Journal of the Pandemic, Day Time-Is-A-Meaningless-Concept

(Trigger warning: firearms)

The weather has been tolerably nice of late. Not that I really go anywhere
much, of course. But the people putting new siding on my neighbor's house have
had nice weather for their two-week-long circus of loud noises and louder
music.

As foreshadowed in the last post, I'm now a firearm owner. I have kind of mixed
feelings about it, honestly.

Where I live, you have to have a "permit to purchase" a pistol or a
military-style rifle with a pistol grip, removable magazine, et cetera.
Normally this involves going down to the police department, filling out
paperwork, et cetera. Because of the pandemic, you can do it these days via
email. I filled out a PDF form, printed it, signed it, scanned it, and send it
off in an email. A week later, I had my permit in the mail.

It turns out that you can order firearms online, too. So that's what I did. For
- just to put things in perspective - less than the cost of a Nintendo Switch,
I was able to buy a police-surplus 9mm semi-automatic pistol older than I am,
and have it shipped to a local store. No ID required, just a credit card.

I mean, they did ask for my ID and my purchase permit when I picked it up. But
it was astonishingly simple and painless to do.

So... that's how I became the owner of a pistol. It's large, black, heavy, and
designed to kill people, which I very sincerely hope it will never have to do.
While a very complicated piece of machinery, the controls are quite simple.
Magazine release, trigger, safety... that's it, really. It's single-action and
doesn't have a decocker. Not a great CCW pistol, but fine for my purposes.

Yes, look at me, almost sort of not quite knowing all the boomstick lingo. I
did some reading, the last couple of weeks, to familiarize myself with what I'm
getting into and to learn how to become a, uh, responsible gun owner. Mostly
this has, ironically, confirmed my beliefs that the overwhelming majority of
"gun people" are emotionally-crippled sociopaths. (Leftist "gun people" like in
the SRA, etc, really aren't any better on things like caliber/bullet choices
for personal defense, say. And where many of the far-right gun people like to
LARP as Navy SEALs or something, their far-left counterparts LARP as Ukranian
paramilitaries. The memes are just as cringe-inducing, albeit rather less
racist.)

So, yeah, that's what's new with me. Work has actually gotten slightly less
crazy, amazingly; with people headed back to school, traffic dipped back down
from its insane peak, and the servers and networks now actually have a little
bit of breathing room. I'm enjoying it while I can; the holiday crush begins in
mere weeks, sigh. The only saving grace is that the higher-ups approve
deploying more resources for the holiday period. Or they did in years past,
anyway...