Sibbitt and I continue our discussion on weapons and the role of the citizen.

I have indeed been discussing "Government" as a monolithic entity, and in the assumption that this imaginary Government would want to destroy me. In a scenario where a hostile force sought to control a population rather than destroy it entirely, personal firearms are absolutely would certainly prevent it, especially in the US.

I'm happy to hear about The Oathkeepers.

I should also point out that when I read the news, I am painfully aware of the gatekeepers of this information and that simply because it is not being reported does not mean it is not happening. I strongly suspected this to be the case with cases of self-defense; such instances would likely be reported in the local news precinct, but probably not nationally unless a bunch of disabled puppies were involved.

Many, many times I have come across news reports of horrible crimes perpetrated on those who wanted to defend themselves but were unable and I've wished they had just had one gun somewhere in the house. Or at least tear gas grenades.

Again, I tend to feel this way towards people I perceive to be less capable of defending themselves physically.

I'm also for the Dune Home Defense System: The gom jabbar, a little needle tipped with meta-cyanide. I wonder if those would be legal.

So thanks for the information, Sibbitt. As usual, I feel better about most things and worried about a whole slew of new things.

The role of firearms in my life is one I think about often. As with each and every amendment, the right to bear arms is a response to prevent a specific condition that would endanger the civil liberties of The People. In many cases, the amendment also seeks to uphold the virtues we want to see in our government as well as in ourselves as citizens and active participants.

Some are just disasters. Eighteenth Amendment, prohibition of alcohol? When I view the Amendments in context and as a continuing process of striving towards a unreachable ideal, the spirit of the law, if not the letter, begins to transcend the nightmarish technicalities and inevitable ironies of this very difficult process.

The right to bear arms seeks to allow citizens that are not part of government institution to protect themselves against force, physical force implemented by a government institution. In my apocalyptic view of things, I assume this means the Government wants to destroy or enslave me through armed conflict. I like this idea. Then the dang old irony again: How do you love something you are willing to destroy? The United States is like my parents, and maybe your parents. I love them and want them to love me, but man are they totally wrong about a lot of things.

Fear is not love. Should the Government with a capital "G" ever choose to destroy me, I don't think any firearm would protect me. Not anymore. Back in ye olde days, when it was all musket-to-musket and knives on sticks, maybe. Now that we have the deadliest, most bad-ass military ever, victory seems unlikely. Because the military is under control of the Government, and it is the most directly controlled. And the police. Pretend that a crazed police chief orders his officers to my house to arrest me because he didn't like my facial hair. The order is wrong, and I know it is wrong. Is it my duty as a citizen to take up arms against this tyranny, to battle men and women who are doing their duty? Is it my duty to surrender peacefully to avoid bloodshed? It's a tough choice, hanging on my strength of principle and amount of faith.

I have the right to defend myself. Do I have faith in the United States to not resist physically and hope the truth comes out in our judicial system? I think either decision would have to compromise something I believe in.

The right to bear arms is a good right, but I don't think a single person or even a militia would be able to withstand a government-led assault. In a scenario where every citizen is armed, the Government still controls our resources. If all of Phoenix started a revolution, shutting off our water would wipe most of us out before we could fire a shot. Sadly, we would probably tear each other apart fighting for the remaining resources. While I believe that people are not inclined to harm each other physically under normal circumstances, try not having a drink of water for a few days. You will not be yourself.

I believe in the right to bear arms. I believe there is no weapon I could acquire that would protect me from an organized assault by my state and federal government. Kinda hurts my pride.

I suppose a gun might be useful in self-defense. The effectiveness of such a defense plan kinda depends on me being prepared, and if so prepared, how I will actually know the proper course of action. I could see myself really fucking up a rescue attempt, I mean. I believe this now, even with my Army Basic Combat training. Mostly because I was trained how to fight on a battlefield, not in my kitchen or at the neighborhood grocery store.

As a bit of a side note, in Arizona I am allowed to carry handguns into bars and all kinds of places. The likelihood that I will be shot by a police officer due to a simple misunderstanding will skyrocket so I probably won't attempt this. Police have to make difficult decisions quickly in complex, high-pressure situations. If I am actually armed, the decision for an officer who is rightly concerned with protecting their own life becomes much more simple. I'm using firearms in this example but the same goes for knives, baseball bats, rocks.

In another irony of government, the onus is on me to behave appropriately during an encounter with law enforcement. Like my other example, do I believe I am right? Do I believe it enough to do battle with agents of law enforcement? What if I'm wrong? Even if I know for certain they are wrong, what is the proper role of dissent for a citizen in my situation? Another time when maybe there is no right thing to do.

Heh, I don't mean to sound indifferent towards the staggering difficulty in enforcing laws and maintaining public safety. But the irony abounds. Whenever someone I've never met with a gun walks up to me and starts telling me to do things, my natural instinct is not towards polite cooperation; it's more like RUN RUN SERPENTINE SERPENTINE. Biologically it's quite a conundrum.

