[FRIAM] is "assault rifle" a red herring?

[Steve Smith]

Dave, Glen, et (gun-toting) alia -

> When I bought the pistol, 1969,  I could get armor piercing, black talon, heavy grain, light grain, different gauge shot shells, flares, and a grenade launcher (bullet with screw in top that took a rod to which the grenade was attached). Best friend at the time was a genius savant in electronics (3M fellow while still an undergraduate) and full-bore survivalist. We had a lot of fun together. He was the "researcher" that wired up a modular computer the psych department received sans manual, and I was the "lab rat" in my first LSD experiments. You produce some interesting brain waves when on meditation and on LSD.
And this was during your SDS/Weathermen years, right?   At least nobody
died (as you tell it).

And even more fascinating if you are fondling your .357 whilst on your
LSD trip, jacked in to a jacked up TRS-80's?  /The heft, the grip, the
caress of the cold metal! / How does that translate when inhibitions and
conventions about reality are lifted?   Maybe complement that with a WWI
Trench Knife or a Katana in the other hand!  Surely there are some such
studies out there of how the brain lights up when you have the
capability to "end" one or many people at the twitch of the wrist or an
index finger?   And does it matter if it's loaded with snake-shot,
mercury-filled hollow point, armor piercing, or a grenade (or one of
each)?    Do some light up our sense of importance, power, domination
more than others? 

And how about them Rods from God (nod to Marcus).  Does  any one check
the payloads on SpaceX's  Falcon Heavy launches?   I think a full
complement of Gods Rods comes in at the standard 6-shooter revolver
cylinder load of tungsten telephone poles.    If you can't use them to
excise Pence and those traitorous lawmakers from "the People's House",
maybe take out Putin in his summer house, or Epstiens island,  or
Khomanie or XiXhing or little Rocket Man and his sister, or ...  how
*must* it feel to be Zeus or Thor hisself?  Oh the problems we could
solve with enough ballistic dominance!   Just think how fast we could
have cleared the Ever Given clog in the Suez?   <bwah ha ha!> <ha
haaaa...>...  <ha!>.

Some of my lucid-dreaming as a pre-teen included carrying a fully
automatic weapon of some kind (my father's era Tommy Gun, or the
contemporary M16 ?)   I didn't watch many movies and no TV but somehow I
knew the image/swagger of having a firestick in my hand that in
principle could eliminate all foes just by waving it in their direction
with the trigger held tight.   Unsurprisingly, the subjects of my
attempted elimination were "deserving* of such, because  in fact they
weren't just out to get *me* but to "get" innocent people and *I* was
the only thing standing between the two.   Where did I get *that*
image?  I was the proverbial "good guy with a gun"... what an archetype
for my developing young male psyche!  Taken straight from the engraving
on the barrel of Glen's own obje't d' desire is the phrase "The Judge". 
Yes, it is compelling to be judge, jury and executioner!   After all we
*individuals* know best right from wrong and Ayn Rant(sic) tole us that
it was our public duty to pursue our private interests to their
fullest... and what greater proof of that is the willingness to take
someone else's life with a flick of a wrist and twitch of a finger, for
our idiosyncratic sense of greater-good!  I wonder what our last two
mass murderers were fixing up?  Getting rid of those little exotic women
he felt to be his temptation?   Getting back at the bullies from high
school that *might* have been in the supermarket  (or school playground,
or theater or ???) that day?

Of course, true to form (in such dreams), the more important a willful
act was, the more ineffectual my ability to respond.   Most of us know
how ff'ing hard it is to *run* in a dream, but in this case, that
ineffectuality was extended to the bullets in the rifle...  they were
definitely "ultra-light grain loads" and in fact the harder I squinched
my eyes or ground my teeth, or thrust the weapon toward the target, the
more lame the trajectory until the bullets were barely able to make it
out of the barrel!   I vaguely remember in those dreams (paradoxically)
having the fear that I would actually *hit something* with my limp
waterhose of lead.   As I tried in vain to raise my aim enough for the
pathetic stream of tracers (yes, somehow I knew about tracer rounds) to
reach my targets, I had to ask myself the question "are these truly my
enemies, and is complete annihilation by lead (and tracers) raining down
from the sky (consider my trajectories) the best answer.   It was
usually at this point in my dream that I began to exert my will a little
more effectually and quit picking at *that* Gordian Knot.    I think by
then my enemies were usually bored enough with watching my pathetic
attempts to "hose them out of existence" that they had quit whatever
Snidely Whiplash activity they had been gesturing toward and I probably
woke up out of my own boredom with the whole scene.   I don't think kids
who play MMORPG FPS (massive multiplayer online role playing game
first-person-shooters) have the same dreams I did... maybe if I'd had
more encouragement in my hero-wannabe-ism I would have become a gun nut
myself?

