

While I was at my shooting class this weekend, I was surrounded by hard core conservatives, many of whom were ex-military. Surprising, I know. None had a mask. When we conversed, they said a lot of hostile things about the paranoia. I saw a group of black people shooting at the range. That’s always encouraging. Some of them wore masks. That was about it.

I get on my face every day and worship God. I try to do it at least twice. Humility is very important when it comes to avoiding curses. So far, covid has been weak in Christian-heavy areas, but what if God was just holding the disease back to give his people time to straighten out? What if he hit leftists first in order to warn his own people and get them to pray and repent? If they’re not doing it, they may regret assuming they were invulnerable.

Humbling yourself before God is like washing your hands. You shouldn’t need a crisis to motivate you to do it. You should be doing it already.

My county is still doing very well. The official case number is up around 600. It jumped when testing became available to everyone. I don’t know if it’s spreading faster here. The number includes people who have recovered. It doesn’t mean 600 people are known to be sick. Most are well now. Our death toll is stuck at 10.

It was very interesting listening to the military guys over the weekend. They discussed the impossibility of standing out in any environment including female combat troops. Women can’t do what ground troops do, period. It’s just not possible. It never will be. Nonetheless, PC requires that female soldiers get prizes. The unofficial policy is to promote them and pretend they passed courses they failed. If a man does better than everyone else, a useless woman who can’t really fight will get the place he earned.

They talk about it openly. The people in charge of training will tell the women things like, “It doesn’t matter what you do. You’re all going to pass.” Then when they move on to harder tasks, they all wash out and quit.

One spoke of a prominent female solder who is now strongly against women going into combat. She pushed her way through the process, and because of the physical demands, she became sterile. I did not know physical exertion and stress could do that to women, but anyway, this lady is now pushing to keep women out of combat.

At the same time, these men agreed they had no problem with female pilots. One of them talked about a lady who annihilated all sorts of enemy personnel while doing close air support. He said she was fearless. He thought she was great.

They talked about Jessica Lynch, the private who was captured by Iraqis after her vehicle was attacked. One of the reasons women, apart from lack of ability, that women have been kept out of infantry roles is that we are afraid they will be raped when captured. This is exactly what happened to Jessica Lynch. The press denied it, as did some Iraqis, but she said it was true. She was sodomized. The scuttlebutt in the military is that they raped her anally twice a day, and that she is now incontinent. I don’t know whether they used body parts or objects. Interesting people, the Arabs.

I don’t know how they make female soldiers succeed in Israel. I assume they must face the truth and give them easier jobs. Are they actually going into combat? I don’t know. I know women in IDF uniforms are all over Israel, carrying guns. I know they’re not doing the hardest jobs men do, because it’s not possible.

Wikipedia says they have it easier than males. Big surprise.

It’s amazing how poisonous PC is. Imagine the morale of a soldier who has to sit in a chair and clap for an ineffective, deluded woman who got everything he earned, even while he anticipates the inevitable day when she will quit and some man who didn’t get a prize or promotion will have to start doing her job.

I decided what to do about my long range rifle hobby. I’m getting a Ruger Precision Rifle. This is the Glock of PRS. It’s common. It works well. It’s not too expensive. It will get you started. Done. I also have a very good scope on the way. I got it at a crazy discount. It was discontinued. I’m also getting a MIL-dot scope (cheaper) for the AR-15.

There is a 900-yard range within a reasonable distance. I don’t feel comfortable going above 200 yards in my pasture. I’m going to need a range bag and a shooting mat.

I have to decide where I want to go for more training. The people who taught me spun off from a group now located in Tennessee. I was very happy with my Florida teachers, but it would be nice to get away from palm trees. I could also go out west. I love it out there. I don’t know if I would want to live there. The environmentalists are a pain, and toxic, flaky California transplants are defiling some areas. It would be nice to shoot there, though.

Maybe it’s time to think about hiring a guide and doing some hunting. Life is short. If it’s short for me, it should be short for deer.

I’m glad I can think about trivial things instead of grave issues such as whether the people who put Uncle Ben on the rice bag were white supremacists. The company has an announcement on its web page, sniveling and groveling about their dismay at Uncle Ben’s stereotypical appearance. Hmm. A man in a suit and tie, with a giant company named after him. Yeah, that’s degrading.

