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.

What’s in the Scroll?

It’s very weird how the truth, and by “truth,” I mean the only truth, which is God’s truth, works. It’s not hard to understand, and it’s generally very obvious, but we are often unable to see it. We can’t see the truth until God shows it to us with supernatural revelation, and then it appears simple and obvious, because it is.

Human beings are born blind and deaf. We don’t have the equipment to perceive the truth. It has to be revealed to us by God. The reason we don’t understand things is that we are supernaturally blocked.

I have wanted to put together an end time timeline so I would know what was going on around me. I used to sit around with Microsoft Word open, trying to make a list. I looked at the Bible, and I wrote things down. It should have been very easy, but it wasn’t, and I made mistakes.

Yesterday I decided to try again, and it all came together in a very short time. That’s how things work when God helps you.

Here’s how it looks:

1. Falling away.
2. Persecution.
3. Rapture.
4. Tribulation and the rule of the Antichrist.
5. Return of Jesus.
6. Satan and other inferior spirits bound.
7. Messianic age, with Jesus on earth, ruling with resurrected believers.
8. Satan released to tempt the world.
9. Satan defeated and imprisoned forever, along with the damned.
10. Heaven and earth destroyed.

That’s not everything, but it’s a few things I consider important. Right now, it seems pretty sound.

The age of the Gentiles, which I call the Church Age, is over. God isn’t watering the plant, and it’s withering. If we’re not in the apocalypse, which comes next, we’re in some kind of interstitial transition period.

Yesterday, I wrote about the rapture. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I keep feeling that God is telling me I am not going to be on earth next year. On the other hand, people love to say we can’t predict anything. While Jesus was with the disciples, he said he didn’t know when the end would come. People point to that and say Jesus still doesn’t know, so we won’t know, either. He said his “day” would come like a thief in the night, and he said he would return when the disciples thought not. Many Christians think we’re going to be taken by surprise.

I opined that Jesus had probably been told the date of the rapture at some point after saying he didn’t know it, because the Bible didn’t say he would never be told. I guessed that he would give his people warning, because the Bible says God doesn’t do anything without telling the prophets.

In my comments, Juliette Ochieng, AKA Baldilocks, piped up with the answer. In 1 Thessalonians 5, we see this:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Well, there you go.

I read the Bible, and I listen to the Bible, but I don’t remember all of it all the time. The answer was right there, and I didn’t remember reading it.

Jesus warned Lot, and he warned Noah. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the flood were pictures of the apocalypse. God works in repetitive patterns. He’s not going to take his favor away from the world suddenly, fail to inform his children, and leave them in the world to suffer not only the torments intended for the lost but also unrestrained persecution.

So the news is very good.

What about redemption, though? I don’t mean salvation. I mean restoration. The world has been cursed for thousands of years. Many saved people have died young. They’ve even died in the womb. They’ve been barren. They’ve had deformities. They’ve died single. They’ve been poor and diseased. They’ve been murdered by unbelievers, including rabbis, popes, and priests. What about compensation?

The Bible clearly says believers will rule the world with Jesus for a thousand years. It’s not referring to believers who appear out of nowhere. It refers to those who lived before the return of Jesus.

This means you get a second chance at life. If you were deformed, maimed, or sick, you get to live whole and healthy. If you were mentally ill, you get to live with a healthy mind. If you were poor, you live in abundance. If you were persecuted, you live in safety. You get to prosper. You get to marry your childhood sweetheart and have an ideal life.

The Bible says people in heaven don’t marry, but the Messianic age will take place on earth, not just in heaven. It says people will live long lives. It says, “the child shall die an hundred years old.” It doesn’t say, “the resurrected person will die an hundred years old.” There will be marriage and reproduction.