Wait...I was saying something unrelated to dodging bullets. No, it is related; protecting myself against people who want to harm me. The tendency is to consider everyone who wants to kill someone a criminal, but not the person who kills that person. This is often the case, but it is a precarious assumption. Myself, I cannot think of any thing that would cause government agents to want to kill me, but I'm certain there are people who have considering doing me great harm for personal transgressions that weren't actually laws.

So should I kill them? "I'm just going to kill you; why are you taking it so personally?" Hmm.

This is more of a general musing; I lean towards pacifism but I am well aware that I am physically capable of killing without any actual weapon. A firearm would be most useful to me in the event that my opponent was using a firearm and had announced his arrival and intent in some way.

It is possible to train for such a situation, but all the anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that accurate simulations are impossible. I've heard stories and had actual police tell me about the mishaps that occur when drawing a firearm during a confrontation. Safetys will still be on, shots will miss from 10 feet away, weapons will discharge unintentionally. One police officer I spoke to had pulled his gun for the first time and had fired every single round before he had drawn it level. That time everyone was okay, the criminal had been terrified and given up immediately after.

I scour the news for stories about citizens protecting themselves and each other with their personal firearms. It doesn't seem to happen as often as I'd hope or expect. Police are by far the primary defenders of the population, even in states like mine which allows great liberty for carrying firearms.

If I were in a wishing mood, I would wish that along with our right to bear arms, we would take an active interest in taking care of each other in all the other, much more common ways.

I believe that weapons rights are important on principle, but I've come to accept that firearms are not really very useful at protecting me from the threats I expect to encounter in my beloved United States.

Also, I've come to love shooting watermelons with shotguns. Or pumpkins after Halloween when they're practically giving them away. Sometimes Nature is kind and bestows upon Mankind giant fruit with hard outer rinds and rich gooey innards.

Certainly Americans should embrace the responsibility of weapon ownership. And while we're at it, we should as vigorously defend all those other amendments that make this country worth fighting for.

Except that prohibition of alcohol one.

And you're dead.

This is how most monster hunters die. They enter some evil pit of dank horrors and then encounter something they didn't expect.

The two seconds that it takes to tilt your head and wonder "What the hell is that?" is long enough for most monsters. Preparation is the key to survival.

Which brings me to the wedding. Jared Sibbitt has long been my greatest ally and mentor in surviving the wilds of the world, from the Sierra Nevada to the Waffle Houses of the Carolinas. Sibbitt will probably deny this for modesty's sake, so to be fair it was the wilderness itself that taught me the lessons; Sibbitt just made sure I stayed alive long enough to learn them.

This June, Jared and his delightful love Risa will be getting married. I have the honor of being in the wedding party as the Grooms Gurg. Quite a synthesis for me, as I only Gurg informally, up to now. It's an odd feeling, kind of a grown-up feeling, to be Gurg in a somewhat official capacity.

I'm taking it very seriously.

I will have to straddle two traditions like a pirate might straddle two large marine creatures: the ancient role of the groomsman and, in anthropological terms, relatively new role of Gurg. Hmm...I think I'll use a geological time scale from now on. Makes everything human-related look like it happened practically simultaneously.

In ancient days, the groomsmen had the responsibility and honor of battling the bride's family and their warriors, thus buying the groom enough time to convince the bride to marry him, grab the dowry and run. During these brutal, misogynistic, and awesome times a groomsman could be lost forever, or be found days later in the woods stumbling around naked and covered in Sharpie.

These days, the duties are different. Assisting with minor complications, showing guests their seats, decorating the newlyweds' canoe or what-have-you. There is also the matter of the bachelor party. At the bachelor party, the possible fates of the groomsmen are still very similar to those of ancient times.

The role of Gurg is pretty malleable, and perhaps this is its curse. I have 109 days to regain my fighting form. I have 109 days to brush up on all the random skills I've picked up over the years: making bathtub whiskey, editing 5-paragraph essays, handling poisonous insects and large reptiles, cave exploration, identifying edible native flora, arson, harmonica playing, tax evasion, first aid, rabble-rousing, rabble-wrangling, rabble certifications and permits...

...dog whispering, alchemy, singing along with songs I never heard before, fighting small fires, repairing head-butt holes in drywall, science-fictioning, data analyses, deep sea diving, cliff jumping, tracking (human), urban exploration (also referred to as "trespassing"), tai chi, avoiding military service, driving (motorcycles through 2.5-ton trucks), shoe-shining, baggage handling, hallucinating, finding lost things, pitching woo, fending off woo, intercepting and redirecting woo, hand-to-hand combat, hand-to-foot combat, foot-to-ass combat, eskrima stick-fighting, Shakespearean acting, and processing insurance claims.

