is "assault rifle" a red herring?

Dennis Miller

Effin' Epic, Steve. Well done!
On 3/30/21 11:25 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
Dave, Glen, et (gun-toting) alia -

When I bought the pistol, 1969,  I could get armor piercing, black talon, heavy grain, light grain, different gauge shot shells, flares, and a grenade launcher (bullet with screw in top that took a rod to which the grenade was attached). Best friend at the time was a genius savant in electronics (3M fellow while still an undergraduate) and full-bore survivalist. We had a lot of fun together. He was the "researcher" that wired up a modular computer the psych department received sans manual, and I was the "lab rat" in my first LSD experiments. You produce some interesting brain waves when on meditation and on LSD.
And this was during your SDS/Weathermen years, right?   At least nobody died (as you tell it).

And even more fascinating if you are fondling your .357 whilst on your LSD trip, jacked in to a jacked up TRS-80's?  /The heft, the grip, the caress of the cold metal! / How does that translate when inhibitions and conventions about reality are lifted?   Maybe complement that with a WWI Trench Knife or a Katana in the other hand!  Surely there are some such studies out there of how the brain lights up when you have the capability to "end" one or many people at the twitch of the wrist or an index finger?   And does it matter if it's loaded with snake-shot, mercury-filled hollow point, armor piercing, or a grenade (or one of each)?    Do some light up our sense of importance, power, domination more than others? 

And how about them Rods from God (nod to Marcus).  Does  any one check the payloads on SpaceX's  Falcon Heavy launches?   I think a full complement of Gods Rods comes in at the standard 6-shooter revolver cylinder load of tungsten telephone poles.    If you can't use them to excise Pence and those traitorous lawmakers from "the People's House", maybe take out Putin in his summer house, or Epstiens island,  or Khomanie or XiXhing or little Rocket Man and his sister, or ...  how *must* it feel to be Zeus or Thor hisself?  Oh the problems we could solve with enough ballistic dominance!   Just think how fast we could have cleared the Ever Given clog in the Suez?   <bwah ha ha!> <ha haaaa...>...  <ha!>.

Some of my lucid-dreaming as a pre-teen included carrying a fully automatic weapon of some kind (my father's era Tommy Gun, or the contemporary M16 ?)   I didn't watch many movies and no TV but somehow I knew the image/swagger of having a firestick in my hand that in principle could eliminate all foes just by waving it in their direction with the trigger held tight.   Unsurprisingly, the subjects of my attempted elimination were "deserving* of such, because  in fact they weren't just out to get *me* but to "get" innocent people and *I* was the only thing standing between the two.   Where did I get *that* image?  I was the proverbial "good guy with a gun"... what an archetype for my developing young male psyche!  Taken straight from the engraving on the barrel of Glen's own obje't d' desire is the phrase "The Judge".  Yes, it is compelling to be judge, jury and executioner!   After all we *individuals* know best right from wrong and Ayn Rant(sic) tole us that it was our public
duty to pursue our private interests to their fullest... and what greater proof of that is the willingness to take someone else's life with a flick of a wrist and twitch of a finger, for our idiosyncratic sense of greater-good!  I wonder what our last two mass murderers were fixing up?  Getting rid of those little exotic women he felt to be his temptation?   Getting back at the bullies from high school that *might* have been in the supermarket  (or school playground, or theater or ???) that day?

Of course, true to form (in such dreams), the more important a willful act was, the more ineffectual my ability to respond.   Most of us know how ff'ing hard it is to *run* in a dream, but in this case, that ineffectuality was extended to the bullets in the rifle...  they were definitely "ultra-light grain loads" and in fact the harder I squinched my eyes or ground my teeth, or thrust the weapon toward the target, the more lame the trajectory until the bullets were barely able to make it out of the barrel!   I vaguely remember in those dreams (paradoxically) having the fear that I would actually *hit something* with my limp waterhose of lead.   As I tried in vain to raise my aim enough for the pathetic stream of tracers (yes, somehow I knew about tracer rounds) to reach my targets, I had to ask myself the question "are these truly my enemies, and is complete annihilation by lead (and tracers) raining down from the sky (consider my trajectories) the best answer.   It was
usually at this point in my dream that I began to exert my will a little more effectually and quit picking at *that* Gordian Knot.    I think by then my enemies were usually bored enough with watching my pathetic attempts to "hose them out of existence" that they had quit whatever Snidely Whiplash activity they had been gesturing toward and I probably woke up out of my own boredom with the whole scene.   I don't think kids who play MMORPG FPS (massive multiplayer online role playing game first-person-shooters) have the same dreams I did... maybe if I'd had more encouragement in my hero-wannabe-ism I would have become a gun nut myself?