It ties up a lot of loose ends. The Bible is full of wonderful promises for us, but we often die without seeing them realized. It also promises things to the Messiah, but Jesus was killed before they came to pass. We know the reward of Jesus comes after his return, fulfilling every prophecy, and we know we are his body, and we inherit the blessings he earned. It makes sense that we, too, would be fulfilled in the Messianic age.

This is how I see things at the moment. I don’t see any reason to doubt it.

There are lots of promises about people who have been thwarted, receiving all the things of which they have been deprived. How can those promises be true if we don’t get a do-over, just like Jesus?

It’s astounding to see how disgusting the world has gotten. We see filthy language on billboards. The Internet has made us murderous and vicious. The lowest of the low are our celebrities and role models. We even have Sports Illustrated trying to turn men into homosexuals.

Imagine going back to 1980 and telling the staffers at Sports Illustrated they were going to try to convert heterosexual men. They would have assumed you were insane. But Sports Illustrated now has a castrated male swimsuit model, and the intention of their swimsuit photos is to arouse heterosexual men sexually. They’re trying to convince straight American males it’s okay to lust after a man. This guy also works for Victoria’s Secret, so men have already seen him prancing around in women’s underwear.

It’s going to work. Mark my words. There is no idiocy human beings can’t swallow when the Holy Spirit is gone and peer pressure is applied.

It’s going to be a bad time for women when homosexuality diverts males in large numbers. Women are hard for men to get along with, and they have babies. They expect to be supported. They earn less money. Selfish men who have no sexual desire for women will have great incentive to abandon them.

When two gay men get together, they have some advantages. They understand each other well. They have similar desires and opinions. They don’t have to worry about babies popping up to interfere with their selfish lives. They don’t have to have the burden and fear of long-term commitment. They are likely to have more money than a straight couple. These truths will put women in a bad spot.

When it comes to sex, men love novelty. Men in gay relationships can switch and swap all the time, keeping sex interesting. No wife can pull that off. Marry the most beautiful woman on earth, and in a few months or even weeks, you’ll find her less exciting than other women. It’s just the way men work.

Of course, the tribulation will be terrible for women, and everyone else, in many other ways.

I wonder what will happen to the unborn in the rapture. The unborn are people, and they have no sin. Will they be taken? Will pregnant women find they are suddenly no longer pregnant? Will children below the age of accountability disappear? Will people who lack the mental capacity to sin disappear? Am I the only one who wonders about these things?

How will TV preachers explain it when the rapture comes and they’re still here doing their shows? What excuses will they come up with? Maybe they’ll say God chose his special, anointed, exalted servants to stay during the tribulation, preach to the unsaved, and, of course, collect a lot of offerings.

I think we’ll have a very good idea when the rapture is coming. I think it will be very soon. I think the rewards for people who make it will be far better than anything we can imagine. I don’t believe we have anything to worry about.

Zoloft and Xanax are Counterfeits

Nothing good comes out of a person unless God first puts it inside him. It’s impossible to do all the things Jesus wants us to do unless he gives us supernatural revelation. I just got a great one.

I was watching a video from One for Israel Ministries. It’s a Messianic ministry in Israel. They put up wonderful testimonies from Jews who got to know their Messiah. They get death threats from rabbis, but they seem to be doing fine.

In case you don’t want to sit through the video, I’ll spoil it for you. A man was in the French army. He was treated badly because he was a Jew. He knew a large, muscular Muslim named Korish. The Muslim asked him for things all the time, and he gave them to him. One day Korish asked him for a cigarette, and he refused to give it to him because Korish never thanked him.

Korish beat him so badly he lost consciousness. He believes he died. He left his body. He prayed to God, asking him to do something, if he really existed.

He reentered his body. He was in a coma for over 5 months. When he woke up, he was given a complaint to sign. Korish would have gone to prison, and he would have had to pay his victim a lot of money. He wanted to put Korish in prison, and he wanted to kill him when he got out. Korish was a mess. He cried all the time and couldn’t eat.

