Riots

A story about being in the LA riots without a gun.

(H/T)

You can find similar stories about Hurricane Katrina. Or you can read how Mayor "No Guns For You" Bloomberg turned Staten Island into a looters' paradise in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

I have a relative who was in LA for the riots. See, he moved to LA from one of the Dixie states. When he moved there, one of his new neighbors came over to brief him on neighborhood things. The neighbor told the tale of a local miscreant who had a penchant for breaking into houses, with the lament that "nobody has been able to do anything about him." Relative asked: "Has anybody tried shooting him?" Miscreant never bothered him.

So fast-forward a few years. Relative has made friends with the family across the street. His counterpart in that family occasionally gave Relative some good-natured shit about how Relative owned guns and Neighbor won't have a gun in his house.

Riots broke out. The rioting came within a few blocks of the neighborhood. Relative still had to go to work; he carried some flavor of a 1911 with him. At Relative's house, he loaded his other guns (a couple of shotguns and an EBR) and put them where he thought they would be useful.

Neighbor came over and asked "can we stay with you?" Because everybody knew that calling 9-1-1 would result in either no response from the cops or even a busy signal.

After the riots were over, Neighbor learned to shoot. And bought weapons.

Maybe civil order only breaks down every so often and maybe less often than one might think. But when you need a gun, you probably really need one, in the same way that when you need a fire extinguisher, there isn't time to putter on over to the local hardware store for one.

I sincerely hope that you go through life without ever needing either a fire extinguisher or a firearm. Hope, though, is not a plan.

What is your plan?