Preparation is survival. If I get to that wedding and something makes me say "What the hell is that?", I am dead. Or at least lost in the forest for a while.

Roughly every 45 minutes I am required to rant about the shortcomings of various works of fantasy. These tirades tend to veer towards Twilight and Harry Potter.

My latest complaint about Harry Potter is the lack of Americans. Get some Americans in there, I say! You have students popping out of the sea and flying in on polar bears from the Arctic or where-have-you, but no Americans? Because an American would have had everything wrapped up by Book 3. We Americans know how to handle dark peoples. And we solve our problems with guns. You don't need to go to school for 7 years learning elaborate magic to kill a dark wizard. Hell, a child can learn to use a gun to lethal effect in under a minute. Very simple point-and-click interface.

An American student, had he been teleported to some strange place with a bunch of guys in robes cavorting around talking about how they were going to kill him, well, Americans can't stand that stuff. Dirty Harry Potter would just blast Voldemort in his flat face. Big-ass snake coming at you? Similar solution. Some Ministry of Magic lady coming around to take over the school? Americans know who takes over a school, and it sure ain't administrators; it's kids with guns.

There are reports of "technology" not working in Hogwart's. So what, like a hammer or a crowbar wouldn't work? You need magic to do anything? Guns are pretty simple machines. A small explosion and then point the shrapnel in the right direction. End of dark wizard.

I would have also set up dark wizard-only drinking fountains. Then I would have poisoned those drinking fountains. Set up an area in the back of that Magic Bus where the Darks have to sit. Then, while they sit, just shoot them. The Side of Good wins again.

A rich elitist young classmate and his goons giving you a hard time? See how superior he feels when he wakes up and finds his familiar's decapitated head on the pillow next to him. American-style.

America's Razor: The simplest solution is often the most permanent.

Dirty Harry Potter would have gotten away with it, too. Plenty of magic-finding devices and trained wizard detectives, but no one knows what to do if someone is garroted. "All right guys, we're looking for someone who has access to piano wire, check and see which students own pianos."

I guess that's all for now. I'll be back in 45 minutes.

Experimenting with my drawring tablet. A lot of tinkering went into this whale. Much like all whales.

Taking apart a dryer is relatively easy, entertaining, and educational.

Now what to do with all this wet clothing.

Weekend night. Work tomorrow. Stomach hurts back hurts head hurts. Perfect time for writing.

Necessary conditions, I suppose. It's difficult for me to do even the things I enjoy doing without the nagging assurance that I have far more reasonable things to be doing.

Take that, Reason! You're next, Causality! Yeah you better run as well Grammer1!1!one

The glorious hole of being a writer is that dreaming counts as research hours. (The length of time dreaming, mind you, not the dream-length. Since dreamtime can seem like years and events may happen simultaneously or you may "remember" events while dreaming that never happened. The accountants, man, they just hate it. And never piss off your accountants, real or otherwise.)

In a food-poisoning-related fever-dream (which can count as time-and-a-half (but don't push it)) I visited a massive interactive zoo. The zoo was interactive, you see, because swaths of land were converted into vastly different climates and biomes and habitats and were all stuck up next to each other. A visitor, such as I, would essentially mount an expedition and travel about for weeks at a time observing creatures that might not be encountered in a lifetime of travel.

But it wasn't entirely safe. Most of the animals weren't life-threatening. Mostly.

The sun was setting over a soupy green lake and dense growth of giant ferns were rustling gently at the water's edge. The ground was reddish, dusty, and hard as clay. This was the Komodo Dragon area. I hadn't seen any of the massive lizards yet, but night was falling and I did not intend to take any chances hanging around.

Throughout the park were these odd little way stations, areas designed to appear as part of their particular environment. The Komodo Dragon way station was large and red. It gave to mind an uneven lump of clay thumped down and gouged at with a spoon. Not terribly stylish, but I guess it matched the overall color scheme. The important feature was the steep sides with handholds that could be climbed by a human, but presumably not a massive reptile. Night was falling as I made my way up.

In a cavern I met another group of people. I had gone for days without running into anyone else but in this territory everyone seemed to prefer the way station. It was like that in the Arctic biomes. I don't think polar bears have ever had a fear of humans, and if they had they sure didn't anymore.

The group had built a fire and invited me to join them and swap stories. I smiled, shook my head no, and continued climbing up.

At the top I ran into a woman that looked like my old biology professor. She was just beginning her climb down to join the main group. When she noticed me, she called to me, "Hi Guillermo."

I was so surprised to see her there that I just stared at her.

"Well, goodbye," she said, starting to pick her way down again. "You know, I didn't think I'd see you back here. After your brother died about a year ago."

I just shrugged my shoulders. Then she was gone. I found a small hollow and laid down my sleeping bag. It was completely night now. The sky was clear. I lay there in my hollow looking up at the stars. I felt like I could see every single one of them.