From some of my earlier blogs you can sense that I have been concerned about a civil uprising in the United States. Some of my readers have suggested that I get some form of self-defense.
I finally began investigating the issue to see whether I could buy any reasonable self-defense weapons.
When I was the business manager of the Glide Memorial Church (social activism central on the West Coast) I had offended some ex-con prison activist building tenants who subsequently threatened to kill me. I went to Sears and bought myself a rifle and ammunition which I rode home with on my motorcycle. By the time I got home I realized that I was much smarter and more competent than those ex-cons and so I developed a number of alternate ways of dealing with them. I returned the rifle.
This time, as I looked at the self-defense milieu, I found that in order to buy a handgun I had to take a handgun safety examination (HSC) for $25 and demonstrate an ability to load and unload a handgun. So I read the 56 page Department of Justice PDF for the test. On page 6 I found I didn't need such a certificate because I am an honorably discharged veteran.
Actually I'm not an honorably discharged veteran. When I found my discharge documents from the late 1960s I found that I had been put on separation status that allows me to be recalled by an act of Congress at any time (45 years later it still hasn’t happened).
I read the entire 56 page PDF and was absolutely shocked at the number of laws on the books, at the felony level, directed against gun owners. Example: I can't give a handgun to my son without his having to register it and he can't give it to his sister without going through a certified gun dealer and having her take the handgun test. In San Francisco, in California, I can't get a wide range of traditional pistols nor can I get ammunition on the Internet and I am severely restricted in the types of ammunition clips I can own.
That is only the beginning of the limitations on my ownership or use of handguns and rifles. The list is long and absolutely unwarranted for any responsible law-abiding person.
As I pointed out in an earlier blog the anti-gun movement is hysterical. I also pointed out the reason that this movement is blind to the reality around us (a permanent black hereditary under-class with illegal guns) and is acting at an hysterical level.
The main institution working against this hysteria is the National Rifle Association and their lobbying group the Institute for Legislative Action. I sent them some money after encountering the real world of anti-gun hysteria.