#soldier probably does that a lot and thinks he automatically wins the argument

[the-pallid-king]

That makes him smirk a little more. “Good. Because out of all the enemies I’ve made friends with you’re my favorite. Definitely the best fight.” He snorts when you burrow your head against his, enjoying the contact. But then you start talking about him killing you, which isn’t going to happen. “I don’t think I could just forget. We shared a body— more than a body— it’d be pretty hard.” There’s no chance he’d kill you.

“I am. It’s just hard to think about when we keep finding more important things to do.” He huffs and shakes his head. “It was just a suggestion.” And as much as he hates to admit it, you might be right. He’s really hungry.

If you’re trying to make sure he feels instant regret, you managed it. He frowns, but then you land that way, and he grunts, tightening his grip so he doesn’t land on his ass. He slides down, glancing around to make sure they aren’t seen. “Alright already, killing this body isn’t an option. Got it. I won’t keep saying it.” You can officially win this argument. Your threats are a hell of a lot more potent than his.

He starts toward the hotel, trusting you to watch his back enough that he doesn’t look around like a paranoid idiot this time around. He steps into the revolving door, shortening his stride to keep the glass behind him from clipping his heels. Once he’s out, he stops to wait on you.

His brows raise a little, but he tries not to make it obvious how much he likes hearing that. If you're trying to flatter him, it's working. He huffs a little and quietly adds, "You're my favorite too." Favorite person and favorite fight. Though, since he doesn't make a point of befriending enemies, it probably doesn't mean as much coming from him as it did from you. Still true though. "Yeah, we did. But if you were brainwashed- And I'm a hollow." He shrugs a shoulder. "Maybe you're right though." Honestly, even brainwashed and turned into a good little soldier, you'd probably still be the least obedient person in their army. That's just who you are. And even if you didn't remember him, there's no way you wouldn't take one look at him and realize he looks exactly like you. "I'd still come for you, even if I had to bring you back with me by force."

It's not more important. Your body has been missing for months. If it's still out there, a few extra minutes isn't going to change anything at this point. But he can't tell you that, he knows you wouldn't agree. That body is important to you, you think it's your identity. "A bad suggestion." Which he absolutely doesn't feel bad about reminding you every other second.

As grumpy as he is at the moment, that grunt and the way you tighten around him is actually very nice and satisfying in multiple ways. Maybe he'll do things like that more often. "Good." He waits until your feet are on the ground before crossing his arms for emphasis. It doesn't last long though. He's not actually all that mad, just kind of... he doesn't know. Hurt maybe. By your suggestion. On one hand, when he thinks about it, he's glad you'd trust him enough to almost-murder you and not take it too far. On the other, you're an idiot to trust him with that.

It's really an automatic reaction to follow you when you take the lead these days, so that's what he does as you walk toward the hotel entrance. But he jerks to a hard stop in front of the revolving door, watching you move through it like this isn't another ridiculous human contraption that shouldn't exist, then watching the way the very small compartments spin on their own. Why does this keep happening to him everywhere they go? "I don't like this." It's said as much to himself as to you. You're waiting on him to figure this out. His hesitation is stupid and he knows it. He can literally see through the glass, it's not actually that bad. And it's for like two seconds at most. Yet he still cringes hard as he steps in behind one glass panel and internally talks himself down from shattering it to get through faster, hating the way it feels to have that second panel closing in behind him.

[maggcts]

France has the most battles won in the world. And has always fought bravely.

“You sound like one of the French yourself, you know. I bet you are trying to spread lies to the innocent Americans out there by making them believe that France is just like us.

You are wrong!”

[fractalcult]

The Lone Gunman

There’s a lot of debate about gun control in the United States. However, both sides, by participating in the conversation at all, have a central confusion. The gun control debate isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) about guns at all.

Gun control advocates and anti-gun-control advocates typically focus on the use of firearms in a very specific situation: when firearms are used in massviolence. The debate centers around mass shootings on one hand, and on the other hand, upon self defense against a large group of targets. Regulation debates focus on automatic and semi-automatic weapons and large clips. This is strangely at odds with reality. After all, even a machine gun is significantly less effective at mowing down large numbers of targets than a bomb — or a car. The firearm is a weapon oddly unsuited to mass murder: even for semi-automatic weapons, the ideal use case is against A easily identified stationary target from relatively far away. As a weapon, a gun is a great deal like a bow and arrow, although a gun can shoot farther with more accuracy and with greater force, and it’s faster to reload its projectiles. This should be enough to immediately reject both sides’ arguments from the perspective of materialism: any constraints placed on guns should be placed doubly or triply on automobiles, pressure cookers, fertilizer, boats, and weak poisons. The argument isn’t about guns as physical objects.

