Purchase of guns and ammo wasted effort?

In a comment this morning to yesterday's "Buy, buy, buy", The Last Cause asked, "I wonder if all of the effort to purchase ammunition for firearms that will never be used is just misplaced effort."

Some of it will prove to be misplaced, no doubt. Ultimately, in practical terms, it's foolish to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on tools you have neither the skill nor intention to use. But even if the larger portion of those guns wind up gathering cobwebs in closets, it's still a good thing. It shows me that there's still a "screw-you" spirit out there. Maybe only a spark of it, but there's hope in a spark.

Ten years ago, when I lived in Southern California, I watched a similar phenomenon on a more local scale. State laws against certain cosmetic features on rifles had just been tightened. A bit of deceptive hocus-pocus on the part of the California AG had just transformed thousands of people who had foolishly registered their "assault weapons" into felons. Freedom was most certainly not on the march, at least not in a forward direction. These new restrictions were due to take effect in a few months.

Californians' response? Gun shops couldn't keep'em in stock. Untold thousands of imported SKS rifles - just barely legal - virtually cascaded off the shelves. Anything black and pistol-gripped was a sure seller. I went to gun shows and watched the ammo dealers doing business as if they'd found a way to mint their own money. It was really something. I got a helluva kick out of it.

What was the point of all that, since probably few of those people had any intention of ever firing their guns? Nothing but the "screw-you" factor. And here's the beautiful thing: it had an effect. When all those previously-registered rifles became felony-worthy illegal by DOJ fiat, there was talk of door-to-door confiscation. And by that I mean Sacramento was talking about it. But by dint of sheer numbers, that talk faded away swiftly. Nothing was EVER done about getting all those heavily-armed felons to turn'em in.

Now, you know and I know that virtually none of those people would really have shot back. Nobody did in New Orleans. But we're talking about a lot more people here, and the key word is "virtually." Would you want to be the lucky cop who encountered the exception to the rule? To a bullet from a round of 7.62X39 ammo, Kevlar may as well be silk. So in the absence of any cops willing to enforce the new law, Sacramento just let it all go away.

No, I'm not suggesting that we can confidently count on that sensible reaction to mass non-compliance from the feds. But the existence of that non-compliance is heartening, at least.

In practical terms, beans are more important than bullets. I wish I believed that all those gun-buying folks out there were making other necessary preps. Probably most of them aren't. But this episode shows me that, if nothing else, the spirit of the raised middle finger is still more alive throughout this country than I have sometimes feared.