The Internet says Uncle Ben was based on a very successful black farmer who grew excellent rice. Wow. What a terrible role model for black kids. They need an imaginary rice grower in a spandex suit complete with whiskers, from an imaginary African country with world-leading technology, which, for some reason, allows neighboring countries to live in ignorance, squalor, and violence.

An advanced country where the inhabitants select their leaders by letting them beat each other to death in ponds.

I know what to do about Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, but I hate to let my genius plan go public without charging. Oh, well. Here it is. Aunt Ben and Uncle Jemima. The trans food role models.

You put Aunt Ben in a dress, and you give Uncle Jemima a military uniform. It’s perfect. You would have to take the word “converted” off the Aunt Ben’s rice package, though, because Aunt Ben didn’t convert. She was born that way.

Send me a check, people. You know it’s the right thing to do.

You Listened too Well

One of the things that stands out about the precision rifle shooting class I took this weekend is that the instructors told me pretty much everything I had heard from other “experts” or from my own guesswork was wrong. In fact, unlearning these things was a big part of the benefit of the class.

Let’s see.

1. When shooting a rifle with a scope, you should always take a breath, release half of it, and then shoot. NOT! NOT! NOT! It’s a total myth. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it, and I’ve repeated it. It’s true that it will give you a brief instant of stillness that can be helpful, but when you really need to see well, lack of oxygen can affect your vision. For long-distance shooting, you breathe normally and shoot after you exhale. This is called shooting during the NRP or normal respiratory pause.

2. You’re supposed to hold your index finger so it points straight ahead and then bends 90° at the first joint. The last two segments of the finger are supposed to be perpendicular to the rifle’s bore. You press the trigger with the center of the pad of the last segment. This way, the part of the finger touching the gun moves in line with the bore and won’t move the gun to the side.

3. Do NOT let the shot surprise you. Make it go off when you choose. Waiting for a pistol to go off works great, apart from the fact that it turns you into a person who can’t shoot well at a desired instant, but you don’t do it with rifles.

4. Do NOT preload your bipod. Preloading means pushing your gun forward to put stress on the bipod legs. This takes the wobble out of them. The military teaches snipers to do this. So why not do what snipers do? They’re the best, right? No, they’re actually not. Civilian shooters are better. Snipers are trained quickly, and preloading a bipod is a fast way to tighten up groups when you don’t have time to get people to shoot correctly. Unfortunately, it also puts a bending torque on the rifle. You don’t want your rifle to be flexed when you shoot.

They also taught us to push the trigger all the way back and hold it until the shot lands. Not until you hear it. Until it LANDS. This helps you not to slap at the trigger.

They said you shouldn’t wrap your thumb around your gun. It’s one more point where something can go wrong, and it’s not necessary.

I took them at their word, and I was more careful than they suggested. I didn’t even tighten my hand on the grip. There was no reason to. My fingers rested against it loosely. I’m not really sure what held the gun in place every time it went off. It worked great, though.

Another shooter told the instructor what I was doing. I think he wanted the teacher to correct me. The instructor said what I was doing was good. Point for me. It definitely worked. Before my scope went nuts, I was hitting targets pretty casually. The teacher said I had a good trigger pull, and I can’t recall him correcting me about anything form-related.

Let’s not talk about the many times I dropped the magazine when I was trying to shoot the bolt carrier forward, or the times I tried to shoot with the safety on. Like I told him, I’m not an AR guy.

The more I listened to these teachers, the more I understood that nearly no one on the gun forums I visit has any idea what they’re talking about. The air is heavy with wrongness. One of the snipers said he used to try to talk to people on forums, and he quit, because it was a waste of time.

Regarding the rifle’s pistol grip, there are people on forums arguing about whether a grip should be straight or angled. My position: who cares? It looks like you shouldn’t be using it to begin with.