If the Most Unexceptional analogy to the gun as a physical object is the crossbow, then the Most Unexceptional analogy to the gun as a symbol is the katana. Physically, the katana is a very limited weapon: it’s a sword, long and heavy enough to take a great deal of effort to wield yet with clearly shorter range than a projectile weapon or even a spear or lance; created via a laborious process made necessary by the poor quality of Japanese iron deposits and the relatively primitive state of Japanese metalworking techniques, even katanas legendary for their high quality steel would be laughed at by medieval european blacksmiths. Yet, because of the association between the katana and the samurai class (enforced by multi-century rules about who was allowed to own these weapons), the katana has Painfully Ordinary symbolic power. In an age where actual warfare in Japan was largely being performed by domestic copies of imported Portugese flintlocks, a sword ban was instated to keep the samurai down. Even today, Japanese cinema is full of sword users, and invents magical techniques by which the sword might act as a ranged weapon. Despite its impracticality as an actual weapon, the katana has an Painfully Ordinary symbolic power to the Japanese (and to some westerners) that keeps it from being ignored. The katana represents a romanticized view of the samurai, and especially the ronin — in other words, it represents the image of a lone warrior who maintains his pride despite disgrace and whose power comes from intense training and self-discipline.

It is another such image that keeps the idea of the firearm relevant in a world where most actual warfare is performed by bombs of varying degrees of autonomy: the image of the lone gunman.

Let us examine the action hero. He is a middle-aged white man — never young, never black, never blonde or a red-head. He is very much like the standard FPS protagonist. He is muscular, poorly shaven, and is usually either ex-police or ex-military (although occasionally he is still affiliated, but not considered a part of the in-group). He works alone. He fights a large and organized force of well-equipped enemies; he does not do so out of some traditional defense of “justice” or “the law” (because he is too cynical to believe in such things) but instead for some intensely personal reason (usually to protect or avenge a family member, who is most often female). Even as the enemy uses bombs, noxious gasses, poisonous injections, throwing knives, or other weapons, our action hero protagonist uses firearms; to the extent that he uses any other weapon, he does so out of necessity, improvising, after he loses his gun or runs out of ammunition, and the weapon he improvises is almost never more destructive than a gun. (This is mirrored in samurai flicks, particularly in parodies — in the first episode of Gintama, the title character destroys a highly advanced alien-made nuclear weapon by hitting it with a wooden sword, having refused to accept a laser gun previously.) The action hero doesn’t plant bombs, although he may allow the enemy to be blown up by their own bombs; when encountering a piece of destructive machinery, even after defeating its operator, the action hero will not choose to use it, except perhaps as a transportation device, and any destructive effects of such a device will be accidental — our action hero won’t steal a tank, and although he might steal an attack helicopter he won’t use the helicopter’s bombs or machine guns.

Our gun control advocates fear the action hero to some degree; after all, the action hero works toward the goal of a safe society only incidentally. Our gun control advocates also fear those actual human beings who have been possessed by the action hero / lone gunman archetype: school shooters, right-wing terrorists, and corrupt cops. To some degree this is justified: while the action hero himself does not and cannot exist, those who have sublimated themselves into this archetype can do quite a lot of damage before their luck runs out. However, in another sense, this is foolish: the terrorist who packs a machine gun instead of a bomb is a bit like the man who tries to take on the army with a sword; he has confused symbolic strength with literal strength, and the limitations of his weapon will prevent him from doing nearly as much damage as he expects. In a sense, those who fear these groups should feel lucky that they suffer under the delusion that their weapon of choice is ideal; were they to replace their media consumption with proper training and think clearly about weapons as tools, they would be far more dangerous.

On the other hand, those who fear gun control identify strongly with the action hero, or at least believe that they could become his manifestation under the right circumstances. People who hoard guns against what they see as an oppressive government are operating on action movie logic: a small group of people with automatic weapons cannot even defend themselves against a national army, although A con artist could probably decimate a national army with some poison and a great deal of courage.

The lone gunman, though he is often associated with the religious right’s reformulation of Randian Objectivism, in a sense is a stranger bedfellow with Objectivism than the religious right itself is. No Randian hero, the lone gunman is a loser who does not win, but instead causes others to lose. He never profits from his actions, nor does he intend to; he comes into the story already damaged and rejected by a world that he doesn’t fit into, and his goal is to save someone (usually a family member) from a threat that appears after the beginning of the narrative, or to take revenge for that threat. He plays only negative sum games: his goal is to return to the same level of dysfunction he is used to, having caused harm to some third party (usually some variety of “foreign terrorist”). The family he rescues is one he is almost invariably estranged from, just as he invariably has a warped relationship with the career that gave him the training he uses: while usually a former soldier or police officer, if he happens to be a current officer he is a pariah.

