abyss

Recently, I spent some time in two “sports stores” (gun shops) waiting while a buddy finalized purchases. I was an observer. I had no money to spend -- I simply watched.

I need to insert some disclaimers here. I own guns. I am a good shot, in fact with my preferred handgun: I am very good. While at best fair, I can handle a bow too. I have hunted, and the only reason I do not now is that I do not live near appropriate land where I can gain access.

I found the experience horrifying. I watched several people buy guns. Not to hunt, not to target shoot – in fact none seemed likely to spend time learning to shoot the weapons they bought. All bought very high powered, intentionally deadly, ammunition.


So why, decades after becoming a civilian, is a man arming? Why does a fifty-something woman buy her first gun? Why will there be a loaded revolver near a new marriage bed? Why does a man bring his wife to pick out an assault rifle as her birthday gift? There is as Buffalo Springfield observed, “something happening here.”

Come; look into the abyss with me.

In the view of those new gun owners, several things are true. First, the new Attorney General and the Democrat controlled Congress are going to try to disarm middle class Americans. Second, Mr. Obama’s economic policies will lead to complete collapse of the economic system, food riots, and eventually a police state. This is intentional. Third, the protective services, police, National Guard etc are either the enemy or completely unable to defend law and order. Finally ‘the Rapture’ is about to happen and if one is left here, the ‘great tribulation.’

The people buying those guns believe all or some of these things absolutely. They see chaos looming, they are afraid. They are preparing for the long night.

The problem here is that when one prepares for war, one gets war. No weapon too terrible to ever be used has escaped use, be it the bow, crossbow, rifle, canon, machine gun, or atom bomb. Arsenals exist to support violence not peace. One of those I met in a gun shop told me he expects, “a civil war.”

According to my sources, those who “know” about such things suggest that everyone should have a year’s rations including water, fuel for a generator, one assault rifle and one handgun for each adult and 1,000(!) rounds of ammunition for each weapon. Combat knives are apparently optional. I cannot imagine what sort of situation would compel me to own several thousand rounds of hollow point magnum loads. 1,000 lives per weapon in my hands – whom is it I should expect to kill?

This is the abyss. Americans are arming expecting to kill Americans. I was actually told that one expectation was that the government would try to arrest people for being well off and that in that case, killing police was the moral choice.

I do not know how many people actually believe this stuff. I can tell you the gun shops were both hiring. In our recession / depression burdened society apparent to me is an investment opportunity in the stock of gun makers.

Again, I do not hate firearms. I like to target shoot and I am good at it. But I have looked into the abyss. I am terrified.