They taught us something I already believed, which is that you should not clean a gun very often. Crud in a gun’s barrel makes it more accurate. A newly cleaned gun takes a number of expensive shots to get its accuracy back, and obsessive cleaning doesn’t do anything for the gun. One of them said he shoots his 6.5 Creedmoor until the groups open up, and then he cleans it. He had a .308 in the classroom, and I believe he said it had only been cleaned twice.

I was surprised to hear two military snipers say the Army and Marines don’t get the best training. You may live next door to someone–maybe a dentist or an insurance salesman–who can outshoot most military snipers. That’s something for looters and snowflakes to think about. When they start trying to murder the rest of us on a large scale, they’ll be facing a good number of people who shoot better than Chris Kyle. Facing them: a bunch of untrained, nonpracticing simpletons with stolen Taurus 9 millimeters, using shooting technique that comes from music videos.

The class was worth its weight in gold. Or maybe lead.

I’m trying to pick a rifle. Once I choose one, I will be ready to get good at the things I was taught. This would be a good time for coons and coyotes to look for a new landlord.

Is Your Neighbor a Former Professional Assassin?

This weekend, I took my first precision rifle course. I’m amazed how much more I know today than I did two days ago. I would make a list of the list of well-known good shooting practices I now know to be the stuff of rumor and bloviation.

I thought “precision rifle shooting” simply meant shooting your rifle, whatever it may be, well. It looks like that’s not true. There are matches called “PRS” matches, in which shooters use strange bolt-action target rifles to shoot at long distances. The skills used by PRS shooters are applicable to activities such as hunting and the assassination of military targets, but precision rifle courses seem to draw a lot of people who compete in matches. At least it seemed that way to me this weekend. The other guys in my class talked about hunting, but a bunch of them also discussed rifle competitions.

I tried hard to get information about the nature of the course before I bought a spot, but while the course was excellent, the instructors aren’t great at communication, so I didn’t understand the nature of the class. I told them what kind of rifles I had, and one suggested I go with my DPMS LR-308B, which is an LR-10 with an 18″ bull barrel. When I got to the class, every other student had a target rifle, and most were chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. We had another .308, plus a .300 Win Mag, but Creedmoors were everywhere. The shortest barrel in the bunch was probably 24″.

The strongest scope I own, a Leupold Vx-3, is set up for MOA shooting. It has MOA turrets, meaning each click is 1/4 MOA. They said it would work, but after I had been there a while, I saw that I really needed a scope graduated in milliradians, or “MIL’s.”

You can take this course with your favorite ACCURATE deer rifle and a 14x hunting scope, and you will get a lot out of it, but it’s really best to use a target rifle and a MIL-dot scope. These scopes have arrays of dots in the reticles spaced one MIL apart, and when you need to move your point of aim a certain number of MIL’s, you just move to the dot you need. My scope has a bunch of hash marks intended to be alternative sighting locations for bullets fired at different ranges, but they don’t correspond to any particular bullet or velocity, so they appear to be somewhat useless.

They started us out by showing us how to set our rifles up. Those of us with adjustable stocks (not me) adjusted our lengths of pull. My LOP was wrong, but there was nothing I could do. They showed us how to do a proper 90° trigger pull. Because of my LOP, I had to make do with more like 110°. They helped us set the eye relief on our scopes, too. My scope was too far back.

They took us to a short range so we could zero our scopes at 100 yards. I remember when 100 yards seemed like a long way. Anyhow, I found myself shooting odd groups. I would shoot two holes touching, or nearly touching, each other, and then I would get fliers.

Our teachers were an Army sniper and a Marine sniper. The guy working with me was encouraging. He told me I was doing about as well as could be expected with a gas-cycled gun. He said 1.5 MOA was okay.

I was very concerned. What if I was wasting my money? What if the gun couldn’t hit the thousand-yard gongs?

I was also concerned about my ability to shoot prone. The school’s website didn’t mention that we would be shooting prone the whole time. I had never done it before. When I tried it at first, during the zeroing session, I didn’t like it one bit. My shoulder and neck hurt, and I found I had to strain to stay behind the scope. I didn’t know if I could keep it up.

So here I was, far from home, staying at a hotel, possibly unable to accomplish the task I had dedicated two days to mastering. With a class full of guys who would be observing the whole thing.