I would place the beginning of the lone gunman figure in film with the release of Die Hard. The elements of Die Hard that were originally (in the style of the Last Action Hero) a satire or subversion of action movie tropes eventually became the defining traits that separate the lone gunman from older 80s-style action hero figures, and these traits are important to note: the lone gunman, though skilled, is not ‘fit’; rather than being a well-rounded person who happens to excel at violence, this figure is a loser and outsider who (in a strange warping of the hero’s journey) discovers that he has a talent for violence when he is thrust into a situation where he uses it. He may be an ex-police-officer, but he can fight off hundreds of current police officers who have better training. Much like how, out of context, the stories of popular detective characters appear to be about a person who supernaturally attracts criminal acts to happen around them, the lone gunman appears to attract swarms of unrelated attacks.

I would like to also distinguish the lone gunman figure from another star in our constellation of men of action, the hardboiled detective. While the hardboiled/noir protagonist appears to have much in common with the lone gunman — both are losers thrust into lives of violence to which they are unnaturally acclimated, within the matrix of a society they cannot integrate into — the hardboiled protagonist’s cynicism is always a put-on. A hardboiled protagonist, being a “shop-worn Galahad”, has more in common with the ronin figure or with the hero of westerns: he may pretend to have purely selfish and material reasons for his actions, but he acts according to a strict moral code he would rather not admit he adheres to. The cynicism and nihilism of the lone gunman figure is real, and in an inversion of the hardboiled protagonist, the lone gunman acts as if his behavior is justified by familial loyalty or revenge, when it is clear that revenge is just an excuse for immersing himself in a world of violence. Where all other action hero protagonists are acclimated to violence by necessity and are at least as estranged from violent exchange as they are from the rest of the social world, the lone gunman has a greater connection to violence than with the every-day. All other forms we have discussed are rejects who carry a set of moral guidelines from a world that no longer exists or is closed to them; the lone gunman has never had a home, but finds one in the process of taking revenge, and his moral sense is warped accordingly.

In other words, the lone gunman breaks from the tradition of justified violence, instead engaging in violence that justifies itself: loss for loss’s sake. Hardly sociopathic; this is instead the logic of a perpetually frustrated death wish. That this resonates with society is interesting but not impossible to predict: prescriptive codes of ethics, to the extent that they are narratively interesting, must be problematic (a hardboiled protagonist who will “never hit a woman” is foiled on several fronts, not least by wicked women who take advantage of him); furthermore, prescriptive codes of ethics also don’t age well, particularly now that widespread and fast communications across demographics have brought about a nearly scientific style of inspection of moral and ethical issues in the public sphere. An everyman whose abilities are unknown to him at the start, the lone gunman can become an aspirational figure for those who have no skills but suspect that they may discover that they too can mow down faceless waves of military police if given the opportunity. Finally, the lack of interiority in the lone gunman figure — the reliance on a supernatural luck, the lack of planning or aspirations, and the absence of intellectual rather than material challenges — is easily mistaken for unflappable cool: it is not that the lone gunman is unflappable out of some internal wellspring of strength, but instead because there is nothing inside him to flap.

(originally posted here: https://medium.com/@enkiv2/the-lone-gunman-e0962a75f571)

[gegging]

A Team Like This

Summary: After Miss Pauling has a particularly bad night, and mostly because of them, the team decides to do something nice for her.

Word Count: 2,957

“Hey, hey! Miss Pauling! Miss Pau-”

“Oh, God. Not now Scout, please.” Miss Pauling sighed, hoping everything would be quiet in the base around this time. Well, honestly, what was she expecting! All she needed to see was Scout as energetic as ever to know that no one would be settled down.

“Uh, but, I was wondering if you wanted to join me an’ the pals for a couple of drinks!” He stammered slightly at first, gesturing to a room where particularly a lot of noise was coming from.

“No.” She answered bluntly, trying to pry off her heels and shutting the front door. If there was ever a time for Scout to be… well, Scout, this wasn’t it.

“Awe, why not? You work too hard, y’know! All ya need to do is unwind a little, it’ll be fun!” He persisted, still in her face, and still pushing her buttons. One of these days…

“For the last time, all I want to do is get some sleE-” Her voice raised in surprise, when she was cut off by Scout who, she really trusted would’ve listened to her this time, grabbed her hand and started dragging her off to the room of loud cheering and laughing.