The victim’s family was experiencing a wave of salvations accompanied by miracle healings. He started reading the New Testament. He was captivated by the story of the landlord who forgave his servant’s debts.

I won’t summarize the story, because every Christian knows it.

The victim thought about what he owed God for saving his life, and he forgave Korish. He owed God much more than Korish owed him.

I thought about this. I forgive people all the time. I’m not stupid. I know I have to do it. I also know it makes life easier. I ask God to help me forgive people from the heart. I’ve been asking for that for years.

Today I got a revelation. Somehow, I suddenly had a heartfelt appreciation of the forgiveness I had received. I always try to be forgiving, and I fight self-righteousness, but until today, I couldn’t completely shake the idea that I was doing people a favor when I forgave them. Of course, I’m not. It’s an obligation. In relation to God, I am much worse than the worst person who has harmed me, but God is letting it slide. I am not an underserving victim surrounded by inferiors. I am just like the people I forgive. I knew that already, but now I can feel it. Only God can make me feel it.

I feel peace surrounding me. I want to get off the couch and go run an errand, but I feel like I’m glued here. Everything is so quiet.

The mind can’t save you. The mind is just a door you can use to let the Holy Spirit in.

I’m very grateful. I couldn’t do this on my own. I have been trying so long, I can’t remember when I started.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen the video before.

I guess I’ll sit here and swim in the fog of peace until I can get up.

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.

Church Age Ends; Tribulation Soon to Follow

Last night, I had a sobering experience. I heard myself thinking the world was ending. I heard it over and over. Then I got the strong impression that I would not be here on earth next year.

When it comes to things like this, I have been wrong a few times. I’m generally right. I remember being filled with the strong sense that my dad would not be alive on April 1, 2019, and he died on March 25. I had the impression a long time before he died. It didn’t come to me on March 24.

If anyone wants to take time to pray that I would know the truth, I would appreciate it. I don’t want to be deceived.

The Bible says we will not know the day or the hour of the rapture, but it doesn’t say we won’t have a good general idea when it will happen. It doesn’t say we won’t know the year. Sometimes you have to read carefully in order to avoid making a mistake.

The Bible can be confusing. It says God doesn’t do anything without telling the prophets, but Jesus told the disciples he would come at a time when they thought not.

Did he mean believers would not know the rapture was imminent? Maybe not. Maybe he meant he would return 2000 years later instead of revealing himself as God in their time. The disciples seem to have expected things to wrap up quickly. It could be that when he said “you,” he was referring to the people who were with him at that moment.

Here’s something interesting: “apocalypse” doesn’t mean “end of the world” or “destruction.” It means “revelation.” Things will be revealed.

I was praying about these things last night, and I kept feeling a strange sensation. I concentrated on it and tried to define it. I realized I felt as though I were in the presence of someone straining to give birth.

I embedded a video made by a pastor in Kentucky. He had dreams he felt were prophetic. He thinks 2021 will be a taste of hell in America. He predicts 80% inflation. I didn’t want to hear that. I don’t have a nine-to-five job. If my cash disappears, and my investments turn into liabilities, and precious metals become relatively worthless, what will I do to survive at my age? After I got the impression that I would be raptured, I felt much better. I don’t want to be a beggar or a laborer when I could be at the marriage supper of Jesus Christ.

Yesterday I saw something truly disgusting, and I considered it a sign that God is done with the world. Sports Illustrated is putting a castrated man in its swimsuit edition. They fully expect other men to be aroused by him. Many of them will be aroused. Men who object will be vilified. Wait and see. It’s not enough to tolerate homosexual eunuchs. We are now expected to participate in their sick fetish.

Try and imagine this happening in 1985. No; that doesn’t get the message across. It’s not that shocking if things change a lot over 35 years. Try and imagine it happening in 2015. Man is changing with extreme rapidity now. Psychosis is a pandemic.

