In reference to this thread over at Wirecutter's Knuckledraggin' My Life Away, about a new CA-compliant mag (reviewed by Tam, no less, review linked in the OP) to workaround the latest semi-auto "assault rifle" frenzy in state capitol Excremento, CA, bloghost Kenny and I have gone back and forth.
And when I write a reply this long, you can damned sure bet it's going to be a post here, because laziness, or thrift. I killed and cooked these electrons, and now they're on the menu here.
So please, read the OP and the replies over there, and then join our show, already in progress:
"First, terminology:
When I say ARs I mean CA's misnamed "assault rifles" of all types.
There are easily 10M of those floating around.
One retailer in SoCal has been selling 1000-1500/week for over 10 years. That's 3+M right there.
But as the Legos of the gun world, AR-15 clones are definitely the most numerous.
The people that own them own multiples.
At one point a full-built AR-15 clone was cheaper than most decent handguns from the Big Three.
Guys would walk in and buy 10 AR-clone lowers for $500-700, then have the completion parts - uppers, lower parts kits, etc. - (all not a firearm) shipped to their door.
I know multiple people who have enough to fill a military armory rack or two, and they're average.
Varmint/target shooter, couple of telescoping stock M-4geries, solid stock, .300 Blackout, 2-4 in pistol calibers from 9mm to .45, and then got bit by the .308/AR-10 bug.
It adds up.
That's not 25% of the state's pop., probably more like a couple of million folks, but it's a crapton of rifles, and I've seen it at gun counters times beyond counting, as a customer, and as occasional help.
I won't say how many I have, or had, but I've sold two extras, and have a number of unbuilt lowers just gathering dust, besides the rifles.
And I'll probably buy some more de-nutted featureless ones just to have something I can take to a local range.
The only place I can't shoot non-conforming ones is in-state, in public.
Private land ranges are catch me-fuck me if I dared, but pulling the takedown pins, and going to Vegas or AZ with boxes of parts is a semi-annual event. It takes 5 minutes to make a shootable rifle, and five more to make it a gaggle of parts I can own but not assemble in-state. So I break no laws coming nor going.
And I can attend courses out-of-state anywhere I want to drive.
If someone can't afford a tank of gas and a weekend off, I feel for them.
And yeah, this state's going to go broke, and self-destruct. I'm counting on it. And I'm not alone.
But I'll surrender this portion of American territory to the people making it Calizuela when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I'm glad you're happy where you are, really I am, but I was born here, and I'll die here. And when the whole rotten Stalinist wet dream they've fornicated it into being comes down in a flaming wreck, I like my odds of getting my state back, because no one in the other 49 is going to give two wet farts to helping them out when they go bankrupt. Please, don't!
That's a feature to me, not a bug.
Hate on the Leftards in Excremento all you like; I share your opinion of them. There is nothing too evil, too stupid, or both, that they wouldn't do.
And them going down like Soviet Russia is the plan. It happens every time it's been tried.
Maybe grandkids can experience what this state was like when I grew up here. Once 10M illegals self-deport, and the toothless banjo-playing misfits of liberalism from the Other 49 move back in with their cousins, because there's no more welfare gravy train here.
Just don't hate on people because they don't want to join you in your Appalachian paradise. (Besides, if we all did that, and TN's population was doubled by refugee "Californians", you'd hate it, the locals' kids would be priced out of their home state, and you'd just want to move again, amirite?) There's really no place to run in the long run. And if TN starts getting stupid, like FL and TX and ID and MT are already doing, where to next...? (Oh, and bonus points, even though it won't be your fault, you'll be blamed anyway as being one of those " damned Californians who f****d up the state" you're in now if/when that happens. Even though that will probably be New Yorkers other east coast city folk and such.)
I wish it was actual Californians crapping in their punchbowl (for any value of that from Oregon to Florida); it'd be fair return for what their misfit cousins did to CA.
I'm happy for anyone who's happy where they live, especially those who love their home state, natural or adopted. I've seen most of this country, and there's plenty of reason to like where you are, wherever that is. (Buffalo and Cleveland probably excepted.)
But I'm pissed as hell about what's been done to mine, and I plan on being an ornery disagreeable sonofabitch to those that are screwing that pooch here until I see them on fire, or swinging from lampposts.
Pensions alone are going to blow the whole thing up in a few more years, if the entire world's economy doesn't take the mother of all sh*ts first.
And then, those readily-convertible-but-legal-now ARs may come in kind of handy.
Which is exactly what keeps @$$holes like CA senators Fineswine and Kneepads up sleepless at night.