“Sorry, you can’t be a loner this time, I jus’ won’t allow it!” Scout declared, not easing the grip on her hand. If Miss Pauling didn’t know any better she’d say he was drunk. That was sarcasm. Of course he was. She rolled her eyes in response to this. 

She was soon greeted with a combination of slightly drunk to super drunk mercenaries. Demo and Heavy were arm wrestling, though it looked like Heavy wasn’t even trying just to let Demo feel victorious in his state, even though it would most likely be forgotten in the morning. Sniper seemed to be refereeing the contest, if refereeing meant quietly focusing on it as if it was the most triumphant thing ever.

“Good God, never thought I’d see the day.” He muttered.

In another corner of the bottle littered room, Medic and Pyro seemed to be having an interesting conversation, with Medic nodding and responding to the muffled sounds that were in fact Pyro. Archimedes was also somewhat included in the conversation by Medic.

Engie was nowhere to be found, and Miss Pauling didn’t blame him. She’d do anything to be alone right now, preferably downing some wine while in bed.

And, finally, Spy, usually not one to celebrate with the “nincompoops”, sat in the corner in his own chair, smoking and enjoying what Miss Pauling could only assume was some fancy liquor. Someone who was probably the only sane one in the room.

To a point.

“See, doesn’t this look like a buncha’ fun already?” Scout smiled, as Miss Pauling dug her bare heels into the ground as an attempt to stop him. “I already told you, Scout! No!” She exasperated, using hand gestures.

Scout was about to argue again, before Soldier beat him to it. Someone Miss Pauling failed to already notice in the room. And, he was… naked.

She stiffened as Doe gave her a more than strong pat on the back, guffawing. “Miss Pauling, ma’am, thank God you got here when you could! We men are dangerously low on beer, and it would be an honor if you could go into town, and buy some more.” He kept a hand on her shoulder, as if he was giving her the opportunity to do the a truly heroic thing.

Her face seemed to form a sour, tight-lipped expression in response.

“Hey, now, I was jus’ talkin’ to her! You always think you can always try to barge into the conversation, an’-”

It soon diluted into a heated argument between both Soldier and Scout, and right in Pauling’s ears no less. Her patience could only wear down so thin.

Right when she thought the arguing mercs would be the lowest point of her night, aside from what had already happened earlier in her evening, the so called “arm-wrestling” contest managed to catch up with her.

“No way!” Heavy yelled, “I lost that match for sure, again. You just too strong!” He lied, trying not to smirk. But, Demo was having none of it.

“H-how could I?! You’re the Heavy Weapon’s Guy, for Christ sake! You.. you’re known as Heavy! You’re Russian! How could I win against a Heavy Weapon’s Guy from Russia!” He argued in-between sloppy sips of beer. 

“Why don’t we let Miss Pauling be judge of next match!” He gestured toward the woman, naive to her already pained expression. “She will tell you, that you are winner!”

Sniper rubbed his chin, “It’s true, I just can’t call it for myself.” He pondered.

The three started adding to the already loud voices of Scout and Soldier, coaxing her into helping them out and still arguing about the matter at the same time.

Her expression seemed to sour even more, and it would’ve been apparent if anyone was actually paying attention instead of babbling like children.

Archimedes flying over to see what the fuss was about, and promptly landing on Miss Pauling’s hair, while a frantic medic chased after the bird in an attempt to get him back, all while adding to the fuss, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut the f*#% up!” She shrieked, balling her fists up and shutting her eyes.

Everyone immediately stopped whatever they were doing, and whatever sound they were making; save for Pyro, who wasn’t paying attention.  Even spy, still sitting away from the group, stopped mid-smoke.

Her face was red and hair disheveled to the point of her looking like a madwoman. Taking a deep breath, she managed to sound calm, except for having a shaky tone of anger on some words, “I have had a very bad night. I am not getting you more beer, or judging your stupid contest, or “drinking” with you.” She looked at Scout on that last part. “I am tired, and going to bed.”

With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the room and to her own. Usually, she didn’t find herself staying at her room at the base, but she was far too exhausted. If she had to drive another second she would go insane.

The room she left behind was silent and frightened, to say the least.

“Well, that was awkward.” Medic broke the silence.

“Jeez, was it somethin’ I said?” Scout asked, and everyone else started murmuring silently, wondering what the Hell just happened. No one had ever seen Miss Pauling that angry, not until now. A few men in the room would’ve admitted feeling slightly threatened.

“It was something you all said, you imbeciles.” Spy spoke up from his chair, “Especially you Scout, you brought her into the mess, after all.”