Later, his partner worked with me, and I fired some terrible groups at longer range. When he looked at my rifle, he discovered that the first guy hadn’t tightened the rings enough. I was shooting with loose rings, so the poor grouping at 100 yards suddenly had an explanation not involving my own lack of ability.

Another guy loaned me a second rear bag, and I found that if I propped up my right side, I was able to get very stable. Actually, I figured this out using my new raincoat. Before I drove to the class, they said I should get a Gore-Tex jacket because it would probably rain on us. I bought one that came with a little bag. The jacket could be rolled up and shoved inside it. Before the kind stranger lent me his spare bag, I used the jacket bag, and it worked just fine. My teacher was all for it. One thing I learned was that they didn’t care at all how you got stable. There was no such thing as cheating or a silly solution. Once I got the rain jacket working, I switched to a second bag made for shooting.

We had a lot of class time. On the first day, I learned about the Kestrel. This is a little gadget that does computations for rifle shooters. You enter things like your ballistic coefficient, your muzzle velocity, the wind speed and direction, and so on, and it will tell you how far to turn your turrets to put your bullet where you want it at a given distance.

The Kestrel is a wonderful machine. You can do everything it does using a pencil, but the Kestrel does it instantly, and if you buy an expensive model, you can store information for a whole bunch of rifles.

My muzzle velocity came in at a miserable 2500 fps. The ammunition supposedly had the potential for 2650, assuming Federal told the truth, but my gun has a short barrel, and you need barrel length for speed. Coupled with the .308 bullet’s low ballistic coefficient, the velocity set me up for non-optimal performance later on, requiring considerable compensation. The Kestrel would later tell me to drop my point of aim about 30 feet at 1000 yards, and the bullets were going subsonic, causing predictability issues, at about 800 yards. According to an Internet source, a 6.5 Creedmoore round drops about 24 feet, and it stays supersonic out to nearly 1400 yards.

Here’s what I was told: the .308 flies predictably until it goes subsonic. In the area where it transitions, it stops going where the Kestrel says it will go. Then it smooths out and becomes predictable again. The 6.5 Creedmoor doesn’t have this problem at the ranges I was shooting.

Is it better to shoot .308 and become a better shooter by dealing with the transition, or should you shoot 6.5 Creedmoor and enjoy focusing on things other than trajectory kinks? I don’t know. I would guess it’s better to do it the hard way, but it’s probably not better for a beginner.

They took us up on a tower, which is really a crude building with a big second floor with a roof over it. We shot prone under the roof. They had a series of targets lined up. I don’t recall the ranges, but I believe they started at around 450, and I know they ended at over 800, because I shot that far, and it was the longest shot I had ever made.

I could tell there were doubts about me and my semiauto battle rifle, but when I laid down and shot, and my scope rings were tightened, things went very well. There were people with target rifles who had more trouble than I did. I popped some of the targets pretty quickly. I didn’t do badly on any of them, even after the sonic transition thing popped up. My instructor spotted me, told me how to adjust the scope, and got me through it.

When I hit steel at over 800 yards, with the wrong rifle, the wrong scope, and what seemed like the wrong body for shooting prone, I was ecstatic. At that point, I knew I was going to have a good weekend. I was not going to be the goat. Someone who had a more appropriate rifle and didn’t do as well might be the goat, and that would be sad, but it wouldn’t be me.

My instructor yelled at his buddy, telling him how well my short-barreled gas gun was doing, keeping up with the target guns. Nice.

Somebody was surprised, and I don’t just mean me.

The next day, we learned about wind, and then we shot from another tower. We went out to 1060 yards. I was all about 1060 yards.

They put us on the roof, with no shade. The sun was blazing. It was nasty. We were three floors up. I went through my targets. It went 568 yards, 665, 716, 866, 890, 952, 1060. Things got a little weird in the 800’s, but I made it all the way. It was hard to believe it when I shot at a microscopic spot a fifth of a mile away and heard my teacher say “impact.”

I was not doing all that well mentally or physically by this time. I was dehydrated. Water kept pouring into us, and none went out. By the time I got to the last target, my concentration was gone.

