"Buy, buy buy"...?

From Michael Gaddy's current article on LRC:

While we stumble along economically with bailouts, buyouts, and poor sales in almost all sectors, two products in America are seeing dramatic increases in sales: guns and ammo. People who never owned a gun before are buying; people are buying multiples of military style weapons and ammo is being bought by the case instead of by the box.

Many explain this away as folks simply worried that Obama will move to ban certain firearms, especially those referred to by the ignorant as "assault weapons," I believe the motivation to buy firearms and ammunition goes much deeper.

More and more Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the storm that is brewing on the horizon, a storm driven by the possibility of a complete economic collapse.

The more astute are reading the handwriting on the wall: military combat units being assigned for stateside duty to quell domestic disturbances, a militarization of law enforcement, and the fear of what will happen when the state is no longer able to provide monthly checks to the millions currently living on government handouts labeled as "entitlements."

A strong possibility exists, when the checks stop, those who no longer have will seek to forcibly take from those who do. The scenes from New Orleans after Katrina have not disappeared from the public memory.

He goes on to point out that national legislation is pre-positioned to exploit the next inevitable slaughter of disarmed victims by some sociopath who fails to adequately abide by already-existing laws against murder and assault, using a (gasp!) gun. The enemies of firearms ownership in this country can be confidently counted on to exploit every such occurrence. He also says - correctly, in my opinion - that the majority of those currently sweeping gun shop shelves clean will not resist when that new legislation leads to confiscations, a la post-Katrina New Orleans. It's a good article. Read it.

I think it's very good, and a very good statement to our would-be masters, that guns and ammo are flying off the shelves at this uncertain time.

But I sincerely hope all those buying folks out there are "buy, buy buying" more than guns and ammo, if they really want themselves and their families to get through a possible collapse. If they live in places that can turn into replicas of post-Katrina NO, I hope at least some of them are getting out of there.

We already know the government isn't here to help. We already know most won't resist confiscation. So don't be there when it happens, and don't put yourself in a position where you're forced to depend on government "help."

Does this contradict my earlier statement that retreating is not 'the only true path?" Maybe, but I don't retract the statement. Do as thou wilt, by all means. But at least look around you. If what you're doing is a true path to disaster, only you can get yourself the hell out of the way.

I don't know what the future holds; neither do you. But some things we do know. If you're even bothering to read this, chances are you do know that the incoming administration is not your friend, any more that the outgoing one was. Maybe it will be worse - it's shaping up to be. You do know that it will exploit all possible events to enhance its own power at your expense. You do know that the national, and maybe the world, economy has one foot in the grave. You do know that the people in charge of the next big disaster will do "one heck of a job," even if it leaves you starving and at the mercy of looters and local tyrants. You do know all these things.

But do you know the answer to these questions? If New Orleans comes to a city near you today, what will you and your family be eating two months from now? Where will you live? How will you stay warm? How will you defend yourself? These are the important questions, and you don't have to be a "gun nut" - or any other kind of nut - to be answering them for yourselves. Now.