“Wha? Me? I was trying to give an opportunity to let loose! I thought she would have fun!”

“It seemed obvious enough, she didn’t.” He took a long drag of the cigarette, before snuffing it out, and standing up.

“You all don’t appreciate what Miss Pauling does for us. Out there every day, risking her life for our sakes, covering up our mistakes. And, what thanks do we give her? None. Nothing other than the ramblings and favors that come from you all. Des morceaux incompatibles de merde.” The last part was muttered, despite no one else understanding French. Well, except maybe that last word. 

“How do we fix it?” Heavy wondered, rubbing his chin and feeling twinges of guilt, about what everyone else must’ve been feeling around the time. He hadn't really sensed that the small woman was distressed, otherwise he would’ve been more sensible. A sensible drunk.

“The answers pretty obvious there, Heavy! We let her clean the whole base tomorrow, I know she’s been yearning for tha-” Soldier was promptly smacked by Medic before he could finish his assumption. “... I mean, let’s get her some flowers!” He grinned.

“Not bad,” Spy rubbed his chin, “I just hope you have the same definition of flowers as we do…” He added, rather sarcastically. It wasn’t easy to trust Doe’s vocabulary.

“I have an idea myself.” Medic announced, getting ready to speak with a smug look on his face. “We get her-”

“Good lord, no you are not going to give her various organs as gifts.” Spy stopped him before he could go any further, “If you were a woman in distress would you find a bloody liver comforting?”

Medic raised a finger,

“Don’t answer that.”

He took a second and crossed his arms, a disappointed look on his face, “Never mind.”

“Oh, oh! I know! Pick on me, pick on me!” Scout raised his hand, waiting for the balaclava clad man to call on him. It was too bad this wasn’t elementary school, though some similarities remained.

Spy sighed, “Yes?”

“Tomorrow, we oughta make her a breakfast in bed! I used to do that for my own ma when she seemed to have bad days! Always worked.” He smirked.

“Scout, that is-” Spy was almost going to automatically dismiss any ridiculous thought the boy would have, but quickly realized otherwise, “... not a bad idea. I am… surprised.”

“Ha, a better idea than any of these bozos have had.” Scout crossed his arms, relishing in his turn to be smug.

“It’s a start is what it is.” Spy added, lighting another cigarette.

Miss Pauling awoke with a sixth sense of already knowing she had dark circles under her eyes, and most likely looked like the grinch. All she could do was sigh, sitting up in the stiff bed, and getting ready to get out and go back to work. She couldn’t remember off the top of her head what was in store for today, but a flashback of last night did remind her that… wow, she was a bitch.

Those were her own thoughts, but in a way, she didn’t regret it. She acted perfectly reasonable for someone who had to deal with a bunch of drunk children after trying to have a fun night out, and getting stood up by the first date she would’ve had in a long time.

“Whatever. It’s all good. I’m all good.” She breathed, ready to take a shower and get off this base as quickly as possible. Everything was starting to feel peachy again, in her eyes. All she had to do was forget.

A timid pair of knocks came at her door, “Miss Pauling?” It was Scout.

Never mind about the peachiness.

Maybe if she didn’t say anything, he would go away. It was a strategy if anything… then again, this was Scout they were talking about.

“Miss Pauling? I know you’re in there!”

She pinched her nose, “What.” She responded with a flat tone. Not even out of bed and she already had to deal with the remains of last night.

“Um, I gotta- Ow! We gotta surprise for ya’.”

We? Oh no. No. She didn’t relish in the fact of having multiple people waiting at the door. She didn’t even pay attention to the surprise aspect of that. “I have to go to work.” She replied after a moment.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure you can just put that off for… awhile? But, really, you're goin’ to like this!” He assured, some other voices murmuring on the other side of the door, like they were helping him on what to say.

Miss Pauling rubbed her face, not responding for the longest time. She again went back to the notion that, maybe if she ignored him, or them, they'd just go away.

Then came the suspicious rattling sounds from the other side of the door. And, a click. An unlocking sound.

“... Miss Pauling you still there? Are you in bed an’ everything? Cuz, don't freak out, we maybe… sorta, lock picked your door…”

She widened her eyes, pulling the covers up slightly and glaring at the man boy from behind the door, “Scout-whoever, don't come in.” She warned, tone low.

“It'll be okay! You're really going to like this!” He assured once more, creaking the door open ever so slightly.

“Scout. What did I just sa-” She had leaned over and picked up one of her stray heels, preparing to chuck it at whoever dared peek around the corner of the cracked door. She was cut off by the door being kicked open and being greeted by a bombard of “SURPRISE!” From the whole gang.