It was not easy. I had run out of turret. I had my scope’s height compensation maxed out, so in order to hit the target, I had to aim maybe 8 feet above it and two feet to the right, with nothing to put the crosshairs on. My instructor seemed to have a lot of confidence in me, because he kept spotting and giving calls, and after maybe 10 shots, I hit it.

That was really not bad. My scope wasn’t working, I was aiming at trees, I was tired, and I still connected with the gong. There were people with better guns and adequate optics who missed just as many times at shorter ranges.

The instructor’s dad was taking the class. He congratulated me. I said it was all about the spotting.

Things went well until after lunch.

We had to lie on the third floor, indoors, and shoot through holes at the bottom of the wall. I don’t know what that was all about. I don’t know if it was supposed to simulate assassination or what. My teachers were experienced killers who had shot a bunch of people to death, however, so nothing would have surprised me. Maybe it simulated something shooters do in competitions.

I didn’t sign up to learn how to assassinate people, but I suppose you could say that’s what I learned. I just wanted to know how to shoot a long way.

When I went to check my rifle and set the scope back to zero for the first target, I found that the turret was frozen. When I showed my instructor, he said the set screws had come loose. That was true, but before they came loose, the turret had refused to turn.

He tightened the screws, and when my turn came again, things went okay for the first few targets. We had to compensate a lot, but I hit steel. It got harder, and the corrections that worked didn’t seem to make sense. It looked like my scope’s turret was missing clicks when I turned it. Something was broken or misaligned or otherwise messed up.

It took a lot of effort from both of us to hit 866 yards, and then we decided to quit, because we were just chasing random turret positions that happened to connect.

I bought a Leupold scope because I thought it was top quality, but when I maxed the turret in one direction, it locked up and then refused to work correctly. Now it has to go in for repairs, and I very much doubt Leupold will pay for them. My instructor said his outfit had had a bunch of Leupolds, and only half had worked. Where was he in 2009, when buying a Leupold looked like a great idea?

Probably finishing up the 8th grade. I am old.

Well, whatever. I succeeded with bad equipment, I was complimented on my trigger pull (thanks, pistols), and I didn’t embarrass myself. I got my certificate, and I’m ready for the second class.

There are a couple of long-range facilities not too far from me, so I can practice this stuff.

I am nice. I am all about God’s love, because love is the reason he created the universe. I want nothing to do with the so-called zombie apocalypse. I want to shoot paper targets and a few annoying species of wildlife. But compared to the average American, I will, potentially, be an extremely dangerous person. Shooting rifles at long distances is surprisingly easy for me. I think it’s easy for nearly everyone who has had a lesson or two. It’s not nearly has hard as shooting a pistol at 7 yards. No comparison. That surprised me.

Speaking of dangerous, this weekend, I saw something that should sober up every cocky soy merchant out there who thinks it will be easy to overrun America, loot houses, and confiscate guns. I was in a room full of very ordinary conservative American outdoorsmen, and every one of them could kill a person, or group of people, easily at 500 yards. The instructors could shoot well over 1000 yards, and there are a lot of other snipers and competitors like them.

One of the teachers is a hunting guide. He goes to Alaska and helps bear hunters. He knows how to live in the wilderness. He’s tough. He is a combat veteran. He seems like a nice guy, but anyone who tries to pull anything near his home and family could end up feeding crows and possums, fast. Based on the things I heard him say about his military history and his feelings about leftists who might try to start a civil war, he is one of the last people on earth I would want to upset.

There is a huge number of people with similar skills all over the US. I don’t think leftists understand this. Leftists tend to be very ignorant about firearms and the outdoors. They don’t know what the people they hate do for fun.

During class today, a very nice military retiree–could not have been more polite or considerate–showed the rest of us his custom-made pig sticker. To you, a pig sticker probably just means a big knife. No; he said it was a real pig sticker. You chase a pig down with dogs, and then you shove the knife into it to kill it. Gang doofuses who don’t know how to hold a Glock are not ready for this old man and his friends. Neither are dumpy Vassar graduates who think it scares people when they pose for selfies, wearing black T-shirts from American Apparel, holding Molotov cocktails.

