Thoughts from the ammo line

We are celebrating an anniversary with Ammo Grrrll: THE COLUMN TURNS 3. She writes:

On the previous two anniversaries of this column, I briefly reviewed how the column was born for readers who had joined us recently. I believe that the traditional gift for any first anniversary is paper, but for the third, it’s Special Iran Paper – large bills in a bale and the recipient pretends to promise not to become a nuclear power. So here’s what happened:

Mr. AG and I moved from Minnesota to Arizona in 2010. Shortly thereafter, Mr. AG decided to get his Concealed Weapons Permit. He looked online for a teacher and lucked into one of the best, a guy we call 3G or, Glenn the Gun Guy, who teaches Law Enforcement Officers. Mr. AG bought a Springfield Armory XDM S-A pistol which required .40 caliber ammo.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons too complicated to revisit here, our new interest in shooting coincided with a nationwide ammo drought that lasted for about two years.

From childhood on, I have had a severe problem with unreasoning authority telling me I couldn’t do something. I took this drought as a personal affront and a challenge. Since Mr. AG was still working full-time and I was retired, it became my near full-time job to seek out sources of .40 caliber ammo. And then to stand in line for it – sometimes Soviet-style lines for hours at a time. It took on the nature of a Holy Quest. Typically, I was first or second in line at Walmart every day at 4 a.m, waiting for the new ammo to be shelved at 7 a.m.

When I was second in line, it was always behind a hilariously-un-pc guy who had been a contractor in Iraq for 5 years. He was there at all hours of the early morning because he had been blown up by an IED, spent 19 months in hospital, and lived in more or less constant pain and could only sleep for a couple hours at a time anyway. We became very good friends and he and his lovely Texas wife are among our Tuesday night poker buddies.

I also made friends with the young Hispanic guy who unloaded the trucks at Walmart who would text me what ammo was coming, if any. If other “regulars” didn’t see me in line, they knew better than to waste their time there.

The ammo line became quite a convivial place. When you stand around with the same group of strangers nearly every morning for months at a time, joking, talking politics, you get to know people. I started bringing snacks to share, my famous Lemon Bars, mostly. One time I laid out a full buffet on the ammo counter, but Walmart was not amused. By the second year, I had also started shooting and turned out to be pretty good at it. We bought more guns. (EVERYBODY buys more guns!) Soon, I needed .22s, 9 mm’s, and .45s as well as the .40s. Whew! More work for Mother.

Mr. AG and I had been Power Line fans for years and were friends with both John and Scott. When John waxed enthusiastic about shooting, I wrote that first column about my experiences in gun-friendly Arizona and sent it to Scott as a kind of audition. As I’ve said before, he posted it within minutes of receiving it, and suddenly I was a guest columnist!

I will remain ever grateful for that opportunity, especially to join such an esteemed site as Power Line. But on this third anniversary, I want especially to express my deep gratitude to my regular readers and commenters. And make another point that I think is important.

In many ways, my entire life has been a refutation of the bizarre notion that the “Evil Manly Male Patriarchy of Men” is all that prevents women from achieving their dreams. I will state categorically that I can think of no time when my father, my husband, a teacher, or “Society” in general, ever told me that I could not do anything I put my hand to because I was a female. I hear tell this is not every woman’s experience, but it is mine.

First of all, the Four Horsemen of Power Line welcomed me. I expected that my column would resonate with smart, witty center/right women, including some long-time women friends. And my women readers are indeed awesome. Thank you, ladies, one and all. But I have been particularly surprised and touched by the number of men fans who not only read me, but include regular – in some cases, weekly! – messages of support.

Now think about the dreary continual drizzle of anti-male bilge in the last half-century. This is exactly the demographic – gun-lovin’, right-wing, manly guys – that the Left would have us believe would be most hostile to a woman columnist. These are the guys, we are assured, who only take brief breaks from shooting their “assault” rifles at kitties to beat their wives during the Super Bowl and hail from such irredeemable places as Alabama, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. And yet they send me witty, erudite “attagrrrlls” every week! How could that BE? SOMEBODY is clearly mistaken here.

You will do well to understand – all the way down to a cellular level — that every single thing the Left says is a lie. Every. Single. Thing. Including whether or not it is currently raining. Millions of women are not dying of anorexia – which even a cursory glance around any mall would confirm. Women were not herded into the “Doll Corner” from the “Block Corner” in kindergarten. Women do not make 76 cents for every dollar a man makes, or the evil capitalists would hire ONLY women. One out of four college girls has not been sexually assaulted; President Trump is not anti-gay; there IS rampant, widespread voter fraud, which is precisely why the left cannot tolerate an investigation or picture ID. I could go on. And, no doubt, will.

I used to worry about running out of things to say. With the Great Democrat Freakout, that is no longer an issue. I will continue to work hard to merit my great readers. Terrific. The best. Winners all. Smart, believe me. Good-looking! Massive hands. A couple don’t like me. Fair enough, but still sad. (Sorry, I got carried away from reading #Yes!HeISMyPresident’s Tweets.)

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