Have a Safe and Happy Breakfast

I appreciate all the info on reloading. I’m sure it will be useful, and it reminds me of something important. I never got around to buying a reloading manual. I have The ABCs of Reloading, but that’s not a manual. I think there was some sort of delay with the latest version of the Speer manual, and that’s why I didn’t buy one. Not sure. Anyway, I’ll be all over it now that I’ve remembered.

I don’t understand reloading yet, but the one thing everyone seems to be sure of is this: you absolutely have to have a manual, and no other source of information is worth a crap. Don’t look at the web. Don’t ask your friends who reload. Read the manual. I don’t get it, but I will assume it’s gospel. When information I get from other sources is inconsistent with the manual, I will obey the manual. I guess.

It’s too bad I’m all excited about the .45 and the .38 Super. One thing I’ve learned at the range is, nobody who likes .40 S&W should ever have to pay for brass. It’s far and away the most common item on the pistol-side pavement at Trail Glades. Big ol’ drifts of it. All over.

People are advising me to buy stuff at gun shows. Wish I could. I keep checking all the listings I can find, and it looks like gun shows in Miami are damn rare. Hard to believe, given our proud tradition of violence.

I had an interesting experience this morning. I have been trying to get more serious about concealed carry, because it’s just a good idea, and because I feel silly walking around unarmed, with an expensive carry permit in my wallet. How would you like to die under those circumstances? Tragic, and also embarrassing. Today I had my usual Tuesday breakfast with my father, and I took a Glock along. It’s surprising how quickly you get used to it. That’s what I was hoping for. Carrying can make you self-conscious, and that discourages you from doing it, so I want to get past that.

As we left the restaurant, I passed the cop who always watches over the strip mall. I think this was the first time in my life–in Miami–I had stood within a few feet of an on-duty cop, with a loaded piece on me. The fact that it felt odd shows how successful the gun-hating pansies have been. It ought to feel as natural as carrying a cell phone. My right to my carry gun is as strong and as reasonable as the cop’s right to his. In fact, it’s more reasonable, because civilian guns stop crimes more effectively than police guns. And unlike the police, armed civilians cost society nothing, and the potential supply is gigantic.

The cop had no idea I was carrying, and neither of us had any idea who else in the area was carrying. Did that make me feel uneasy? Far from it. It gave me hope and made me feel more secure. I realize that lawful carry by ordinary citizens makes life infinitely safer in a crisis. Imagine what one person like me could have done at Virginia Tech. Well, you don’t have to imagine. Because two armed citizens not affiliated with the police recently put a quick end to a similar massacre in Israel. You can argue that an untrained person like me is more likely to soil himself and faint than shoot an armed criminal. But statistics don’t bear that out. The general rule is, people who fear for their lives step up to the plate and use their guns effectively. The press conceals it from us, but it happens all the time.

It’s too bad the press works so hard to hide successful incidents of self-defense by armed citizens. Because publicizing them would prevent a lot of crimes. If the criminals in Miami understood that every coffee shop is likely to hold one or two armed individuals–people the criminals can’t identify in advance–they’d be a lot less likely to cause problems.

Imagine you’re a criminal. Contrary to anti-gun BS, most gun crime is committed by habitual slimeballs, not ordinary people who go insane the second their skin touches bluing. So you’re a criminal, and you want to hold up a store to get money for meth. But you live in a carry state AND the TV talking heads have been yammering persistently about how common carry permits are. And it’s a very high rate. Are you going to be crazy enough to commit a robbery? Almost certainly not. Criminals who are willing to take on armed victims are very uncommon. That’s why we see massacres on school campuses. They’re stocked ponds.