Plague Year 1, August 26

[Trigger warning: firearms]

The world is still a mad, mad place, and getting madder every day.

As the utter shit show that is 2020 marches on, I am growing increasingly
concerned about the upcoming election in this country and the, how do I put
this, diminishing hopes for a peaceful transition of power. I worry and fear
that violent civil unrest is almost inevitable in the mid-October to
mid-January timespan. It's not entirely a fait accompli, as such; who
instigates it is far from foretold. It could be Cult 45, it could be neo-Nazis
and accelerationists (and yes, the two groups are different). It could be the
far left, if Putin's puppet steals another election.

Whomever starts it, and however it ends, I fear something like the George Floyd
uprisings, just... larger, and worse.

Over the last month or so, I've been thinking about this, and taking some
precautions and making some preparations. We now have solar (and battery)
powered security cameras covering the front of the house, the backyard, and the
alley. I don't know that they necessarily make anyone safer, but they improve
our situational awareness significantly.

I've also decided to buy a gun.

I've resisted this for years, largely because I didn't (and still don't) want
to be associated with the stereotypical far-right, smooth-brained
gun-fetishizing crowd. And there's also the sad reality that at one or two
points when I was younger, access to a firearm would almost certainly have
meant I'd no longer be around, today.

But a baseball bat and an axe aren't going to do an enormous amount of good for
self-defense in an uprising where literally everyone has a firearm, you know?
So... buying a gun.

If you don't live in the US or don't pay attention to these sorts of things
(which I normally don't), this turns out to be a really terrible time to try
and buy a firearm. People are stockpiling them... and ammunition. Ammunition in
any popular/common caliber is in astonishingly short supply. So I did what
seemed like a reasonable, if weird-sounding, recommendation I came across on a
website somewhere, and bought ammunition first. Thanks to the magic of the
internet, I'm now the proud owner of two-hundred rounds of 9mm ammunition.
Later this week I'll be heading out and arranging the purchase of... some sort
of 9mm pistol. It might wind up being used, or in a weird color; doesn't really
matter.

And... that's it, really. I'm not going to get any accessories, or anything. No
scopes, no lights, no lasers... not even a holster. It's literally to defend
myself, in my house. If there's no civil war happening, it'll live locked,
unloaded, in the safe we already have, cemented into the basement. If there is
a civil war happening, it'll probably live loaded in my desk drawer. There are
no children here, and between the pandemic and everything, we never really
leave the house anymore. If we do... back in the safe it goes. We'll at least
be responsible gun owners.

Why not a rifle? For my intended purposes--self-defense in my home, and only in
my home--one doesn't make much sense. I also don't have and don't want to buy a
safe large enough to hold one. (Nor spend extra on a takedown rifle that'd fit
in our existing safe.) Same for a shotgun. It's a small house; the maximum
possible range someone could be in view and be an imminent threat at is about
fifteen feet. My neighbors are about twenty feet to either side; I'm not about
to go all FPS-game LARP and start spraying bullets through the walls between
rooms, or anything moronic like that.

Hopefully I'll never need it, but... time will tell.

Other than that gloominess in my life, things have been relatively uneventful
of late. Work's been busy (as always, it seems) and it's been hot and humid,
which would be annoying if I ever left the house...