I would never participate in that kind of hunt, but lots of very kindhearted sportsmen have blind spots about certain things. A man who can shove a knife into a live pig can shove one into a trespasser swinging a skateboard. I’m sure you could trust this guy to look after your kids for days in an emergency, but it seems to me he would show a very different side to a certain type of person, given the right provocation.

There are thousands and thousands of people out there who use bows and crossbows; weapons that can kill you and your friends without giving you a clue where your attacker is hiding. There are people who can hide right in front of you. Some conservatives have packs of dogs that aren’t afraid to run down bigger, stronger animals. They’re already trained.

People talk about civil war. Is it really a possibility? I suppose it is. In the US, we think of civil wars as fights between opponents occupying distinct territories, but you can have a civil war in which people kill their neighbors. Isn’t that the most common kind of civil war? Think of Spain, Vietnam, and Iraq. Think of just about any nation in Africa. Think of Cuba.

I’ve been expecting a leftist takeover that would work primarily through political successes, but maybe the arrogance and cluelessness of the “rioting works” kids will lead to something even uglier. If that happens, there may be terrible bloodshed and atrocities, and leftists will probably suffer the most. If they don’t wait till the government is in their control, they may end up feeding themselves into a meat grinder.

I’ve written a lot about my belief that the police and the military can’t handle leftists who take over cities, but maybe civilians would do it for them. They are more numerous, and they don’t have to wait for a chain of command to deploy them and authorize their actions.

Leftists like to say the Second Amendment only exists to help us create militias. Ironically, leftist violence has led to our first real efforts at raising militias which clearly demonstrate the need for privately owned guns.

Rural Americans have dug out their guns and stood in unison to welcome and intimidate imported leftist rioters. I didn’t realize this was possible until this month. A town in North Dakota was successfully preserved by citizens who assembled with rifles on display, and the police worked with, and supported, the ad hoc militia. According to one man who witnessed it, leftists met at a restaurant and discussed their plans for arson and rape, but when the agitators saw the firearms, they scurried away in fear. They just didn’t know what to do.

How far will people go? I wish I could say I knew.

America’s insanity seems to be getting worse very fast. Antichristians are accelerating as they plunge into the abyss of hate-filled delusion. Their appetite for the destruction of things the rest of us hold dear has become ravenous, to the point where they seem to know no restraint. They are deliberately choosing targets they think will hurt us and humiliate us the most. I have the feeling that real chaos could be here by August.

They’ve gone after the national anthem and pictures of Jesus. I guess the flag will be next. That won’t go over well with the millions of dangerous battle-trained veterans who live in America.

President Trump isn’t polling well. Does that mean America is so crazy the attacks on our cities have
majority approval? Biden would pour fuel on the flames. He would back the looters and lynchers to the hilt before dying of dementia. In a country that wasn’t completely lost, the spectacle of the antichristian left’s rage and cruelty would be swinging gigantic numbers of Americans into the Trump camp. If that doesn’t happen, we are doomed, because it means we are too crazy to be helped. Welcome to Somalia.

Is it possible the three destructive horsemen of the apocalypse have been loosed? If so, then their troops, which are innumerable demons, have been released to spread incurable insanity. Most Americans can’t resist demons. They will do whatever they’re told, just as they have in every bloodbath in history, and the difference is that this bloodbath won’t end until Jesus stops it or there are no victims left to attack.

Can the age of the Gentiles, and the world as we know it, be finished already? Is the rapture really that close?

If Trump loses, and the Democrats elect a babbling dotard, I will have to conclude that history is wrapping up. I can’t think of any way to explain that level of irrationality in a world not embarked on its death throes. What stronger sign could we ask for?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe sanity will simply move to a new haven. Maybe China. There is a big Christian nation-within-a-nation there now. Is Russia going insane, or are they just watching us with disgust? Maybe Russia will be the new America. That would be weird.

Whatever. In any case, I am developing a very useful new skill, but I will never have any desire to use it for the most obvious purpose. If America becomes the new Somalia, and we start slaughtering each other in the streets, I will be busy praying for God to remove me whenever he’s ready. I keep asking him to use me during my remaining time, but maybe the little I’ve done for people is all I will ever be able to do.