Gun Blog Variety Podcast #115 - Pocket-Carrying Botnets Count America's Guns

Trying to fit a pocket pistol into girl jeans is like trying to cram 10 pounds of Maura Healey's stupid into a 5 pound bag.

• So why is it that women can't just carry guns in their pockets? Beth gives tells us the story of a "helpful" male trainer who didn't stop to think that maybe he wasn't as helpful as he thought he was.
• What kind of person tries to kill a cop with a stolen car? Sean takes a look.
• THE INTERNET IS DOWN! THE INTERNET IS DOWN! ...well, maybe not. Barron explains how a botnet made it impossible for many to access the websites they needed most.
• In the Main Topic, Sean and Erin take a look at that very interesting question: How many guns are really in America?
• Sometimes a story is so big that Tiffany can't cover it in only one show. She jumps back to the 'Good Samaritan' story to talk about how a reliably anti-gun journalist had a decidedly non-typical response.
• When your survival is on the line, the people you surround yourself with can make the difference between life and death. How well do you know them? Erin tells us that now is the time to get to know them well.
• Either Maura Healey just can't seem to see reason, or she just loves to see herself getting the Patented Weer'd Audio Fisk™ treatment. This time she's on Boston Public Radio.
• Our plug of the week is for Armed Lutheran Radio,

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Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here. 

Thanks also to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

And a special thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Remington Ammunition and Lucky Gunner.com.

BCP Segment Transcript:
Keep an Eye on Your Tribe

I’ve mentioned in previous segments that we call ourselves Preppers because the previous term, Survivalists, was co-opted by fanatical racist and separatist movements.

And while the term Prepper isn’t yet a bad word (despite the best efforts of National Geographic and their execrable Doomsday Preppers show), given the recent political climate and continuing belief that anyone who keeps guns and supplies is looking for an excuse to start a civil war, we may have that in our future.

(As an aside, if we ever do need to stop calling ourselves preppers, I suggest we start telling people that we’re fans of the Walking Dead. Given that it’s the #1 show on TV right now, they probably won’t ask more questions.)

But on to the point of my segment: while our lifestyle hasn’t yet been tagged with a radical political affiliation, it’s something to look out for among members of your prepping circle or bug-out group, to whom I shall refer from now on as “your tribe”.

Just recently, I discovered that someone who I had been Facebook friends with had recently jumped on the pro-fascism bandwagon. His wall was full of slogans like “Nationalist Pride” and quotes praising Mussolini, and pictures of people in black shirts with red armbands, and lighting bolts everywhere. SO many lightning bolts. The kind that look suspiciously like an S.

And then I looked a bit harder, and found a picture of him wearing a t-shirt with the Waffen SS death’s head on it.

Now it’s very easy to miss these kinds of things on Facebook, because if you have more than a dozen friends it’s impossible to keep track of everything they put on their walls. If you’re like me, you mainly get by with what’s on your news feed.

But while it’s okay for this kind of oversight to happen on Facebook, it’s another thing when that person is part of your tribe for whatever reason, because they’re going to be associating with you and therefore YOU are going to be associated with THEM in the eyes of onlookers… and all it takes is one neo-nazi in a prepping group to tarnish all of your reputations and make every prepper look like a paranoid, hateful racist.

I hope this segment doesn’t come across as me sounding like I’m saying “You must carefully watch your tribe for signs of wrongthink,” because that’s not what I want.

What I am saying is that you need to make sure you know what other tribe members are saying, doing, and believing. Back in 2011 there was a warning put out by the FBI for store owners to be careful of people purchasing things like weatherproofed ammunition, MREs, night vision devices, and the like, as well as people who insisted on paying for such purchases with cash, because these were indications that this person might be a potential terrorist.

Naturally, these are also things that hunters and preppers buy, and many folks still pay for things with cash because it’s, y’know, legal tender. And we preppers resented being lumped in with terrorists just because we bought gear which MIGHT be used to aid a plot.

Well, the same holds true here, only moreso: we don’t want the prepping movement to be lumped in with racists and fascists and nazis, either.

So keep an eye out for this kind of behavior in your tribe. If you notice it, talk to that person about it. Let them know that you care about them, and that you think they’re headed down a dangerous path, and that they ought to reconsider their life choices.

Hopefully, with love and support, you can rescue that person. But if you can’t -- you probably ought to let them go. You don’t want to be considered a racist or a fascist by proxy, and you CERTAINLY don’t want any additional scrutiny by law enforcement because you’re a known associate of a nazi.

So keep an eye on your tribe, and make sure everyone is on an even keel. Like my mom says, “Who your friends are reflects on you,” and not only is this true, but it’s also true that whoever you prep with reflects on the Prepper movement.

Please don’t let our culture be overrun with nazis. I really don’t want to change my segment’s name to “Blue Collar Walking.”