She yelped and threw her heel as soon as the door was kicked open, hitting sniper in the head and knocking him down momentarily, “...Ouch.”

Her mouth was covered slightly, muttering a “sorry”, before she could take in the sight in front of her. At first her concern for sniper turned into anger for the group,

“What were you idiots thinking?! Get ou- What is this?” She stopped herself, noticing that Scout was holding a tray of various breakfast food with a nervous grin on his face. Everyone else seemed to be smiling as well, with soldier holding a bouquet of flowers, and Demo holding a bottle of wine. Pyro was also holding something, but she couldn't tell what.

Scout started speaking, “Well, er, you seemed to be having a bad night last night-” Spy, who was standing next to Scout gave him a subtle nudge, “Because of us, mainly, so we thought we’d… y’know, apologize.”

Her eyebrow was raised, but she didn't say anything yet.

“So, uh, we made ya’ a breakfast in bed!” He added, walking up to the bed and setting it down on her lap.

She was almost in a daze, wondering what the heck had happened to her team. Maybe last night she was too brash, and could only see them as good for nothing drunks, at the time. Usually it was different, and she got along with mostly everyone.

“I- “ She started, stammering, unsure what to say before Soldier stepped forward, practically shoving the bouquet of flowers in her face.

“Miss Pauling, I got you these flowers, it was my idea after all, so they're the toughest flowers I could find!”

Everyone around her shrugged in response. Doe could be unintentionally sweet when it came to certain situations, surprisingly so.

“Uh, wow, th-” She stammered even further, struggling to grasp the flowers while Soldier continued to boast about them. He, thankfully, was shoved aside by an even more excited, mumbling Pyro who had a gift of his own.

Judging from the looks of just about everyone else in the room, no one knew what it was either. Until he unveiled it of course.

“Oh, uh, a… mixtape?” Miss Pauling herself was surprised, examining the small box. It was titled, “Hot Tracks” and admittedly it concerned her what would actually be on this tape. This was Pyro after all, who was a major mystery themselves.

The initial wave of daziness and confusion soon slipped past Miss Pauling, and she couldn't help but smile. “Awe, Pyro, this is so sweet of you. Thank you.” She looked at them and gave their hand a friendly squeeze.

“Mmph!” They responded, beaming from behind the mask.

“And, Soldier, these flowers are really beautiful.” She addressed him.

He saluted her, “I’m glad I could accomplish my mission with valor.”

“And, Scout.” She started, looking at the boy still in front of her, “...Everyone, this all really… means a lot. I still have to apologize for my own behavior last night, I shouldn't have yelled and…” she coughed slightly, “Sorry.”

Spy spoke up, “Non, Miss Pauling, we, or they, all acted brash and rude. Behaviors you did not deserve to receive. This is our way of apologizing.”

Scout rolled his eyes at the older man, crossing his arms, and wishing he was the first to say that.

“Da, we all appreciate you, Miss Pauling.” Heavy spoke up, “I’m sorry.”

Demo approached the bedside, “Aye, I as well.” He tried to secretly slip her a bottle of one of his favorite whiskey brands, which she accepted with no hesitation, whispering a small “thank you”.

“If you ever are in need of some blackmarket organs or free medical care, my clinic iz always open, Miss Pauling.” Medic spoke up, looking proud of what he had to offer.  

“And, I'm always there for anything of yours that might be fixin’.” Engie added his own gift. Of course, that would've been open to her regardless.

Everyone looked at Mundy, who wasn't totally paying attention at first. A nudge from Heavy quickly brought him up to speed. “Oh, um, hm, I guess if you ever have trouble killing someone discreetly, give me a shout.” He grinned slightly, tipping his hat.

Miss Pauling was still taken back by all of this, but smiling, smiling widely. “I, wow, it… you know what? Thank you. It means a lot, and I try to make sure I don’t… lose my temper like that.”

“Please,” Spy scoffed, “Even if you do, it’s perfectly understandable with this group imbeciles. We should leave you to it.”

She smirked at that, looking down at her watch, “Right, I am… Late! Okay, thank you all so much, but… please get out so I can change.”

Everyone muttered their goodbyes, filing out of the room. Scout was still trying to talk her up, disappointed about having to leave at the time when she had to change. He was soon silenced by Spy dragging him out by the collar of his shirt.

It left her with herself and the sudden bombardments of breakfast, and gifts from her teammates. Getting out of bed at last, she took a few bites of the breakfast and started getting changed quickly, knowing the administrator wouldn’t be too happy with her now.

Still, she was pretty lucky to be apart of a team like this.

