Plus Cheery Thoughts About the Apocalypse

It’s a frustrating day. My Ruger Precision Rifle arrived at the pawn shop yesterday. I have seen it. I have touched it, with quivering, eager, enraptured fingers. But my background check is still adrift in cyberspace. I have not been allowed to bring the new baby home.

In Florida, background checks go through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; wonderful, wonderful people, doing a hard job and doing it well. I want to emphasize that last part. While they are diddling around with my rifle.

They match your name up to lists of people they know can’t buy firearms. If there are no matches, they clear you. If anything they pops up, they look into it, and eventually, they clear you. Or not.

The shop owner told me he was seeing two types of checks: the kind that take 5 minutes, and the kind that take 4 hours. It looks like I’m in the latter category. Last time, I had to fill the form out one day and pick the gun up the next. Same thing is happening now.

My guess is that someone with a name somewhat similar to mine did something bad this year. This is my second long background check in a row. Something changed between my last reasonably fast check and the two long ones. It can’t just be the backlog caused by increased gun sales, because I bought a gun a month or two back and got cleared while I was still in the store. There was a backlog then, and they still got me out the door in less than an hour.

I used to wonder if they were deliberately messing with me because I bought so many guns. Thing is, they’re supposed to destroy all background check records, so when I buy a gun, the FDLE should have no idea whether I’ve ever bought one before. Would they lie? Here’s what I think: they are wonderful, wonderful people, doing a hard job and doing it well.

The current administration is pro-civil-rights (more accurate than “pro-gun”), and Florida law enforcement people have a reputation for feeling the same way, so one assumes they would not do anything to reduce gun sales.

The delays are irksome, because they amount to a de facto waiting period. I’m not supposed to have a waiting period. I have a carry permit, and for some reason, this means I don’t have to wait. It’s a little odd, because the waiting period exemption applies to long guns, and a carry permit does not. Maybe the assumption is that if you’re already carrying, a waiting period won’t prevent you from shooting anyone. You’ll just tell the clerk, “My wife burned the taters again, and you guys are holding me up, so I guess I’ll have to shoot her with my carry piece. Thanks for ruining our anniversary.”

I looked up the numbers to see how many checks are done in Florida every month. Guess how many they did last month. Wrong. They did over 200,000. A lot. It makes me wonder how many guns Americans actually have. Anti-civil-rights nuts like to say we have 300 million, but even if you cut Florida’s current monthly total in half to reflect more typical times, Florida alone must be adding a million guns per year, not including private transactions. Wouldn’t that mean Americans are adding something like 10 million per year, making allowances for snowflake states where the serfs don’t get to buy many guns?

If the numbers are right, we should have added something like 200 million guns since 2000, and America has been around a lot longer than that. Guns don’t disappear very often, and most are used very little, so most old guns are still around. Maybe we have more than half a billion guns.

That’s fine with me. The more good people are armed, the more motivation bad people have to leave them alone. We worry a lot about bad people getting guns, but we should probably worry more about good people not having them. The kind of people who want to go after the innocent in America are generally cowards, and they avoid confrontations with anyone who can retaliate.

My guess, based on what the pawn shop guy told me, is that I’ll be getting a call between one and two.

I think I’m getting over the AR bug. I was not a fan of the AR platform, but I bought an AR-15 anyway just for the experience. Then I made fun of it. Then I improved it and started loving it in spite of the design’s obvious silliness. I thought I might build a second AR in 6mm ARC for fun. Today I read some statistics about reliability issues, and now I’m off the AR again.

I read that 19% of troops surveyed said they had experienced an AR failure DURING A BATTLE. When I say “AR,” I mean all types. The M16, for example, is really an AR-15 with full-auto included.

It would be bad if 19% of troops said their guns had failed at any point in their service, including during training, but having it happen during a battle is really bad. It means a lot of Americans have been killed by AR malfunctions; when your rifle fails during battle, you can die. That’s not a small thing. Also, remember, the men who were killed by malfunctions didn’t get to take the survey, so 19% is probably lower than the real figure.

I read an article by a Green Beret, and he pointed out something I hadn’t thought of. The AR has a buffer tube which has to be in line with the barrel, and if the tube gets bent, the gun can’t shoot.

