Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll’s is at home in what she calls MY ARIZONA. She writes:

I have spoken glowingly and often of the robust gun culture in my adopted state of Arizona.

Now, I realize that some people hate guns. Others are simply not interested in guns and still others know their personal temperaments well enough to eschew them. An email friend said recently, “Though I stand firmly behind the Second Amendment, I know that me with a firearm is a fish with a bicycle at the top of a ski jump. Nothing good will come of it. My weapon of choice is flight.”

Self-knowledge is important! I think Plato said that. Or possibly Oprah.

But even I am sometimes surprised at the extent of enthusiasm for guns in Arizona, at how absolutely routine gun discussions are. My dentist, a fetching young mother of three trained for dentistry in the military, is a shooter who is completely unfazed working on patients who are strapped up while she drills. The oral surgeon she referred me to took some of his fee in bullets, no lie. I knew it would ultimately be worth my while to stand in line for hours a day!

My friend Angela was called to serve on jury duty. You know the cynical old saying about juries being composed of people too stupid to get out of jury duty. It is not only a lie, but a slander. Juries are almost always – with the obvious exception of California – composed of serious, patriotic citizens who feel a responsibility to serve.

But here’s the point. Angela came back the first day from Florence, the county seat, and reported that among the magazines offered in the room where potential jurors muster was American Rifleman. For the two or three readers who may not know this, that is the official journal of the National Rifle Association. If such a horrifying magazine appeared in a government office in St. Paul, it would have to come with a fainting couch and Play-Doh. Here a case could be made for a genuine “trigger” warning.

I had occasion to go to Urgent Care last month for an allergic cough that sounded like the final stages of tuberculosis. This cough hung around for a month and showed every sign of having taken up permanent residence in my chest, and who could blame it, because my chest…Holy Cow, who am I, “Donna” Trump? Never mind. Just trust me, it’s a really great chest even though I have teeny tiny hands.

Anyway, I was wearing my C2 Tactical Range t-shirt. And here is what happened in Urgent Care. The Intake Lady saw the shirt and told me that her son was a Marine sniper who had a shirt with a picture of an AR and the saying, “Don’t bother to run, you will only die tired” on it. She sat at a computer and asked me many preliminary questions, including whether or not I felt safe at home. I said that I did. She then asked me, with a smile toward the t-shirt, if there were firearms in my home. Now this is a question I usually decline to answer, but in this case I said, “Yes, that’s why I feel safe.” We had a good laugh, even though that triggered a stupendous coughing fit. At least she didn’t have to ask me what I was there for.

The doctor, a handsome Hispanic gentleman – well, he looked handsome beneath the mask – examined me, pronounced my lungs clear, which I guess is a good thing in a lung, and asked me how much the C2 Range cost per year and what firearm I favored. We had a spirited discussion of Glocks vs Sigs before he sent me off with several prescriptions, one of which I actually filled and none of which I took, once I read the four-page, single-spaced warnings.

On the way out, the Insurance Guy asked me if I had had any luck finding .22s. I said not only are they scarce as hen’s teeth still, but that now even 9 mms are getting expensive and hard to find again, thanks to renewed gun-grabbing talk by Hillary and other heavily-guarded hypocrites.

I’ve talked guns and ammo with my banker, several waitresses, many checkout ladies at Walmart, the biker guy who installed my new water heater and regularly with another young man who sprays for scorpions and other noxious critters every month.

In fact, I would go so far as to assert that “guns” are to Arizonans what “the weather” is to Minnesotans for conversational ice-breakers.

I’m pretty sure I’ve referenced this story before, but I love it, so here it is again. I was in the Post Office – yes, the Post Office – and the guy ahead of me in line had a beautiful 1911 in a belt holster in back. I said, “I like your .45,” and he said, “Which one?” and produced an appendix holster. Welcome to Arizona.

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