I have a distinct distaste for people who use children to push whatever it is they're pushing. Religion, politics, whatever, leave the kids out of the line of fire. Because the last thing we need in this world is people with lifelong enemies because their parents couldn't fight for themselves.
The youngest person to ever try to kill me and come close was a fifteen year-old boy. Set off the first car bomb that hit me. I'm alive because, like most fifteen-year-old boys, he went off a bit early. So I wound up with an armored door full of fragments and lost a handful of decibels instead of getting the engine block of an Opel to the face.
Another unit rolled him and his family up a while later. Given that he failed completely to hurt anyone, I'm glad I never had him in my sights. I do, however, have a deep disgust for whoever took a kid who should have been worrying about school and soccer and convinced him that killing Americans was what the cool kids did.
I lost a lot of respect for people when the pigtailed scandanavian girl became the puppet of the climate movement. I didn't believe the story that she did it on her own initiative and I still don't. Her parents and her handlers used a teenage, possibly abused kid and put her in a place where she'll have international enemies for the rest of her life. And for what? Scolding "how dare you!" at Germany on the climate when India and China are sitting right there is piss-in-a-hurricane useless.
I understand why. Height of metoo and there she was, all Katniss Everdeen braids and Lyanna Mormont sass, spouting the same shit out of a brave new face. Only now the movement could whip up their base to calling shame on anyone wanting to contradict a child. Fucking cowards. Moral equivalents of the guys who jerked off to J-law's stolen nudes. Didn't exploit her themselves, but didn't mind getting their rocks off when someone else did it for them.
*sigh*
And now Kenosha. I'm honestly surprised. I thought some dumbass protester was going to use their own crotch fruit as a human shield so legions of phones could catch the brutality.
But no, turns out some utter dipshit in Illinois thought to arm a cop-obsessed kid with a long gun, cross state lines, and drop him off with no backup, command, or control. Even if I thought the whole defending the property of people who've never heard of you was a good idea, that's just a special brand of what the actual fuck.
Yeah, we enlist 17 y/o's in the military, but they have an entire chain of command behind them waiting to yank their ass out of whatever stupid they wander into. Most times, they've got an assigned battle buddy so any really stupid idea has to be run through TWO sets of rubbing together brain cells. Worst place the military drops off a 17 y/o on their lonesome is at a mall with dorky clothes and a fresh haircut, not in the middle of a riot zone with a longarm!
I openly despise Illinois' gun control laws, with an extra helping of disgust for Mayor "personal security for me but not for thee" Lightfoot. But someone out there drove this kid across state lines armed and armored. Someone owns the FOID card attached to that rifle. And I hope Illinois throws the fucking book at that person.
We're fucking up this world for kids enough without bringing them in to shovel the shit early with their own hands.

The three largest months in history for NICS background checks (currently the most accurate way of tracking gun purchases) have been June, March, and July of this year, respectively. August may have a downtick, but only a slight one. And that mostly due to school openings (and subsequent closings) as well as the post office pushing protests off the front page. And (mercifully) protests haven't seen any fresh atrocities to piss people off further.
I've been through a lot of sales surges in my time, but this one is new.
Normally (by which I mean since the 90's), a gun-buying spree happens when it looks like a new version of the 1994 ban will kick in. Owners who don't want to deal with it stock up on targeted firearms (usually handguns, AK's, AR's, standard capacity magazines, 80% lowers, and the like). Then the bans don't happen, and over a series of months, supply catches up to demand. This is what happened in the 04, 08, 12, and 16 elections, as well as after Sandy Hook.
This happens because every gun control proposal at the federal level has been low-risk high-reward political theater, and everyone knows it. Whether it's bans or universal background checks (which we already have the only enforceable form of), they accomplish three things for the Democrats:
One, they don't cost the government much to implement. Nor do they impose new taxes on rich donors. It's a new law on the books, just add it to the purview of the cops. Grandfather clauses on already-owned weapons are nearly always added, as confiscation costs much more than banning new ones.
Two, it lets your voter base think you've accomplished something.
Three, everyone you pissed off wasn't going to vote for you anyway, so you've lost nothing.
(Republicans pull the same one-two-three bullshit pattern with abortion restrictions, for much the same reasons.)
But that's business as usual.
Here's what's going on now.
What I'm seeing few and far between on the gun store shelves these days are low-end to middle-of-the-road handguns. Ditto for AR and AK platforms, and pump shotguns with shorter barrels.
What's still on the shelves? AR 80% lowers. High-end AR's and pistols. Single-action revolvers. Lever-action rifles. Long-barrelled hunting shotguns.
In other words, we're not seeing gun nuts adding to the hoard. We're seeing a lot of middle-class and working-class folks who never owned a gun before making the decision to get one to defend themselves and their families while they still can. And they're buying as affordably and effectively as they can.
What's being left behind are either too expensive or less than ideal for self and home defense. Not worthless, just too expensive or less than ideal for the intended jobs.
The FBI data backs me up on this, with somewhere between 40% and 60% of the background checks this year being new owners.