I hope you can understand that, even though it's not the course of action you chose.
And I salute the makers of any device, like the magazine mentioned in the OP that sabotages our would-be overlords' attempts to de-gun the populace. The lazy asstards who decided CA was "too hard" to sell products to can kiss my @$$, eat sh*t, and die.
But the ones who've gone out of their way to monkeywrench socialism here from where they are, like his holiness, St. Ronnie Barrett, who made a CA-compliant M-82 that isn't a .50BMG just to piss off the liberals in this state, and won't repair cop .50BMGs until they let civilians here buy them, are rock stars.
Thanks for the time and the space, Kenny.
And keep doing what you do.
It's funny as hell every day, and a better news source than ABCNNBCBS and Drudge, combined, whether you meant for it to be or not.
37 comments:
Your welcome at my fire anytime.
I left Kali when I foresaw it going fullbore Communist. Now the same thing is happening to WA and I can't move out. - SHIT!! -
_revjen45
We disagree on many, many things but at the end of the day you are right on a great many of them and hence my bromantic feeling for you. You are correct about so many other states falling hard and fast to the Blue Wave ( mostly as the conservatives flee the cities and surrender the voting blocks ). No matter where you go, there they are. I'm staying in Nevada for the same reason you are staying in Cali. At one time it was the best place to go, and there aren't any more of those. Keep up the exceptional work, be cool and be safe.
I feel the same way about where I live. It's home, my family has been here for 150 years, and I'm not letting the commies drive me out.
Old Bob
When your war starts for real, we will come help. We have a proud history of that....-Tennesseans
Very well said. Many who lived in the Southern states ~1858 to 1861 could identify with you. "Why are you fighting us?" asked the Union soldier. "Because you're on my land!" replied the Southern soldier.
But I'll surrender this portion of American territory to the people making it Calizuela when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
You must be one tough S.O.B. with tough S.O.B. friends and stab-proof body armor.
HOWEVER, diseases of human misery will coincide with Calizuela's collapse. Some like typhus have no available vaccine, so you will need chemoprophylaxis with doxycycline. That's just one tiny example.
If Texas has to go through the same SHTF, then I will stay tuned to the Aesop Channel for "lessons learned" posts. Like Selco Begovic.
Yah....not to worry....your fucktard Congressional delegation, along with the one from Illinois and the one from New York, will "arrange" that Federal money bail out those states. After all, Federal money is freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, right?
And then the Big Conflict will erupt.
rather have 500k assholes in area 230m x 630m vs 5 million assholes in area 50m by 50m..
Thing is the other 49 states are not appealing to me. I was born in CA. I do not live on the coast or in the central valley. I'm up here in the hills and mountains, like a lot of conservative Californians. Biggest bonus is LACK OF HUMIDITY. I hate humidity with a passion. A "vacation" to Hawaii sounds like a slice of hell to me, I'd rather go to the high desert any day.
Every single state that has freedom either has air you can chew, or whatever the hell polar vortex crap I'm reading about where, when I want to go check on my chickens and goats, I'd have to spend half an hour suiting up to clear a path to go make sure my goats and chickens aren't dead - and I'd have to heat their coops and enclosures at a serious expense. Screw that. Meanwhile my growing season for my vegetables would be what, 3 months IF anything could grow in the redoubt, or MAYBE I could squeeze out 7 months in the South (while fighting fire ants to get to my tomatoes). Here it's 9 months of growing season with 3 4 months of hot Mediterranean weather - I can grow ANYTHING. We get about 3 months of real cold here in the foothills. As for water? I have a well NOT connected an aquifer. Go figure.
I keep looking and reading about other states and I yearn sometimes, I won't lie. But this is home, my family is here (generations), and half of these out of state and country MFers are going to literally flee when the ground moves. Hasn't been anything decent to shake them up since '89 up here - that's before most of these twerps were alive. Had some asshat argue with me about that here before - after '89 I watched the population of the Bay Area DROP. And Loma Prieta was TINY compared to what's coming (and looking at the ring of fire, sooner rather than later). So flee they will, despite the naysayers, because there won't BE a building for them to go to work IN. They can enjoy sleeping in tents while they sort out their U-Hauls to go home though.
As for weapons... you know. I'm sure all of you stop at every stop sign even at 3:00 am out on country roads, right? Yeah.
When the time comes, give 'em HELL Aesop!
Umm, the ones who make it a habit, and don't at least slow down and look both ways, end up T boned at 2am, dead, surrounded by airbags.