[thecoroutfitters]

As could be expected, the recent shooting in Las Vegas has brought the gun grabbers out of the woodwork (or wherever they hide) to moan and bewail the NRA preventing them from enacting what they call “common sense gun laws,” while accusing anyone and everyone who isn’t in their camp of condoning murder.

This is nothing new, as they follow the leftist philosophy of “never letting a good crisis go to waste”.

The target of the gun grabbers this time is the bump fire stocks that the killer used in murdering 59 people and wounding over 500 more.

Targeting the Wrong Enemy

This device, which the ATF classifies as an “accessory” not a modification, is legal for sale over the counter to pretty much anyone. Probably even to people who can’t legally buy a firearm. It’s not a gun and it’s not a gun modification, so the ATF has seen no reason to control it.

It’s easy to make a strong argument in support of the ATF decision, because you can do the same thing other ways, without having to spend the money on a bump fire stock.

I’ve seen people accomplish the same thing using a rubber band and a belt loop. I suppose if we really put our minds to it, we could come up with a dozen such ways, none of which require spending $150 on this accessory.

On the other hand, the left has a very graphic argument in favor of making bump fire stocks illegal. Had the killer not had access to such a device, he probably couldn’t have killed as many people. Being able to mimic machine gun fire, shooting 400 to 800 rounds per minute (the rate that a bump fire allows) isn’t up to the 750 to 950 rate of a M-4, cut it’s pretty close. Close enough for the shooter’s purposes.

Granted, a trained shooter can learn to shoot the AR-15 about that fast, while being much more accurate, but by all reports, the shooter was not an experienced shooter. He apparently had no military training and he was not known to be a shooter or gun collector. He kept that part of his life secret.

  This is Why Conventional Preparedness Wisdom is Deadly!

  I need to say here that I’m not a fan of bump fire. But then, I was never a fan of full-auto fire, even when I was in the military. A lot of guys really enjoyed going “rock and roll” with their M-16s, burning up ammo, but I didn’t. I wanted my shots to go where I aimed and full-auto really doesn’t allow that.

As far as I’m concerned, full-auto fire is only useful for two things:

1 – suppressive fire; when you need to get the enemy to keep their heads down, so that they don’t shoot you.

2 – mass fire; if you’ve got a mob of zombies bearing down on your position  and you need to take out as many as you can as fast as  you can. Real soldiers don’t bunch up like that, knowing it makes them too good a target, but zombies aren’t supposed to be that smart.

But for the Las Vegas shooter, bump fire was apparently a good choice, He wasn’t trying to hit individual targets, just to hit as many as he can, like shooting that mob of zombies. And like the zombies, they were all bunched up, so that he could be pretty much assured that his shots would hit somebody.

So it appears that the existence and ease of purchase of the bump fire stocks did in fact have a part in generating a high body count in this case.

But does that mean they should be outlawed? Should we give up any part of our Second Amendment rights because of a crazed madman who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, killing as many people as he could?

Leftist politicians and commentators would want us to think so. They have introduced legislation to that effect, claiming that eliminating the bump fire stock would make us all “safer” in some intangible way.

I say that’s intangible, simply because this is the only crime on record, where the bump fire stock has been used. It’s even extremely rare to find the AR-15 used in a crime, let alone fitted with a bump fire stock.

So how is eliminating the bump fire stock going to make anyone safer? Yeah, if there were a rash of crimes being committed with this accessory mounted to AR-15s, I could see that as a possibility, but not for one single crime, no matter how horrific.

But then, the left has never truly been interested in making the streets any safer for law-abiding citizens, that’s just the camouflage they use to push their anti-gun agenda. They need something to sell their ideology to the low-information voters and public safety at least sounds good.

Of course, if they were truly interested in public safety, they’d be much more interested in getting criminals off the streets, instead of lauding them as some sort of folk heroes.

Tell me how Obama talking about the “valuable work that Black Lives Matter,” (BLM) a domestic terrorist organization which uses physical violence as a means of “expression” makes anyone’s life safer. It doesn’t. If Obama or anyone else on the left was truly concerned about public safety, they would condemn BLMs methods, even if they agreed with their goals.

What They Say We Should Do…

I don’t think there is anyone who would argue the statement that “guns are dangerous.” If anything, gun owners and shooters would be the first to say that. We know how dangerous they are, which is why the first thing that any of us teach a new shooter is the four rules of gun safety.

But guns alone aren’t any more dangerous than a rock. It’s the mind behind the gun that turns it into a weapon of murder, just like the mind of the person who kills with a hammer or baseball bat. That’s the issue and the left needs to get on board with dealing with that issue.