It’s easy to see how Sodom ended up with gangs of homosexual rapists who had no interest in women. Homosexuality is rare in healthy cultures, but the word says God gives people who reject him over to it. He stops blocking it, so it spreads. I wouldn’t be shocked if homosexuality became the majority orientation among American males, assuming there is still enough time for it to happen. For quite some time, I’ve believed it would eventually happen.

The world of athletics has always been full of homosexuality. Football is full of unexpressed perversion. Wrestling is unbelievable; it amazes me that men have the stomach to spend hours practicing. A huge percentage of female athletes are lesbians. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Sports Illustrated should become a leading force in the drive to mainstream sodomy and convert heterosexuals.

Ten years ago, you were required to tolerate. Now you are expected to participate.

In America, sport is the god of most adult males. They have a sick, infantile devotion to it. If your god tells you to lust for other men, will you be able to refuse?

There are many, many families in America who spend over $10,000 per year on spectator sports. They go into debt to do it. They paint their houses with team colors. They get in ludicrous bar fights over whose team is best. People have tattooed team logos on their heads. Athlete worship is a powerful tool. We take people with low IQ’s and low character and turn them into apostles because they can jump high and throw balls through nets.

How long have I been saying homosexuality would be used as a club to beat Christians? Probably a decade. I’m sure people thought I was nuts. I was a hundred percent correct. Who would have expected this in 1995? Who would have connected homosexuality to the widescale persecution of the church?

Tolerance is a one-way street.

I wish the rapture were tomorrow. The older I get, the more offensive the earth becomes, and the more I long for something good. I guess everyone in labor wishes it would pass quickly.

Most Christians will be right here during the tribulation. Most of us are complete hypocrites. We lie to ourselves, and we let TV preachers and greedy pastors lie to us. The rapture will be a litmus test. If you’re still here when it’s over, you will be exposed. It will be the correct outcome, and you won’t be able to dispute it.

Things are unpleasant now that we have a mild epidemic, mild shortages, and a little bit of violence. Don’t forget; God is restraining things while his children are here. When we’re gone, he will let the dam burst. Imagine what it will be like when there are severe plagues everywhere, it’s hard to get food, and neighbors are killing each other in every suburb.

The word says the rich will ask the hills and mountains to cover them and hide them from God’s wrath. That’s already happening. Rich people who think God can’t penetrate earthly obstacles are building underground shelters. Instead of listening to God, they’re taking their cues from a Kubrick character.

I hope the impression I have is correct. If I can’t reach enough people to make staying on earth worth the trouble, I want to leave. I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to live under the likes of Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. I don’t want the annoyance of having my law license revoked because I opposed sexual sin on my blog. I don’t want to be told I can’t buy or sell. I don’t want to have my property confiscated. I’m not excited about prison. I would like to put this place behind me. I’m tired of being rejected for telling the truth.

I would give up a thousand acres and a mansion in Tennessee for half of an efficiency apartment in heaven.

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.

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.

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.

You have Placed Your Bet

I believe I have over 100 Youtube subscriptions. I’m not sure. It takes a long time to scroll down through all of them.

I have subscribed to some obscure channels maintained by Christians no one watches. One of them belongs to a man who calls himself Brother Grahame. From the sound of his voice, I assume he’s somewhere in northern England. He had an experience in which he found himself in absolute darkness and knew, instantly, that everything he had done in his life was worthless. He knew God existed, and he knew he was the God of the Bible. He knew he should have been serving him.

Today I was looking for something to watch after mowing the yard, and I saw a recent video he published. He had a dream about people building shelters, and in the dream, God spoke to him and told him his wrath was coming. People were preparing shelters that wouldn’t protect them.

I’ll post the video here.

I asked God if his dream meant anything, and I felt the Holy Spirit rushing through me, confirming that the dream came from the Lord.

Since watching the video, I’ve felt grief for the world. I think we are really at the end. I think the age of the gentiles is over, which means the next major event will be the rapture.