I lived in LA for years, and in San Diego for over a decade. I went native enough that I was once heatedly denounced and told "I should get out of California once in my life before I judged the rest of the nation." This despite living in 5 states from east coast to west, and visiting 46 of the lower 48. I'm not a toothless hillbilly, nor are my relatives in Torrence and Redondo. For that matter, most of white america is only a generation or two away from rural poverty, since most of the US was rural and impoverished until after WWII. I think Aesop is casting a pretty wide net with the name calling, but I'm not going to discount his lived experience.
MY experience on the other hand, is that what ruined Cali is all the illegals on one hand and the aging liberal hippies who ended up with money and power despite their best efforts at tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.
It's been 15 years since I left, and while I occasionally miss the weather and the few friends that remain there, I will never willingly return. I have two paid-for homes. Savings. Retirement money. A full safe. I carry every day, and almost everywhere. When I left I had no hope of saving fast enough to ever buy a home somewhere without bars on the windows, and feared making simple mistakes moving guns and ammo to the range that would land me in prison. I had to REGISTER my AK, which local PD made as difficult as possible, it had to have a replacement stock, and normally removable parts welded in place.
Cali has not gotten BETTER in any way since I left. (a smart alec would say it got better WHEN I left, but since I was a tax payer and successful in one of the dominant industries, I'd say Meh.)
Anyone who is still there, and hasn't spent significant RECENT time outside of Cali, is probably a half-boiled frog. You really can't see how bad it is from inside, it's like Stockholm syndrome or being a battered wife.
I acknowledge your beliefs and determination to stay, but I can't UNDERSTAND it. Barring the Flaming Meteor of Death, it's already lost, and isn't coming back in our lifetimes.
nick
Living in the Northeast and South I understand about having deep roots to a place that make it difficult to leave. Having relatives in California I also understand the appeal of the state. Were it not for the third world types and their associated costs (not just monetary either) it would be worth the expense to live there permanently. Unfortunately the state has been wrecked especially over the last thirty years, the decline is shocking.
California is (or was) the best state to live in and sets the pace for the rest of the country in many ways. When this country crashes things will probably be worse in southern California than most other places (excluding NYC). Southern California is dependent upon a vast water system for its daily needs which is also dependent upon an overtaxed electrical grid for its operation. Without sufficient water life will become impossible in semi-arid climes such as LA. Northern California will certainly be better off and this applies double even further north.
The Gavin Newsomes, Willie Browns, Camel Toe Harriss's et al. of California and their constituents don't strike me as the self reliant or productive types. Without the skills, experience and materials to improvise and figure out solutions to problems they won't make it. They do however bring to the table lots of bad attitude and 'gibs me dat' thinking. Good luck with that when they run out of food and water.
's my point: they will run out of food and water, and I won't be under their thumbs to f**k with, come the day. Sux to be them, because they can't look five minutes ahead, let alone 5 years, and see it coming.
There's more to CA than Disneyland, Hollywood, and Frisco.
Lots more.
The cosmic fruitloops west of I-5 just haven't figured that out yet. Thank heavens.
Born here.
I just planted two more Oroblancos.
I am looking forward to enjoying their fruit until I die.
If things get sporty we could use people with certain skill sets in the northern part of the state.
We are a tank of gas away.
Just saying...
What do you have against Buffalo? I have lived nearby most of my life, and will try to stay here unless the Democrooks make the place unlivable. The food alone is a reason to like the place.
I feel the same way about my liberal fucktard of a city in Florida, Gainesville, where they just voted to get rid of plastic grocery bags and plastic straws because, apparently, our landfill which is 150' above sea level is leaking plastic into the oceans. As if.
Fucking a-holes. I love this area, and I won't leave just because of asshats. Oh, no.
I'm so far right even the local republican party is left of me.
And yet I stand. I go to where the Civil War memorial used to be once a month to pay respect to what was. This city used to celebrate the Battle of Olustee, which kicked the carp out of the Union. Bush II landed here on his way to The Villages. We used to be a great place to live. And I don't want to leave. They can't make me leave.
Don't have a lot of guns, but what I do, I know how to use.
Fuck retreating. Some people can. Wirecutter escaped to save his lady. I am glad for him and his wife. But some can't or won't leave. So, yeah, I get it. Oh, yes I do.
Currently I am waging a campaign of information, striking up discussions and sewing dissent at check-out counters and other places people gather. Don't have a MAGA hat yet, got to get me one.
Home is home. It's your hill to die on. All we can do is draw a line in the sand and hope the motherfucker threatening to cross it isn't stupid enough to do so.