I should probably be telling all this to my therapist, not this crowd...   though i think while her code of ethics requires her to keep it all to herself (unless I or someone else is in imminent danger from my ideations and intentions)... and here, this just goes into the archives for all to read (including my neighbors who probably already know I'm a danger to their god-guts-n-glory 2nd amendment rights).  They are probably scared to death that I'm going to back my antique dump truck through the front wall of their house and hook a logging chain to their gun safe and yank it out of the wimpy little lead anchor-bolts holding it down to their 4" floor-slab...   come the apocalypse (only) of course.   <sidebar> Apocalypse rules: Might really DOES make Right!   Maybe if they hadn't seen me welding steel plates over the doors and windows of the truck cab, they wouldn't have thought of that?  Paranoia provides such a glorious endorphin rush!   /If only I had some cold hard steel
to fondle as I contemplate all the horrible things in the world that "a good guy with a gun" can fix up/ with just a little exertion of will...   and what better scenario than a world run amok where *everything* is an opportunity to "do good" (by some twisted logic).

The saying goes:  "You don't see any motorcycles parked in front of a therapists office".  I suspect you don't see many Diesel Duallies belching black smoke and sporting TruckNutz or NRA stickers either.   I suspect an inflated sense of power over others might be just the antidote to the existential angst and ennui those without the big-iron feel?  Maybe this is the answer to Marcus reflection on whether Rupublicans are happier than Democrats?   Go sit astride a 100 horsepower Iron Horse or in the cab of a 400HP coal-rolling pickemup (don't forget the TruckNutz!) and fondle the grip and finger the trigger of some of your good friends standing against the wall of the closet (or tucked between the mattress and box springs of your bed).  THAT will help relieve any self-doubt/self-loathing you might have!

Just pay it forward, you don't need to own it...  belch that exhaust, rip that sound out those 'murrican made cored out mufflers on your 'murrican made iron horse, wave those ('murrican made) weapons of war, spray some lead...   see, don't you feel better now?   Save that $100 and buy a round of drinks at the roadhouse for you buddies in patinated leather or denim but hold back enough to buy a dozen rounds for your best friend tucked down your pants like a phallic symbol.  He doesn't want to be left with an empty chamber.

Yup, I could probably go on forever...  thank Goddess I sublimated my red-blooded 'murrican love for hot lead into the hot lead of type, long since gone virtual/digital <fingers clattering on my keyboard, ratta tat tat!>.   Spraying my words indiscriminately over the crowd... fortunately they are easier to duck (or catch in your teeth and spit back as some here do so adeptly)... hitting <delete> is like my choosing to wake from lucid dreams when they got too boring or inane in spite of my best efforts to steer them right!   Beware the rain of lead and tracers from an ineffectual keyboard jockey! 

ramble, mumble, grumble, bramble,

 - Steve

<disclosure>   I own my Grandfather's WWI-issue .45 (but no ammo, armor piercing or otherwise), a Diesel pickup (sans NRA sticker and Truck Nutz and  programmed chip to belch smoke), and have owned a round dozen motorcycles (all rice burners) in my life...  oh yeah... a couple-a 1940's typewriters and full set of brass linotype slugs for making (literally) hot lead type on-demand ( forget which type-face, I've never put them in a hot-lead lino to test them out). I don't own any tungsten rods in orbit.
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is "assault rifle" a red herring?

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