Since about 2008, I have been trying to tell people the few things I know about God, and I have had very little success. I tried telling people at Trinity Church in Miami, and the pastors ostracized me and treated me like a child. I tried telling people at New Dawn Ministries in Miami, and the pastors developed a mysterious rage and shut me out, before the head pastor was imprisoned for raping a little girl over and over. Very few people at either church listened to me, and generally, they turned out to be hypocrites. They were Christians on Sunday. The rest of the week, they were getting high, living with people they weren’t married to, listening to filthy music, swallowing the antichristian lies of the political left, dressing provocatively, getting tattoos, and listening to liars like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes. They thought anyone who had a TV camera pointed at him was speaking for God, especially when such people told them what they wanted to hear.

I blog about God, and some people have responded, and I reached a small number of people I knew from church. I reached a lady who saw what I said on Facebook. I reached my dad and one other family member. That’s about it. I feel like I accomplished nearly nothing.

I really did try. I never stopped telling people what I knew. I can’t blame myself if no one listened. I don’t know what else I could have done.

Sometimes I think I should be glad I was rejected, because Jesus and the prophets were rejected. Rejection can be a good sign, because no one–no one–who pleases God is popular. But shouldn’t I have had more success than this? If I were doing things right, wouldn’t God connect me with more people?

Shouldn’t I have done better here in America, which is, after all, a country in which most people claim to be Christians?

I hope I will accomplish something before the end. I like to think God is holding me in reserve for something.

For a long time, I’ve felt a strong identification with Zerubbabel, the governor of Judea who helped rebuild the temple under Darius. His name means “seed of Babel.” I believe prayer in tongues is the undoing of the confusion of tongues in Babel. I’ve been saying this for a decade. I came out of a world where tongues were confused, and I pushed people to learn the unifying tongue of the Holy Spirit. Now that I think about it, it’s a little bit like Abraham’s story. Legend says his father made idols, so Abraham would have been an idolmaker’s assistant. He was the seed of a pagan culture. Then God removed him from that culture, and he started a better one.

I keep speaking in tongues and trying to interpret. I have heard God telling me I was going to be his ensign. Then I heard him say I would be his signet. Yesterday, randomly, I listened to Haggai. I heard the part where God said Zerubbabel was going to be his signet. I hadn’t noticed that before. It was chilling.

Signets and ensigns serve the same purpose. They are not authorities. They are things that illustrate someone else’s authority. A signet or an ensign carries the power of the person it belongs to, and when you use a signet or an ensign, you have that person’s power because you act in his name.

We are supposed to speak and act in the name of Jesus.

Sometimes I wonder if anything we do from here on out matters. If you knew you were going to move to another country next week, would you start a business where you are now? Would you look for a wife locally? Would you plant fruit trees? Probably not. I feel like the game is over and the spectators are still sitting in the stands.

If God’s wrath truly is about to fall on us, things are going to be terrible, and you will not be able to protect yourself. He always knows where you are. There are no barriers that can come between you and whatever he wants to do to you. No one can rescue you. Money can’t buy you a way out. Guns won’t help. Prepping won’t help. The government teat won’t help. You can’t bargain. You just have to suffer.

If you rejected Jesus back when you could get away with it, and you thought no one could do anything about it, you will be proven wrong. What you’ve done has been recorded, and it will not be forgotten or forgiven. God’s justice is perfect. He doesn’t let any evil act, no matter how small, go unpunished. If you don’t ask Jesus to take your punishment, you’re going to have to take it yourself. All your smug, dismissive arguments won’t help you. Every word you spoke against Jesus will be like a red-hot anvil resting on your head. All your nonchalance and sarcasm will be gone. There will be nothing left but pain, terror, humiliation, loneliness, and regret so deep it can’t be imagined. You will also suffer the horror of thinking about the loved ones you convinced to go to hell with you. Your children, perhaps. Your spouse. Friends.