Been following your blog for a couple of years. Sounds like you are more or less where I'm at, regarding the current state of affairs. I thought we had it bad up here in Canada, but it sounds like you guys are getting screwed hard too. Hell, it seems like the socialist dimwits you guys have trying to screw the US into oblivion are stealing ideas from the socialist dimwits trying to screw Canada into the ground.
I'm about done with any kind of discourse with these people. All I can say for them is "enjoy the collapse you created and the ensuing era of warlords in the various balkanized neighbourhoods. You'll either die or wish you were a slave, at which point you'll wish you were dead".
- Juliet Lima
*EDIT my last:
"You'll either die or BE a slave, at which point you'll wish you were dead".
Need more fucking coffee.
Cheers.
- Juliet Lima
Well, good on you to be the remnant Robert speaks of at SLL.
If still alive I'll be happy to visit when you dust yourself off from among the rubble; mean that in a well-wished way. I left (born in the San Fernando Valley) back when Newhall-Saugus area was just arroyos & scrub and a person could literally test the full elevation of the flip-up on their '03 Springfield. Hang well and quietly f-them every chance you get. The breeze will come. The higher the house of cards, the higher the wind-loading.
God love ya,Aesop. We've had this "discussion" before and I fully understand and respect your assessment and resolve.
Your points harden my own resolve in my adopted state.had
Boat Guy
Some time ago, when I was still living in the SF Bay area, there was a gun store not far from my home. I think I was buying one of my shotguns, and commented on the semi-auto M-60 the had sitting on the counter top. "I guess you don't sell many of those", thinking that the display model was all they had. Store manager looks at me and says, "we've sold over 200 of those so far". I was astonished. I suspect all have vanished in the California wilderness areas, north and east of the SF Bay area.
It seems that many of us are realizing a day of reckoning is probably close at hand. I read many good blogs, including yours Aesop, but rarely comment.
Your thoughts in this latest post really resonated with me. Good on you for being an ornery pain in the a@@ stay-behind. Like you, I despise the commies who unmask themselves more every day. However, being an ornery guy myself, the lame stream media does provide ironic entertainment on a regular basis.
Here is a takeaway from your piece above that I would like to see pursued more systematically: the concept of 'monkey-wrenching' the commie ideas currently being forced on our republic. Aesop - Do you see any merit in organizing/publishing an ideas repository from which folks could adept to local conditions??
What do you have against Cleveland?
There's still some decent neighborhoods, and once you're in the outer ring 'burbs it ain't so bad either.
I live in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park - back yard is that 55sq miles of zero gangbusters or other undesirables.
Cistern for water when city water goes down, septic system - not connected to city sewers since they never ran them down road I live on.
Got 5 acres, 2 fenced in gardens so the deer don't eat my veggies.
Can legally target shoot at neighbors house that is not in park, and hunt deer there too.
Everywhere I've wanted to move to seems to get fucked up by dumb ass laws and Marxist morons moving in.
Got friends closeby- I'll ride it out here.
I agree with pretty much everything except the harsh criticism of manufacturers in the firearms industry that have decided not to play your legislators' stupid game. Kudos to those manufacturers who keep creating new products that demonstrate the stupidity of California's anti-gun laws, but it's more of a hobby or act of civil disobedience than a profitable business model because the laws keep changing to make those products illegal, probably before the development costs have been recuperated. You have no right to expect the entire firearms industry to give in to the California legislators' semi-annual temper tantrums. Frankly, it's better for free people everywhere if they don't. Try seeing my perspective instead of your own. Every pistol I buy ships with a ten round magazine that I don't want because the manufacturers decided that it's easier to cave in to California and a few other commie states and the entire country is penalized by the actions of your legislators that we have no chance of voting out of office. The rest of us are hoping California implodes before it destroys the rest of the country.
I stopped counting how many manufacturers and wholesalers refused to sell legal products in CA because they were lazy bastards, not because of any CA law or anything else preventing them, except their own fat stupid contrariness. My final pronouncement on them all ends with the phrase "...sideways, with a rusty chainsaw".
One of them turned down a large buy from the people I represented at the SHOT Show.
We were standing there with cash in hand and an order sheet filled out.
They understood that what they were selling was legal from top to bottom, including in CA, but their company policy was "Fuck California".
We told them we understood their position, and that the reps in their booth were just the messengers, but we told them point-blank to tell that company they were dead to us.
Two years later, they tried to turn that around and re-enter the CA market, long after AR clones with bullet buttons were red-hot here.
Word of mouth killed them.(And bet your ass we helped out with that quite a bit.)
And then they went out of business.
I still can't stop laughing about that.
And I hope they learned to love the taste of a shit sandwich.
