Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
I once worked for someone with an interesting worldview. During my entrance interview, he said the only thing the organization did not tolerate was intolerance. This was indeed a fine platitude. However, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, that trite mantra did not mean what you think it means.
Table of contents
What Is Tolerance Anyway?
That phrase meant that they would embrace without conditions anybody whose vision and values aligned with their own left-leaning sort. I am a pro-life, machinegun-collecting military veteran who believes that the only hope in this world comes through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s guys like me who strain that capacity for tolerance, not the folks with weird sexual fetishes. We got along swimmingly, but as a conservative gun guy, I always felt a bit like the awkward ugly out-of-town cousin during social events.
Tolerance is a one-way street in Information Age America. You can sleep with road kill and identify as a pan-sexual cross-dressing extraterrestrial, and the Left will celebrate you as a boundary-pushing role model. However, assert that all this pervasive sexual weirdness is actually wrong and that violence sometimes really IS the answer and you will find just how tolerant the Left is. In my experience, that would be not terribly.
The Direct Gas Impingement Lightning Rod
I would love to be able to sit down with James Sullivan and Gene Stoner. I would ask them if they had any inkling of the chaos their remarkable little rifle might someday foment. My gut feeling is that these were just exceptionally gifted gun nerds who liked to tinker. I doubt it ever occurred to them that the AR-15 might eventually become so politically charged. The weapon they designed went on to become the longest-serving Infantry rifle in American history. Considering the new SIG XM7 Spear is itself just a souped-up piston-driven AR-10, that record does not look like it will be broken anytime soon.
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It’s not that we Americans harbor a passing interest in the AR-15 rifle. We are veritably consumed by it. Nobody knows how many of the things are out there. Estimates run as high as 44 million. That’s roughly one-tenth of the nearly 400 million guns currently in circulation in our Great Republic. Now let’s put that number in perspective.
AR-15 Assumptions
Assume for the sake of discussion that all of those AR-15s have collapsible stocks and 16-inch barrels. Some are pistols, while others are long-barreled service guns. However, we’re just looking for an average. A standard M-4-style AR-15 is 31.5 inches with the stock collapsed. If you took every one of those 44 million rifles and laid them out muzzle-to-butt they would stretch for 21,875 miles. That would very nearly circle the globe. We Yanks do love our AR-15s.
Those on the other side of the gun control argument will simply never understand. The observation that we have enough AR-15s to girdle the earth will induce the vapors among our less durable countrymen. However, the issue is nuanced and often turns upon your background and conditioning.
The Real Need For An AR-15
Folks raised in New York City likely cannot imagine living in a place wherein you might run your favorite black rifle safely off your back porch. However, I live in rural Mississippi and do just that all the time. That’s honestly why those great old guys who thought up the US Constitution tried to leave so much power to the individual states. The federal government really should be satisfied with fighting wars, minding the borders, and leaving the rest of governance to the local folks. However, they just can’t seem to help themselves.
Nancy Pelosi was raised in Baltimore. Dianne Feinstein came up in San Francisco. They don’t look at life the same way I do. Folks like Nancy and Dianne really cannot fathom why anyone might want to own an AR-15 rifle. They’ve said as much. The fact that so many of their sort legitimately hate people like us all while claiming to be the champions of tolerance is honestly pretty ironic.
A Tale of Two Home Invasions – Oklahoma
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, is a delightful city of roughly 113,000 people just outside of Tulsa. I spent three years in Oklahoma when I was a soldier and very much enjoyed my time there. Broken Arrow rests in Wagoner County and has a reputation for being both peaceful and productive.
One Spring day in 2017, 23-year-old Zach Peters was at his father’s home in Broken Arrow taking a nap. Just after noon, his repose was interrupted by the sounds of someone kicking in the back door. Zach went to investigate and found three young men all dressed in black forcing their way inside.
At this point, these three guys had a decision to make. They could reverse course and ply their nefarious trade elsewhere, or they could push the issue. They chose the latter option. Zach reached for his dad’s AR-15 rifle.
Quite The Scene
There unfolded a fairly epic firefight right there in the kitchen. Zach engaged all three homebreakers, two of whom tragically died on the kitchen floor. The third made it to the driveway before bleeding out. It was a horrible experience all the way around, but Zach lived to see another sunrise.