Generally, when you worry about something, there is a limit to the suffering. Often, what you worry about won’t happen. When such things happen, they’re usually not as bad as you thought. Even if the suffering is severe, it’s usually temporary. At worst, it only lasts as long as you live. When you’ve been damned, it’s not like that. You can’t tell yourself the thing you worry about won’t happen. It has already happened. You can’t say things won’t be that bad, because you know they will be worse than you can imagine. You can’t say it will be temporary, because you know it will never stop. It will never get any better.

You will be in agony all the time. You won’t be able to die again and escape. There will be no one to hear an appeal. You will never see anyone you love again, and they will all forget you. Your name will disappear forever. Your agony will be fresh all the time, but in heaven, it will be as though you never existed. No one will miss you or ask God to help you. It would be like asking a maternity ward nurse to comfort afterbirth.

They won’t think about you, but you will think about them constantly, because you’ll know they are bathing in God’s love, in a place where there is no suffering of any kind.

My impression is that if we elect Biden, it will be a sign that God has cut us off. It will prove demons rule America, and that God has grown tired of trying to help us. No sane person could witness what the left is doing and vote for a demented liar who will perpetuate it.

MORE

I just read some things about Zerubbabel.

He was supposed to be the king of Judah. His grandfather, Jehoiachin, was cursed. Jehoiachin’s father was evil; he practiced false religions. Jehoiachin continued in his ways, and he only ruled for 100 days before Nebuchadnezzar deposed him and took him captive.

God cursed Jehoiachin:

This is what the LORD says: “Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule any more in Judah.”

During his lifetime, these things were true. His eldest son Shealtiel should have been king, but Nebuchadnezzar appointed Jehoiachin’s uncle, an impostor.

It’s a remarkable parallel to the life of John the Baptist. John’s father was a temple priest, and John should have been a priest, but the Romans did away with God’s appointments and put political toadies in the priesthood. John was born to teach in the temple, but he became a voice in the wilderness instead.

Zerubbabel ended up joining the lineage of Jesus. He was one of his direct ancestors.

Here is a striking thing Jeremiah said about Jehoiachin, also known as Coniah:

“As I live,” says the Lord, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off; and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you fear—the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the hand of the Chaldeans.”

He referred to Jehoiachin as a signet he would pull off, and later, he called Zerubbabel his signet.

God cursed the entire house of Judah through Jeremiah, saying:

“You are Gilead to Me, The head of Lebanon; Yet I surely will make you a wilderness, Cities which are not inhabited. I will prepare destroyers against you, Everyone with his weapons; They shall cut down your choice cedars And cast them into the fire.

It looks like there is a parallel.

To work against God is to destroy his temple. Solomon’s temple was made with cedar wood from Lebanon. Nebuchadnezzar was able to destroy it because the Jews, led by the kings of Judah, had left it open to supernatural attack. What the Jews did to God, God did to them.

John was supposed to work in a building full of cedar, but he had to teach in the wilderness because the Jews strayed and didn’t keep God’s protection and order in the temple.

John and Zerubbabel had to rule outside of their proper estates because of the rebellion of their forebears.

It’s amazing how Biblical patterns repeat. John and Jesus seem a lot like Zerubbabel and Joshua (same Hebrew name as Jesus), the high priest of his time. Both pairs worked together to rebuild God’s kingdom on earth. There is always symmetry in the supernatural, so Satan has his pair, too. Satan imitates the pattern with the Beast and his false prophet.

I don’t understand everything, but I can tell you that it’s time to get your act together. You can have your pose and your pride, or you can have mercy. That sums it up.

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.

Wistful Thoughts From a Sinking Ship

If you want a testimony to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, look no further. You only have to see how I behave in the morning.

I have three friends staying in my house; a couple and their teenage son. All are younger than I am. Yesterday, we went to the grocery. They couldn’t believe I didn’t have coffee in the house. They didn’t buy any, however.

