Ask them if they’ve read Ammon Bundy’s piece about immigration, and ask them what they think of it. Keep in mind that Bundy is pretty far right in almost every way, but almost all of his right-wing militia buddies have abandoned him on this.

IMO he’s arrived at the right conclusion, but his reasons–because god–are nonsense. It’s going to be interesting to see how his worldview changes as he realizes that most of the people that he thought were True Believers like him were only allies of convenience.

In my job, I need to use materials that have a mil spec; that means it’s literally military grade, but it’s just saying that it meets or exceeds a certain specification for X product that is used in the military in some way. IMO, if something says ‘military grade’, but isn’t listing the mil spec(s) that it complies to, then it’s essentially meaningless.

I do have a compass that I think was advertised as military grade. It’s the same lensatic compass that is currently used by the military (…when they aren’t using GPS…), except that it doesn’t use tritium on the face. The half-life of tritium is about a decade, so it didn’t seem like a great idea to pay a ton extra for something that would barely glow in the dark in 20 years or so.

How many of the women you knew while working were also working as escorts?

I’ve known four women that worked as escorts; there seems to be a lot of crossover, like, once you can be comfortable taking your clothes off and doing a lap dance for a stranger, it’s not a very big stretch to go to escorting.

TBH, many of the people that buy his products at this time are leftists. Or at least anti-authoritarian, and deeply suspicious of gov’t control over individual liberties. His position that civil rights are for EVERYONE has meant that many people on the political right have no interest in doing business with him. And he’s absolutely right; if rights aren’t for everyone, then they aren’t rights.

It shouldn’t be a radical position to say that all people in the US should have the rights that they are promised by the US Constitution, and yet we currently have a gov’t that is doing their best to wipe their ass with the constitution and flush it down the toilet.

Who is responsible for the death? The person that intentionally drives a van into a crowd of peaceful protestors, the rental company that didn’t do a full psychological screening and criminal background check before they rented a van to the person that committed the murders, or Ford for making the Econoline van with steel body panels instead of covered in 5’ of closed-cell foam?

What it was designed for, and what it’s used for, are two different things, as you already agreed. Even if you truly, absolutely believe that the only purpose of a handgun or removable-magazine-fed semi-automatic rifle is to kill other people, then you would also have to admit that the overwhelming majority of them never are used to fulfill their purpose; the number that do are, compared to the number that exist, practically a rounding error. There are literally more guns in non-police/non-military hands in the US than there are people. There are far, far more defensive gun uses annually–regardless of who measures it and how–than there are gun homicides.

And bluntly, I absolutely DO NOT trust the gov’t to be the only ones with access to firearms. If you can look at Trump, ICE, Hegseth’s DoD, cops in general, and say, oh, yeah, I shouldn’t be armed, but those guys are cool, well, I don’t know what to tell you. And I don’t trust ANY gov’t to not harm the people, because there’s no way to prevent fascists from taking control without also becoming authoritarian.

That’s not necessarily true. In order to remain viable, a company needs to make a profit, or at least break even. If Costco is already at the point where they’re giving as much to their workers as they can while remaining viable as a corporation, then a national retail workers’ union isn’t going to help Costco employees directly.

This is a ‘feature’ of capitalism, and has a lot to do with the way that national and global economic events play out. An individual corporation may or may not be able to do much about the market conditions that it exists in.

His response, as is mine, is that what people use his guns for simply isn’t his business. If people used Stanley hammers to beat people to death, would it mean that Stanley was an immoral company? Or would it mean that people used the product in an unlawful and immoral way?

I happen to very, very strongly believe in 2A, and I think that the US is in the shitstorm it is currently in in no small part because liberals–but not leftists–have been working their asses off to disarm themselves. And I will note that the person in question has consistently employed furries–he loves their work ethic–and strongly supports the rights of LGBTQ+ people to arm themselves.

I don’t have to pay tariffs for Costco purchases.

But I do have to pay duty if I buy more than $200US in any single trip.

The closest Costco to me is in Canada. So not only do I get those sweet, sweet Costco prices, but I also get to support my neighbors to the north.

:)

IIRC the president of Costco said something like, he viewed any attempt by employees to unionize as a failure of management to treat employees fairly. And, well, he’s right; when employers treat employees in a way that they believe is fair, they don’t feel a need to join a union.

I desperately wanted to get a degree in mechanical engineering so I could go to work for an arms company (like Heckler & Kock, FN Herstal, etc.). Never happened, got an art degree instead. Then I met a guy that owns a very small firearms company, and, well, yeesh. It’s a brutally hard business. He makes a good product, he has good morals and ethics, but the market is so saturated that anyone smaller than the largest arms companies are hemorrhaging money. Glad I didn’t try to live my dream now.

I may not like what governments do with arms, but good goddamn, the arms themselves are neat.

Here’s the fun thing: before we had the ability to refrigerate everything, eating like that was normal. Most people didn’t have the luxury of refusing to eat food that wasn’t clearly, obviously spoiled.

It’s not my Walther; it’s my partner’s, and they got the F version specifically because the reduced spring power on the slide makes cycling it easier. But the reduced spring power also makes it less likely to go fully into battery without a very firm grip. In general, the Walther PDPs are very nice guns, but the F versions have to make some trade-offs to work for smaller/weaker hands.

Me, I’ve got a CZ Shadow II Compact (I would have gotten the Carry, but that came out a month or two after I got the Compact). Love it. I went from using an inexpensive steel boat-anchor of a double-stack .40S&W/10mm 1911 in matches to the CZ.

