Happiness is a Warm Gun

I have thought in the past about owning a firearm.

Unlike most lefties, I'm quite comfortable with guns. I was a Boy Scout and my dad was a cop; he used his service revolver to take potshots at groundhogs, and although I don't think my mother liked the guns all that much, at least I knew enough to respect what they were designed to do. In Scouts, I could shoot reasonablly well, but never really had the desire to make a hobby of it.

In college, I had a buddy whose brother was a Marine, and we went shooting a few times. I know how to operate a handgun, I know the difference between a 9mm, a .45, and through that Marine brother, a .50 AE Desert Eagle (AKA the Brown Pants Gun).

For a while, I considered purchasing a weapon because I thought we lefties might have to take our government and our country back from the nutcases who are currently in the process of playing guitars while New Orleans burns (you're doing a great job, Brownie!)

After our car was stolen, I considered buying a gun because home security became a worry.

Now, after watching what's happened in Louisiana - I blogged about it previously - and reading things like this in today's paper, I'm reconsidering it again for completely different reasons.

Mt. Rainier could erupt and wipe out the southern part of the city. There could be a magnitude 7.5 quake (or higher) here. And, for the first time in my life, I'm no longer convinced that the American government - the one I paid so much extra in taxes to this year - can save my bacon when it comes down to it.

As I said in that other blog post, it's very nice that Americans came together to help each other in this time of need. In a way, it's very much we the people saying "fuck the government, if they aren't going to help us, we can help ourselves." But helping ourselves might very well mean being prepared for exactly something like that.

Something small, easy to clean and carry, and a caliber of bullets I can find anywhere.