This morning I woke up at 7:00 and started praying. Walked into the kitchen two hours later, and I saw two zombies peering into the refrigerator. My friend and his wife were squinting at the food through tiny slits. Their shoulders were hunched. They looked like someone had just rolled them out of bed at three a.m.

They were not happy about the lack of coffee, even though it was their choice.

I must have been annoying. I was bouncing around like a high school kid, feeding my birds and getting food ready for lunch. I kept trying not to talk too loud.

They managed to get themselves some eggs and bacon. Watching them eat was like watching a seating in the cafeteria at an assisted living facility. Thankfully, no one passed out in the food.

I felt great even though I strained my back yesterday. I was eager to get the day started. It has been almost two hours, and they are still trying to get into the shower.

When I was younger, I detested mornings. I was perfectly happy to sleep until noon. I hated getting up. When I was practicing law in downtown Miami, I used to drink an entire colada before getting started. A colada is a small container of espresso intended for several people.

I don’t want caffeine in the house now. I’m not a drug user. Why would I want to take drugs every morning?

When I used caffeine, I ground my teeth at night. I had to have some work done on some teeth that were worn. I don’t do that now. If I drank a cup of tea today, I would probably have to take benadryl in order to get to sleep tonight. The Holy Spirit doesn’t need help from drugs.

If you can’t get it together in the morning, there is a kink in the hose between you and God. You weren’t created to dread life.

By the time I’m ready for lunch, they should be dressed.

The husband is Nicaraguan, and his wife is Puerto Rican. They’re charismatic Christians. Yesterday, we talked a lot about the insanity (literal) of modern leftists. They support Trump a hundred percent, as does their son. How do their relatives feel? They’re not happy. They think all Hispanics should support illegal immigration instead of supporting the generous country they swear allegiance to in order to be allowed to stay. They have had fights with friends.

Blessed foreigners move to this country and then join our persecutors. How about that? Says a lot about human depravity.

Why are my friends on the right side of history? It’s the Holy Spirit at work. We look different, and we come from different places, but the Holy Spirit protects serious charismatics from the delusions of the Beast’s socialist, white-hating children, so my friends and I have harmony. I stand against white nuts who don’t know the Holy Spirit, and they stand against brown nuts.

My friends say there is a movement to destroy the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. I guess freeing the slaves was a racist move. Anyway, they are not pleased with what is happening.

I always feel a certain amount of gratitude on the Fourth of July, but this year, it’s different. We didn’t just get independence, which wasn’t actually that great a blessing. We got over 200 years of relative freedom from persecution. Now that’s over. Christians in the US are going to be like Christians in China, and after that, we’ll be like Christians in Iran or Indonesia.

Yesterday we watched a video by Zev Porat, the Israeli Messianic rabbi. He told how his family had tormented him after his acceptance of Yeshua. His grandfather, who is also a rabbi, threw dishes at his head and cut him so badly he needed stitches. His sister asked a religious court for a restraining order. He has never seen his nephews. He was physically thrown out of his grandfather’s funeral, by hired goons. He was fired from his job and ended up living in a tent. His multimillion-dollar inheritance was taken away because he refused to sign a paper saying he renounced Yeshua. He was punched and beaten by a mob. Seven rabbis barged into his tent, tried to bribe him to quit, and spat on him when he refused.

I have never had to deal with that kind of thing, which is very typical among religious Jews. I’ve been completely rejected by crooked pastors and most people who went to the churches I attended. I have stopped communicating with many aquaintances with whom I no longer have much in common. That’s the extent of my persecution and separation. No one spits on me, although I know a few people who would like to.

In Muslim countries, Christians are crucified and beheaded. Some have had their arms cut off. Their churches are burned. The news doesn’t tell us, because Satan controls the press, but you can look it up. Socialist countries have killed innumerable Christians. They have tortured and imprisoned them. They have forced them to do slave labor.