For anyone that reads this, with the time for a gunfight that ArcaneSlime notes, .8 seconds for a draw from concealment and a single shot on target in the A zone is ‘competitive’. You should practice to get to that point. I’m not there, and I need to practice to get there myself.

…'Cuz carrying a gun isn’t like a magic talisman. It doesn’t make you safer to carry a gun unless you practice, and practice a lot. No one wants to get in a gun fight unless they’re either psychotic, suicidally stupid, or both.

Stovepipes are pretty common if you limp-wrist your pistol. Similarly, some pistols don’t go back into battery if you don’t keep a rock-solid grip on the gun (I know for certain that this is an issue with the Walther PDP-F). Hang fires are something I wouldn’t worry about in a gun fight; if it doesn’t go bang, immediately cycle the slide and drop the round. Squibs on the other hand… If you get one of those, well, you aren’t shooting with that gun any more, not until you can clear it. If it goes pop instead of BANG, then you definitely should not try a second time.

Honestly, if you, as a non-cop/non-military person are in a gunfight, the odds that you will need to reload are incredibly low. The biggest reason to carry a spare magazine along with your carry gun is so that you can drop your mag and swap out if you have some kind of failure. But even that is highly unlikely, assuming that you have bought a reputable firearm in the first place (e.g., not KelTec, Taurus, or a Sig P320), and have kept it maintained. Keep in mind that gun fights outside of police standoffs and military engagements are almost always very, very fast; like, less than five seconds most of the time.

…But what happens when your second magazine runs out? What then?

Let’s say that I have a gun that normally has a seven round magazine. I add a second magazine. Now I’ve got 14 rounds! …But why not just make a 14 round magazine? And now when I run out, I have to change two magazines. (FWIW, normal capacity for a semi-auto 9mm is 13-18 rounds, and 15 is about average. 7 is the OEM capacity of all traditional .45ACP 1911 pistols.)

IMO adding a secondary magazine, rather than increasing the capacity of an existing magazine, adds needless complexity. Added complexity increases the odds of failure. I hate to say that this is a skill issue, but, well, changing a magazine quickly is a skill that you should practice if you want to be proficient in practical shooting. (By “practical shooting”, I mean things like IPSC, IDPA, USPSA, PCSL, three gun, steel challenge, self-defense, and war. You shouldn’t need to worry about rapid magazine changes for hunting or long range competitions.)

Unfortunately they’re pretty failure prone; they’ve got some small plastic parts that tend to break. Being pump guns, they’re also at risk of short-stroking, where you don’t fully complete a cycle, and jam your shotgun.

It’s a great idea, KelTec just needs to iron out the bugs.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9335287/

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/10/what-we-know-about-political-violence-in-america/

https://www.justsecurity.org/122278/correctly-assessing-left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-in-the-united-states/

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/09/12/is-radical-left-violence-really-on-the-rise-in-america

Any real analysis of actual rates of violence motivated by politics can see that, while left wing violence is apparently rising, that rise is from “extremely low/non-existent” levels to “barely a blip on the radar” levels when compared to right wing violence. Anyone making claims to the contrary is simply not being honest. The overwhelming majority of violence motivated by politics comes from the right, from neo-Nazi groups, from Oath Keepers, Proud Man-children, Threepers, and so on. Note that these are groups that are actually organized, have a command structure, funding, and so on. Compare this to ‘antifa’–which is short for anti-fascist, and if you aren’t anti-fascist, that makes you what?, pro-fascist?–which is barely organized (despite hysterical claims from Trump and his flunkies), has zero funding aside from the people bring with them, is non-hierarchical, has no meetings, and so on.

Or, y’know, get tested. That was something I always did with significant others before we stopped using barriers (I’m sterile, so pregnancy was never an issue). Anyone that’s not willing to get tested and share results–and I don’t mean verbally, “no, see, I’m totally clean, trust me bro”–isn’t someone you should be having sex with.

…But that’s probably a lot harder for kids to do. I don’t think that a 16yo can walk into a PP and get tested without parental supervision.

Batteries are quite expensive. Lead-acid batteries are readily available, but don’t really work well for powering a house on a regular basis, because they don’t have a very long life cycle. LiON batteries work very well, but they’re fire hazards. Even worse, if you live in an area where you get freezing temperatures, they must be kept inside, because they can’t be allowed to freeze if you’re cycling them. LiFePO4 is the current best option. If you don’t charge them above 80, 85%, and never discharge below 20%, you should have a nearly infinite lifespan. But that means that for every 30kWh of power you use, you want 50kWh of battery. And currently LiFePO4 battery banks run approx. $1000/kWh (+/- depending on band). If you heat your home with electricity, and you live in e.g. North Dakota, you’re going to want more like 200kWh of batteries, because even high efficiency heat pumps can suck a lot of power when it’s -20F.

I’m currently working on getting a 17.7kW system approved by the local utility. It looks like I’ll need to step down what I’m feeding into the grid, because the line capacity out where I live is only 10kW, and they will only approve 75% of the line capacity for grid-tied systems.

I have priced out gym equipment, because I live 100 miles from the nearest “city” (…which is, like 20,000 people).

At $30/mo for a gym membership, it would take me >15 years to pay for a decent, mid-range power rack, Olympic bars, and bench. And that’s not including the weights themselves, which are usually $2-5/pound. A decent elliptical machine from eBay? Another 2 years, plus a year and a half for shipping.

If you’re serious about weights, and not independently wealthy, it almost always makes more sense to have a gym membership.