I should probably be telling all this to my therapist, not this
crowd...   though i think while her code of ethics requires her to keep
it all to herself (unless I or someone else is in imminent danger from
my ideations and intentions)... and here, this just goes into the
archives for all to read (including my neighbors who probably already
know I'm a danger to their god-guts-n-glory 2nd amendment rights).  They
are probably scared to death that I'm going to back my antique dump
truck through the front wall of their house and hook a logging chain to
their gun safe and yank it out of the wimpy little lead anchor-bolts
holding it down to their 4" floor-slab...   come the apocalypse (only)
of course.   <sidebar> Apocalypse rules: Might really DOES make Right!  
Maybe if they hadn't seen me welding steel plates over the doors and
windows of the truck cab, they wouldn't have thought of that?  Paranoia
provides such a glorious endorphin rush!   /If only I had some cold hard
steel to fondle as I contemplate all the horrible things in the world
that "a good guy with a gun" can fix up/ with just a little exertion of
will...   and what better scenario than a world run amok where
*everything* is an opportunity to "do good" (by some twisted logic).

The saying goes:  "You don't see any motorcycles parked in front of a
therapists office".  I suspect you don't see many Diesel Duallies
belching black smoke and sporting TruckNutz or NRA stickers either.   I
suspect an inflated sense of power over others might be just the
antidote to the existential angst and ennui those without the big-iron
feel?  Maybe this is the answer to Marcus reflection on whether
Rupublicans are happier than Democrats?   Go sit astride a 100
horsepower Iron Horse or in the cab of a 400HP coal-rolling pickemup
(don't forget the TruckNutz!) and fondle the grip and finger the trigger
of some of your good friends standing against the wall of the closet (or
tucked between the mattress and box springs of your bed).  THAT will
help relieve any self-doubt/self-loathing you might have!

Just pay it forward, you don't need to own it...  belch that exhaust,
rip that sound out those 'murrican made cored out mufflers on your
'murrican made iron horse, wave those ('murrican made) weapons of war,
spray some lead...   see, don't you feel better now?   Save that $100
and buy a round of drinks at the roadhouse for you buddies in patinated
leather or denim but hold back enough to buy a dozen rounds for your
best friend tucked down your pants like a phallic symbol.  He doesn't
want to be left with an empty chamber.

Yup, I could probably go on forever...  thank Goddess I sublimated my
red-blooded 'murrican love for hot lead into the hot lead of type, long
since gone virtual/digital <fingers clattering on my keyboard, ratta tat
tat!>.   Spraying my words indiscriminately over the crowd...
fortunately they are easier to duck (or catch in your teeth and spit
back as some here do so adeptly)... hitting <delete> is like my choosing
to wake from lucid dreams when they got too boring or inane in spite of
my best efforts to steer them right!   Beware the rain of lead and
tracers from an ineffectual keyboard jockey! 

ramble, mumble, grumble, bramble,

 - Steve

<disclosure>   I own my Grandfather's WWI-issue .45 (but no ammo, armor
piercing or otherwise), a Diesel pickup (sans NRA sticker and Truck Nutz
and  programmed chip to belch smoke), and have owned a round dozen
motorcycles (all rice burners) in my life...  oh yeah... a couple-a
1940's typewriters and full set of brass linotype slugs for making
(literally) hot lead type on-demand ( forget which type-face, I've never
put them in a hot-lead lino to test them out). I don't own any tungsten
rods in orbit.


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