America has been a beautiful haven. Many people have to fight their way into Christian-dominated cultures. I was born into one. I didn’t have to earn a thing. What a blessing.

It was wonderful while it lasted, and whatever protection God will give me in my remaining time will be a magnificent gift. I wish I had always understood what a treasure I had.

Coronavirus Nibbling at Conservative Strongholds

For the second time this year, guests have bailed out due to coronavirus worries.

I invited two friends and their son to visit this weekend. Another friend with three sons was also going to come. A third family with two adults and 5 kids was also included. The lady with three sons decided to bail because she was concerned about taking the disease to her elderly mother.

I’m so used to being insulated, I couldn’t figure out why she was canceling. She had to explain it.

Let’s see how things are going. The papers say we are approaching 800 known cases here, up from something like 300 as of June 1. Testing has gone crazy, which accounts for some of the increase, but it may also be that there is a real spike in cases. Our death toll is stuck at 10, and we have only had around 70 hospitalizations.

Interesting fact: the county is 11.5% black, but 17% of the known cases are black. The figure for non-Hispanic whites is not published, but based on other figures that have been disclosed, it looks like we come in at a little over 50%, in a county where 84% of the people are white and the vast majority of whites are non-Hispanic. In this county, Hispanics make up something like 6% of the population.

Conclusion: white people are doing very well, and other people are not. Why? Also, women are doing much worse than men.

Are white people and men really less likely to be infected, or are we just less likely to get tested?

As always, I don’t know. Testing is still sporadic even if it’s much more common than it used to be. The tests are not reliable. When they work, they only identify active cases, so we have no idea how many people have been infected, had no symptoms, and recovered. No one really knows what’s happening.

Am I concerned about this weekend? I’m not too concerned about myself, but guess who I’m entertaining? Blacks and Hispanics. None of them are old or severely obese, but three are on the heavy side.

I am not anxious to get sick or die, but I’m also not excited about cowering in my burrow and enjoying a continually contracting standard of life just so I can remain alive in a country which, were it a person, would now be close to being wheeled around on a handtruck wearing a straitjacket and plastic face restraint.

One family is from a county with 2700 cases, with a population about 25% greater than the county where I live. Not good, but well below 1%. The others live in a county right at 1%, although they don’t live in the densest area.

What do you do? Do you wall yourself into a hole and have food pumped in through a tube? Do you tear up all your masks and do whatever you please?

We still don’t have much in the way of major-celebrity fatalities. The only one I know of is Roy Horn, and calling him a major celebrity is gracious. Where are the deaths? Many celebrities are wealthy enough to hole up for the rest of their lives, but many are not. There are a lot of broke celebrities. Why aren’t any of them dying? Where are the broke ex-athletes who are very famous yet not rich enough to insulate themselves from coronavirus? They’re all still alive. Why?

The epidemic still doesn’t make sense. It probably won’t make sense 5 years from now. We have been lied to over and over because of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and leftists don’t like to go back and correct their lies years later. We may never know what is and is not true.

If there truly is a serious spike, we will see deaths spike just as much by the middle of July, and we will surely see some famous people die. If we don’t see these things, how can we believe the epidemic got significantly worse? What magic could explain it?

What if I get sick and die? I guess people will mock me for downplaying the epidemic. I’ll be on the streets of gold, however, so it’s not like I’ll care. Hooray for you; you got to deal with the end of civilization a lot longer than I did.

Based on New York’s experience, we have maybe another month of high numbers before us.

I will take reasonable precautions, as always, and leave it at that. I’ll keep trying to stay close to God. Hope I don’t end up in the hospital. If I die, I die. I don’t think it will happen, though. The odds against me being infected are high, the odds of dying are very low, and there is a very good chance I already had the disease in February.

If I stop blogging for a month, send donations to the NRA or World Relief and move on with your lives.

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.