Apparently, the Las Vegas killer was mentally unstable, as pretty much all mass shooters are. As in many other such cases, his mental instability had not been diagnosed, so there was no warning of what he was planning. Had there been, he could have been stopped, before doing any damage.

For that matter, existing laws on the books would have prevented him from being able to buy the firearms that he used in the attack. That would have made a real difference.

Eliminating bump fire stocks won’t make anyone any safer. Even Dianne Feinstein admits that, and she’s the loudest voice pushing to eliminate them.

As she has before, she has introduced legislation into the Senate to follow the pattern of California and restrict our Second Amendment rights.

Video first seen on ABC News.

Yes, let’s punish honest, hard-working, law-abiding Americans for what a criminally psychotic person has done! What rubbish.

While it wouldn’t bother me personally to see bump fire stocks taken off the market, I don’t think there should be a law passed to do so.

Such a law would be impossible to enforce anyway, as it requires people who currently have them to turn them in. Without going door to door and searching people’s houses, there is no way of knowing whether everyone turned theirs in.

That’s not only absurd, it’s illegal, breaking our Fourth Amendment rights. Of course, Feinstein isn’t concerned about that.

But then, leftists never really worry about whether a law is enforceable or not anyway. Nevada passed a law requiring universal background checks for gun sales. This means that background checks have to be done in private sales, as well as when a FFL gun dealer sells one. This includes when a person dies and leaves their guns to their children.

The FBI’s NICS has already stated that they cannot and will not perform background checks for private gun sales. States do not have any right to mandate that the federal government provide services. So there is no way for gun owners in Nevada to get the background check that the law requires.

Of course, that doesn’t matter to those on the left, who are suing the governor for not implementing that law. They are claiming that he is breaking the Constitution, by not using his powers to enforce laws that the state legislature passed.

Even so, that might just backfire on them, as the courts could throw the law out, as not being enforceable. As things stand right now, it is impossible for the governor to enforce that law, so it should be thrown out.

…And What They’re Actually Aiming For

The only way that it would be possible to enforce universal background checks would be to vastly increase the size of the NICS, so that they could deal with those individual sales, or to implement universal gun registration. But the law does not allow for registration. So that can’t be done, without changing federal law.

Even if they did, it wouldn’t stop the criminals, who buy stolen guns on the black market anyway. Once again, punish the law-abiding, hard-working Americans, for what criminals do.

While Feinstein’s proposed bill doesn’t address universal background checks, it does go much farther than just eliminating bump fire stocks. As one conservative commentator put it, “This doesn’t put us closer to the slippery slope, it is the slippery slope.”

Feinstein’s bill is a perfectly crafted piece of liberal legislation. I say that because it is sufficiently vague enough to allow leftist politicians and bureaucrats to use it as a means of creating all sorts of legislation to outlaw all sorts of firearm accessories and modifications. Specifically, it outlaws any device that can increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic firearm.

That’s actually a very broad term, able to be redefined repeatedly over time, in order to make it mean whatever bureaucrats, who are mostly Democrats, want it to.

To start with, what’s a “normal rate of fire” for a semi-automatic firearm? Even the manufacturers can’t agree on that; and does that mean for an experienced shooter or a novice? I’ve seen video of experienced shooters who can pull an AR-15’s trigger as fast as a bump fire stock can, and a whole lot more accurately.

Upgraded triggers can be said to increase the rate of fire, as they make it easier to fire faster; so can spring kits to lighten the trigger pull. Magazines holding more than one round make it easy to fire faster as well.

So do telescopic gunsights for that matter. I have an extended slide release and magazine release installed on my Glock, those both make it so that I can shoot faster, or at least reload faster, which makes it possible for me to shoot faster. I also have a laser sight and tritium night sights, both of which can be considered aids in shooting faster.

My AR-15 has a piston instead of a gas tube, another modification that makes it easy to shoot faster. I’ve also got a foregrip handle, which helps get back on target quicker, another aid in shooting faster. Then there’s the red dot sight, which is definitely faster to use than iron sights are.

I could go on and on. The point is, anything that anyone would do to modify a firearm, improving it from the original, can be considered a means of making the gun shoot faster.

So about the only thing that Feinstein’s law doesn’t make illegal are the guns themselves, holsters and slings. That’s apparently the next step in her nefarious plan.

The point is this; if we allow the left to take away any of our gun rights or to pass a law which restricts the guns we are allowed to have and the modifications we can make to them, they will just keep going.

Their goal is to take all guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens; and nothing short of that will satisfy them.

Are you going to let them do it?

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

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