And they aren't (still) the only company that does that kind of b.s.
Nobody's asking any company to go broke.
But if you're in business, do business.
Or GTFO.
I live in Kentucky. It is not an adopted state. I live where I was born and where my family and ancestors have lived since the days of Daniel Boone.
However, due to my time in the service and just after, I have lived in about 9 other states - Illinois, Florida, South Carolina, Hawaii, California, Virginia, Minnesota, Ohio, and Tennessee.
California is probably the finest piece of land in the entire country with the best weather. (That's why all the hippies and illegals go there.) But my favorite place to live was - East Tennessee. Friendly people, beautiful place, cheap to live there - what's not to like.
Yet 36 years ago, I decided to move back to Kentucky. Why? For the same reason Aesop is going to stay in California no matter what - FAMILY.
And that's what it's about folks. That is where home is. I don't blame Aesop a bit. Indeed, I admire him because staying and fighting it out is a LOT tougher than pulling up stakes and abandoning all that you hold dear.
If he changed his mind and moved out here to Central KY, (or Tennessee), we would welcome him with open arms.** But would he truly be happy here? Maybe. But maybe not. Not because of politics, or the weather, but because his family would still be half a continent away, behind the iron curtain.
**PS: If he did change his mind and move out here to our "Appalachian Paradise" we could at least put to bed this notion of his that California's problem are caused by "toothless banjo pickers". (There are probably more banjo players in my one county than in the entire state of California, and I would state that nearly none of them are liberal hippies.)
I kid, Roy. A little.
More of the problems were from transplants who'd effed up Bahstun and NYFC, then came here to make a new hellhole.
But somebody voted for them, and it wasn't kids I went to school with. It was 20M asstard transplants, who're about as "Californian" as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Gray Davis, and Ahnuld Schwarzenegger.
My offer stands: I'll pay you $1 for every native Californian that effed up anybody's home state, if they'll pay the same amount for each of their state's toothless banjo-playing kinfolk who messed up mine, and I'll retire on the profits.
It ain't the banjo-pickin' that's the problem.
It's the mental deficiencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s73flj1t38
I was born in Kalifornia, it took me 18 years and a stint in Uncle Sam's cluster-fuck to get the hell-out. You wanna stick around and say 'I told you so' that's your prerogative but before that happens your guns will be taken and used against Americans and that is an immoral decision to make. If you wanna die OK but arming your enemies, my enemies in the process? Not good!
Same here, just ignore Gov. Cornhole and everything is good. Of course I avoid Buffalo itself whenever possible. Something about building chunks falling on me turns me off.
I know you're mostly kidding, Aesop. I know where you're coming from so I don't disagree with you about that either.
I moved out of SOCAL after figuring out Id never own any land or home due to values, taxes, and crime. Grew up there. Served out there USMC. Dodging the Laws got old. Smoging my car, and paying to park it on tje street outside my highrent high crime appt got old. Having bangers doing drive bys every day within earshot, and nobody going to jail....
I got out. Been in Texas since. Watched the fuckers fleeing come here and try to comifirnia it. Were holding out si far.
Your article gave me hope for the fall. I have my shit in a kit. and am trying to prep my family for the reality of the melt doen.
God bless you crazy stubborn fuckers. I aspire to be as hardy.
Sorry. posted pre coffee. FML
I thought about leaving my home state, but have decided to stay and fight the madness.I have no ill will for those that choose to go elsewhere. I'm happy to see this sentiment is shared by others. One thing that bothers me is this. So many people that share a lot in common are quick to go small tribe and condemn "Yankees" as all being the same. That's no different than the lib's saying we are all ignorant,inbred, racist's. There's millions of us northern folks who are not on board with the communist takeover. We are outnumbered, and we know that no one is coming to our rescue. I will not go quietly into the cattle car, bless all of you like minded.
You pretty much summed up how I feel. If you have to fall back from the southern smog bowl, feel free to look us up in Madera county gold country. Got 200+ acres a mile or so from the back of a major reservoir and large creek down one side of the property.
It seems that it will be less important which state you live in versus where you live in a state when things really go sideways. I live in good old deep red state Indiana in a rural area surrounded by Amish so if things go bad we have a good support system and reasonable distance from the vibrant diversity but if I lived in northwest Indiana near Gary, it would be a different story.
We have a hill farm in the rolling hills of the Buckeye . Deep green in 50 shades of green as they say in Ireland . Big dogs and big guns all over these hills and thousand meter range in every wheat field . Flourishing underground economy with deeply underground churches giving not one fuck for 501c3 status . What if Shabbat was on a different day each week ?
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