Rifles have bolts, and when they extract and eject cartridges, the bolts have to go backward. There are plenty of semiauto and automatic rifles that don’t have foot-long bolt-and-spring assemblies, but for some reason, Eugene Stoner put such an assembly on his guns. It looks like it was totally unnecessary. The buffer tube is a pipe that holds a spring that operates an AR’s bolt, and in order for the bolt carrier to go backward, a big piston has to travel down the pipe toward the shooter. If the pipe is bent, you’re done. You can’t shoot until you buy a new pipe.

Many guns give you the option of hitting your enemy instead of shooting him. It looks like you can’t do that with an AR. If you hit someone with the butt, you can bend your tube, and then all you have is an expensive club. You can say the answer is to avoid hitting people with your gun, but tell that to someone in combat. What if a soldier is right in a terrorist’s face, and his magazine is empty? Sorry; go get a pugil stick instead. Say, “Time out.”

Even if you don’t hit people with your gun, what if you drop it and step on it? I think that happens in combat. Just guessing.

Another problem with the buffer tube is that it forces you to use a stock which is at least as high as the barrel. There is a reason why long guns have had bent stocks for maybe 500 years. You need to be able to sight down the barrel. You need a place to put your face.

The stock height doesn’t seem to be a problem for me, but I’m not the only person who owns an AR-15.

I may still get another AR15, but I’m afraid I’ll be tempted to set one up for self-defense, and that’s a bad idea. It’s obvious to me that .223 and 5.56 are very poor home defense calibers, but 6mm ARC would be phenomenal. It would cry out to be used against burglars. The caliber would be better than the rifle.

Maybe if I get one, I should weld a long-range scope to the receiver so it could never be used for self-defense distances.

Just kidding.

People get furious when you criticize the AR-15. You should see all the filthy language they use on the web. It’s bad even by Internet standards. “Rage” is the correct word; it’s no exaggeration.

I don’t understand that. You can criticize any product I buy, and I won’t care. I’m not a rifle. Why does it upset other people? Criticism is good. It helps you to stop screwing up. You have to have a serious maturity problem in order to be infuriated by mean remarks about something you bought. People are way too emotionally invested in products. Insecurity leads to bad decisions.

Years ago, at a gun show, some kid heard me talking about my LR-308. He was walking around with an AR-15 on a sling. He had to know what kind of LR-308 I had; it was important to him. I told him it was a DPMS. He was so happy; it was cheaper than what he had. His superiority had been confirmed.

He comforted me, saying my gun was as good as one from Spike’s, a company I had never heard of. I don’t know what he was carrying, but based on his age and attitude, it was probably a $4000 gun he hadn’t finished paying for. He obviously wanted people to see it, since he was lugging it around at the show.

I could have walked up to a table in that very show and bought any AR-15 in the place, and I could have paid cash. I could have bought 10, just to impress the cool kids. What for? I had a 1-MOA rifle from a very reputable company, capable of doing anything you can do with a gun costing three times as much.

I admit, I didn’t have a portrait of Col. Jeff Cooper [genuflect] laser-engraved on the stock, and the bolt carrier wasn’t platinum-plated. If you want economy, little sacrifices have to be made.

Try what I did. Do two Google searches. Here they are: 1) “AR-15 problems,” and 2) “AK-47 problems.” The search results speak for themselves. They are in no way comparable.

Today, out of idle curiosity, I looked around for AR alternatives. The best one for under a thousand dollars is the Mini-14, which is superior in every way except accuracy, which doesn’t matter for self-defense. But the Mini-14 is still expensive, and it shoots the same crummy .223 cartridge. I thought about a Mini-14 in a better chambering. Then I realized I already had Eastern bloc weapons that do exactly what a .30-caliber Mini-14 would do. There was no purpose in changing anything.

I made the right choice years ago when I decided to keep a Vz58 beside my bed, and nothing has changed. It was a great move. An AR-15 would be a big step backward.

Flame away.

I have a ton of .223 ammo, and I don’t regret buying it, because the AR-15 will be a blast at the range and for shooting irritating four-legged mammals. Reliability issues don’t matter when you’re shooting a target or a coon that keeps knocking over your potted plants.

I haven’t shot a living thing since my dad died last year. I lost my taste for it during the grief. I have to go back to firearm pest control. It’s something responsible men have to do. You don’t let squirrels and other pests screw up your property just because every death makes you think of your late dad.

