For decades, the right was caricatured as paranoid doomsday preppers. Now it’s the left that’s preparing for the apocalypse. Once, revolution was an aesthetic — Che Guevara shirts and campus protests. Now it’s a lifestyle brand with tactical vests.
By Dan Zimmerman for Shooting News Weekly
Meanwhile, conservatives — those caricatured as the violent barbarians — are mostly watching this unfold with disbelief. They’ve always known that guns aren’t inherently evil; intent is. What terrifies them isn’t the weaponry but the warped conviction behind it. A man protecting his family is predictable; a lunatic avenging an ideology is not.
We are entering uncharted territory. The United States has seen political assassinations, riots, and radical groups before — but never with this cultural reach. The internet ensures that every grievance finds both a trigger and a target. Fury is now networked, outrage algorithmic. And unlike the extremists of old, today’s radicals don’t hide in compounds. They scroll beside you, shop beside you, share your workspace, and sleep next door.
You can’t mix apocalyptic language with live ammunition and expect harmony. A society can survive hypocrisy. It cannot survive hysteria with high-capacity magazines. Every revolution begins with the belief that violence will heal what politics can’t. It never does. It only creates new tyrants with a taste for blood.
Perhaps, in some dark corner of their minds, the new progressives believe they’re the heroes in history’s next great moral war. They forget that history has a habit of eating its heroes. It also has an excellent memory. It remembers every bullet, every boast, every cause that mistook fury for faith. And it will remember who called it justice when they started killing the innocent.
— John Mac Ghlionn in The Armed Awakening of America’s Radical Left
Find the original article in its entirety at Shooting News Weekly.
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How many rounds of ammunition did your dad’s or grandpa’s 22 bolt action rifle have using 22 short ammo? Ours could hold more than 10, closer to 20, but we preferred longs, it held around 15. What’s the problem with todays high capacity mags, we have had them longer than most of the knuckleheads have been around.