Zach cooperated fully with the authorities, and the shooting was ruled self-defense. Oklahoma has a stand-your-ground law, so the legal stuff turned out OK. The unfortunate miscreants were Maxwell Cook, Jaykob Woodruff, and Jacob Redfearn.
Two of the dead thugs were 18. The third was 15. One man had been packing a knife, while another carried brass knuckles. The three criminals were returning to the home for a second time after having already stolen stuff from the garage earlier in the day. Their 21-year-old getaway driver turned herself in soon thereafter and got slammed with three counts of first-degree murder.
Californicating
In November of 2023, a flaming lunatic Canadian named David DePape smashed in the glass back door to Nancy Pelosi’s Pacific Heights mansion with his shoulder. Standing over the Pelosis’ bed at 2 AM holding a hammer and zip ties, this unhinged guy began grilling Nancy’s husband Paul regarding the whereabouts of his wife. The esteemed congresswoman was in DC at the time.
David DePape was one serious piece of work. Two decades prior he had moved to the US and eventually shacked up with one Gypsy Taub, a Russian pro-nudity activist well-known in the Bay Area (Just what exactly is a pro-nudity activist?) They sort of shared two children. Somewhere along the line, David DePape completely lost his mind.
A Real Creep
Homeless and addicted to drugs, DePape immersed himself in Internet conspiracy theories. Now juiced up on both mind-altering substances and digital lunacy, this disturbed man planned to kidnap Nancy Pelosi for Lord-only-knows what purpose. Thinking quickly, Paul Pelosi did what gun-averse Leftists do when confronted by a homicidal maniac at close quarters. He phoned the police.
Inexplicably, the 43-year-old deranged crazy man did not attack Pelosi physically before the cops’ arrival. Once the cavalry showed up, however, DePape produced his hammer and proceeded to beat Paul Pelosi to a bloody pulp. Pelosi survived but only just. He underwent emergency surgery for a ghastly skull fracture.
The cops later discovered a sleeping bag and two rucksacks DePape had left on the back porch. According to a San Francisco Police spokesperson, they contained, “A sledgehammer, zip ties, gloves, duct tape, cash, a Canadian passport, a Canadian birth certificate, men’s clothes, a video game console, and two inflatable, multicolor unicorn costumes.”
AR-15 Ruminations
I don’t care much for Nancy Pelosi as a lawmaker. I honestly just wish she would leave me alone. However, I truly do not wish her ill. I certainly don’t want her husband to get beaten to within an inch of his life by some nutjob with a hammer and two inflatable unicorn costumes. But how might things have turned out if perhaps the Pelosis had spent a little less time screaming at me and mine about our AR-15s and logged a little more time on the range themselves?
The Pelosi case was admittedly not an AR-15 situation. Paul needed a Springfield Armory Echelon or Glock 17 within easy reach. Securing a handgun such that it is only accessible to those who might responsibly need it is no great chore these days. Doing so might have allowed Paul to avoid having his skull bashed in. It also might have saved the great state of California from having to feed and house David DePape for the rest of his natural life.
So Does The AR-15 Have A Place?
So, why do we need AR-15 rifles? Because we share the world with David DePape and folks like those three teenage idiots who kicked Zach Peters’ back door in at noon on a Monday. The argument can be made that the AR-15 is the ideal tool for such stuff as that. And, of course, the US Constitution specifically says we have a right to own weapons for personal defense.
If anyone out there still believes gun control might ever make a difference, I have some bad news for you. That ship sailed 350 million guns ago. No amount of frenetic legislation will ever prevent the bad guys from accessing firearms in America. That market is already most thoroughly saturated.
AR-15 Conclusion
David DePape didn’t even use a gun to crack Paul Pelosi’s skull. I hate to seem all preachy, but when an 82-year-old man is startled awake by a 43-year-old mentally ill maniac with a hammer, that’s kind of the reason John Moses Browning invented the combat handgun in the first place. I’d love to think the Pelosis learned their lesson and perhaps bought themselves a decent pistol. However, I’m not holding my breath.
The getaway driver in the Oklahoma incident, Elizabeth Rodriguez, pled down to three concurrent 45-year prison sentences for her role in the Broken Arrow burglary. Her life is well and truly over. However, had Mr. Peters not kept his AR-15 rifle handy, things could have turned out very differently. And that’s honestly kind of the point.
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