Mmm, That’s Good Kool-Aid

The unthinkable has happened. I have become an AR15 owner.

This morning I woke up, grabbed the phone, and started entering searches that looked like “[CITY NAME] protest.” It didn’t matter which city’s name I entered. The story was always the same. Leftist journalists are remarkably uncreative. I kept seeing “peaceful protest turned violent.” It was as though they knew they would be fined for failing to use the approved language.

George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, but the results were coming from places like Atlanta and Miami. Mobs even attacked and hurt Secret Service agents near the White House. We have a crisis in which it is completely possible that crowds will storm the White House itself. One wonders what kind of weapons we have to counter that. Supposedly, there is a bunker of sorts under the building. Is it possible we would ever have to send the military in to rescue our president and his family and coworkers?

I just checked, and believe it or not, Donald Trump is in the bunker now. Great.

So I ran out and bought an AR15 in case I had to shoot zombies? No. I ran out and bought an AR15 in case conservatives rose up this week and cleaned out the shelves in every factory and gun store in the United States.

I had been wanting an AR15 for target shooting and wiping out undesirable critters on the farm. I didn’t want to have to wait two months while hoarders bought multiple guns and listed them on Gunbroker for twice their value.

What did I get? A CORE® Scout M-Lok with a 16″ barrel. I also picked up a Vortex scope, extra magazines, and a crate of Norma ammunition. Now I’m all set. I should be able to shoot for a couple of months, and by keeping the brass, I can set myself up for reloading.

The problem with buying an AR15 is that no matter what you buy, people will tell you it’s garbage. You don’t have the Dolce & Gabbana gas system, or you don’t have a cold-hammer-forged barrel, or you got the wrong foregrip. Your gun is mid-grade. Your gun is rack-grade. Burglars will be too offended to die when you shoot them. The AR15 world is full of what are known as “cork sniffers,” and to make them happy, you pretty much have to drop $2000. It’s kind of amazing, given that the AR15 is nothing special.

A real cork sniffer is a guy who orders wine at a restaurant and sniffs the cork when the sommelier presents it. The purpose of presenting the cork is to show that the wine isn’t spoiled. I had to Google to get the truth about this. Apparently, you really should sniff the cork, because if you do, you can detect a chemical that comes from some corks and degrades wine. IF you know what that chemical smells like. But in popular usage, a cork sniffer is a person who snobs out over things that make no difference. If you spent more than $25 on your stereo’s speaker cables, you are a cork sniffer and a sucker.

The abundance of AR15 cork sniffers on the web makes it very hard for a new buyer to figure out what he wants. They present a lot of useless information which always boils down to, “Spend $2000.” For an okay gun in a not-particularly-accurate caliber made from fairly ordinary parts.

I gave up. I found that we had an AR15 manufacturer right here in town, so I went to their shop, figuring they were my best hope of getting useful advice. I figured I would buy a reasonably good AR15 from them, learn about it, and then, if I felt like it, get into sniffing corks.

The CORE rifle company has a gun shop on its property. I showed up before 9:30 a.m. The strip of parking spaces out front was nearly full. I thought I might be too late. When I went in, there were only one or two customers there. I guess the employees take the best parking spots. Maybe that’s smart. If your gun shop looks busy, people who are afraid of losing out during panics may feel motivated to run in and shop. It worked on me.

The people were wonderful. A lady greeted me before the door closed behind me, and she told me where to go. A guy named Pat started helping me as soon as I got to the counter. He answered all my questions. He advised me on optics and ammunition. He set the scope up. He even carried most of the stuff to my car.

Were they busy? Yes. But most of the business was phone business. Calls kept coming in. It sounded like people were calling to see if they still had guns for sale.

Pat was interrupted many times. I kept telling him I was not in a hurry, but he was very concerned about it. He kept apologizing. I guess the shop will fill up later today.

I asked him how things had gone during the covid panic, and he said they had been cleaned out. He said their status as a manufacturer made it easier for them to restock. They had a tremendous amount of AR ammo, and the prices were fine, so I’m glad I know about the place.

They even had .22 LR.

I was there for maybe 90 minutes. The phone kept ringing. They’re going to have a good week.

I suppose some would question the taste of buying an AR15 one day after witnessing my first BLM march, but fortunately, I’m not accountable to the kind of person who has problems with things like that.

One of the customers was a young black man. He was not what you would call an Oreo. He had a hairdo that would gag Coolio, his pants were sagging, and he was wearing Nike sandals with deliberately mismatched socks. He was there to pick up an SBR or short-barreled rifle. That impressed me. To get an SBR, you have to go through the same process machine gun buyers endure. You have to file paperwork with the feds and pay $200 for a tax stamp. It seems to me that any young man who is willing to do that is probably a responsible gun owner, regardless of how he looks. Criminals make their own short-barreled weapons.

I thought about the helpfulness of high-capacity semiauto arms while I was in the store. It occurred to me that the recent attacks on semiauto rifle ownership and large-capacity magazines might result in a lot of deaths this year. Leftists love to say 10 bullets ought to be enough for anyone, but it’s completely untrue. Many, many criminals have hurt innocent people after being shot multiple times, and apart from that, in the current atmosphere, business owners and homeowners face the threat of multiple assailants. If 20 deranged individuals are approaching your house with murder and rape on their minds, and all you have are 10-round magazines, you have a problem.

I’m very disturbed by what’s happening to America. I don’t recall seeing protest waves that compared to this one. We may see lasting siege states develop in our cities.

We only have so many cops and National Guard troops. In comparison, the supply of potential vandals and looters seems bottomless. Cops and soldiers are effective in the right situations, but they can’t deal with riots on truly large scales. Rioters have the power to take cities over on a long-term basis. I hope they don’t know that, but they probably do.

If things go a certain way, we could be looking at an internal situation worse than another war. It all depends on the mindset of the rioters. We lost roughly 60,000 people in the Vietnam War. We could top that here, easily.

What if they take over cities for long periods? It could be very rough on white people, Jews, Asians, and so on. Anyone who has been demonized in the past.

Rioters could install themselves in apartment building lobbies and make the occupants prisoners. They could gather women and move them to buildings dedicated to rape. They could force people out of their homes and onto the streets. If they have the weapons and the numbers, they can turn cities into little Somalias.

I wonder how things will go.

My feeling is that rioters will cost Biden the election. Liberal politicians, journalists, and celebrities are supporting the rioters, and swing voters, exceedingly dim though they are, must have figured that out by now. How will they feel about being menaced by protesters every time they move about in their cities? How will they feel when they see the rioters strutting in their suburbs? Will they respond by voting for more leftists? I guess they could, but it would be such a bad idea that even a swing voter should be able to see the problem with it.

I wonder if we’re seeing the end of the old America. Is it part of the apocalypse? Did America end one night last year, while we were all asleep in bed? Are we just seeing the delayed decomposition of the body?

I feel like kissing the ground and thanking God I’m not in Miami. We had a protest here yesterday, but things aren’t so bad my skin has made me a target.

If anyone harms me here, it will have to be by my consent. I am just too well prepared. I didn’t buy all this stuff so I could shoot other human beings, but it can be put to that use. Somehow I feel I could stomach being martyred better than shooting immature idiots and sending them to hell before they can change.

It’s time to start learning how to deal with this new rifle. Hope I made a good choice.