Ammo shortage is also an issue. Every manufacturer is working at capacity. Going any further would involve expensive investment in machinery in the middle of a pandemic that's unlikely to pay off over the payment plans they can get on such machines. On top of that, the pandemic has also affected their supply chains. You need lead and copper and brass in serious quantity if you're going to be making cartridges. Which means mines and smelters need to be operating. Not to mention ships and trucks.
Which means ammo is hard to find and expensive if you can find it. Good old fashioned 9mm, it's almost impossible to find the FMJ that was easy to get ahold of anywhere for $.20 or $.30 a round back in January. High-end JHP carry ammo at over $1/round MIGHT be on the shelf, if you're lucky.
So where does that leave us now?
Well, I won't say it's too late if you're making the decision to arm yourself to defend yourself now.
I will say your options are now limited.
Don't be jerks to the gun store folks. They're retail drones like anyone else, only they have a federal agency of their very own breathing down their necks.
Don't try to buy anything off of a gun nut friend. Even if it is legal in your state, a lot of people showed their ass in the run-up to and immediately after the Foster/Perry shooting. Some of the gun nuts are still keeping an eye on bargains and will point you to one if asked, but not at our own stashes.
What does this bode for the future?
Nobody knows, folks. I think a magic 8 ball would explode if I even asked.
The riots and protests are increasingly dying down for now. They've been going all summer and nobody's acquired new rallying points and/or martyrs to the causes. If any of them does, that can change overnight. But even this past weekend's protests at Stone Mountain wound up in small brawls over dick size than shootings and melees.
Effectively, every protest has about 20 factions in play.
None of them want to be the one to fire the first shot.
ALL of them want to be the first one to shoot back.
(The Foster/Perry shooting looks like it's being quietly written off as them defending themselves against each other, which lets everyone involved save face)
The protests are also facing heavy resistance to expansion. A lot of smaller cities have seen what's happened elsewhere, decided they wanted none of that, and ran the protests out of town before they even started.
In other words, the quiet/silent majority is getting tired of the bullshit.
Things that can make the protests renew or expand:
eviction moratoriums are being lifted all across the country and the end of the month is coming up fast.
Not even a half-assed replacement to the federal UI kicker is in play.
And we're either on a second wave or never finished the first one, with a 7-day average of over 1K deaths in the US going for over two weeks now.
Harris and her track record on gun control is heavier than many. If she starts leading in the polls big, we might get a normal surge on top of this one. I wouldn't be surprised to see people quietly stocking up on ammo just in case.
I already mentioned the lines the protesters and even the rioters are unwilling to cross. There's another one.
Thus far, the riot damage (and I mean breaking, looting, and burning) has largely limited itself to businesses and government buildings. I've heard of onesies and twosies of upper floor apartments that happened to be over a business being burned, but by and large it's been restricted to businesses and government buildings.
And while it's hard to care about government buildings these days and businesses are in a gray area (It's easy to argue they're not worth lives if it's not YOUR life's work going up in flames. Cities demanding taxes before allowing rebuilding ain't helping.), neither of them hold the place we do for homes.
There have been a couple instances of protest mobs showing up on the front lawns of various politicians, to varying degrees of success.
But while the protests have reached homes, the riots haven't yet. It's a line I don't think anyone's willing to cross at the moment.
I've thought a lot about how the election will affect such things, but we're too far out and there's too much in play. I don't want to start worrying people with potentials that are still vague guesswork.
Take care of yourselves out there.

NY Attorney general is moving to dissolve the NRA after a fraud investigation.
A part of me thinks it's not going to happen. A NY politician giving a shit about fraud and abuse is about as reliable as a bubble wrap anvil. Pot, meet the kettle.
The rest of me doesn't honestly care. The NRA became a cronyism machine years ago, and it's leadership hasn't had a decent shakeup since the Cincinnati revolt, which happened before I was born. It devolved from being an organization devoted to 2A that actually gave a shit and put its money where its mouth was to a good cookie machine for baseline Republicans.
Where's my universal CCW, NRA?
Where the fuck were you when Virginia's shiny new legislature repping beltway and Maryland refugees decided to shit all over the rights of the rest of the state?
Where the fuck have you been on red flag laws?
Where the fuck were you when Breonna Taylor was killed and her boyfriend jailed for defending her?
I've been watching Piper over at Armed Equality and Erin over at Pink Pistols and Maj over at Black Guns Matter working day in and day out. Where the fuck are you and your crew, Wayne?
The NRA had all the resources it needed to be a political powerhouse for the rights it purports to champion. 7 Million brand-new gun owners since January and counting.
Instead it's the lobbyist equivalent of the asshole old boomer fudd in the back corner of the gun show, trying to make one last hugely profitable deal before he croaks. And everyone else at the show knows how to use gunbroker too and knows exactly what he's trying to pawn off and what it really sells for. And they all roll their eyes and go, "OK Boomer. I'll just buy it off your estate sale. Assuming your granola munching millennial kids don't turn em into a buyback program for a Starbucks gift card."
Fuck 'em.