Will I get many chances to shoot the Ruger Precision Rifle before the world ends? I wonder.

Yesterday, a longtime reader provided a link to a disturbing video. A pastor in Kentucky had a couple of dreams. In one, he saw sick people all over the US. Then the coronavirus epidemic hit. In another, he saw chaos which was supposed to take place in the fall of 2020.

I’ll embed the video here. It’s both disturbing and tedious. Sorry if it bores you.

He says the dream indicated that people would be fighting and killing each other in our streets. That, you don’t have to be a prophet to predict. If Trump wins, there will be terrible violence, because leftists have decided rioting is good. If Biden wins, there shouldn’t be rioting, because the people who riot will be celebrating, but as leftist oppression set in, there would surely be widespread civil disobedience in the areas of firearms ownership and carry.

Conservatives just don’t riot. It doesn’t happen. If you see conservatives fighting in the street, it means they were attacked.

I don’t think that will change.

He also said there would be inflation, and he mentioned an 80% drop in the value of money. That concerns me more than rioting. I can’t keep other people from killing each other, I have done what I could to get away from cities, I have encouraged other people to move, and I am able to deal with the stress of watching stubborn people destroy themselves. Inflation would be bad, however, because I need to eat, and I can’t grow much of anything.

Is he right? I am not able to get a clear impression from God. Most of the time, people like this turn out to be wrong, even if they’ve been right before.

I’m wondering if I should buy a property in Tennessee, ASAP, not just for a refuge, but as a hedge against inflation. Land will always have value. Cash and securities won’t. Even gold and silver can become useless.

I keep asking God to tell me what to do. I don’t want to move after it’s too late. I don’t want to beg and live in a shed on someone else’s land. I definitely don’t want to be an agricultural laborer at my age.

Truthfully, I don’t want to be here. If this is the end, may the rapture come ASAP. I have no desire to live in squalor or die at the hands of vicious, unthinking people who have the hearts of apes.

Last night, a young lady I know called me, and she asked if I had seen the same video. That was not comforting. I hadn’t mentioned the video to her. She found it on her own.

She talked about being bound to South Florida for many years. She said she didn’t have the same ties now. I told her she had to get used to cutting people loose. It’s a big part of Christian life. She’s a Haitian girl who grew up in the suburbs, but she has always wanted to live in the country. She had a dream about Tennessee, before I ever mentioned it to her. Weird.

I told her one of my burdens was the knowledge that I couldn’t help most people I knew. I have a good number of friends, and they like to visit. I have spare bedrooms. I have land. Still, I can’t house three dozen poor, unprepared, unskilled, unarmed people and look after them. This is especially true given that I live on sand. Growing food for one person would be hard enough.

I can help a couple of people, but friends who think their families are going to be able to show up and move in are going to be out of luck. Whoever gets here first will win, and the others will have a problem.

The young lady who called is married. Two small children depend on her. Her husband had very little interest in God when they had their first child and became entwined. She knew better. He’s coming around, but it’s very late, and he hasn’t laid any groundwork for the future.

I don’t think I can do much for them. I could take on a wife. I could conceivably shelter an orphan or two. It’s not my place to be a husband to a husband. A married man should be in God’s presence every day, getting God to provide for his family. It’s not my job.

Don’t marry anyone who isn’t close to God. You will regret it.

Here’s a funny thing: I live like a hermit, and I don’t see people often, but there are a bunch of people who depend on me in one way or another. Most of my friends fit this description. They need counsel and other things all the time. I know some of them see my home as a potential haven. I don’t know if they understand how many people want my help or how hard it is for a single man to carry several families. I can’t do it. I need a helper, not people who ride on my back. They need to get ahold of God’s favor, just as I do.

As for my feelings about the future, for a long time, I’ve had the feeling that it doesn’t matter if I let my responsibilities go. I’ve felt that if I chose, I could ignore them, and it wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve felt that if I decided not to do my taxes, it wouldn’t matter, because by the time the IRS would normally have noticed, they would be unable to do anything about it. Maybe chaos really is coming, and the government will be unable to keep up with what we do.

I know I have to live in the country among peaceful Christians. I have to get God to provide abundance for me no matter what happens to America. I will help other people if I can, but I’m not a lifeboat.