Conversations With Bob - Pt. 20
It didn't take Kathy long to convince Bob he needed to lay down for a little longer to allow the sedative a chance to wear off. Between barely being able to stand, and with his back now only partially numb resting for a little while longer sounded like a good idea. Still, Kathy wasn't satisfied knowing Bob as she did.
"Maria. I hate to impose, but would you stay with Bob for awhile and keep him company? Otherwise, he is going to start walking around seeing what trouble he can get into."
Maria smiled. "Sure. I'd hate to have to drag him back inside after he falls flat on his face."
"Ladies, you do know I'm here, don't you?" Bob asked.
"Yes, we know. Want we want you to know is that we know you, and sometimes you take on too much for yourself. And under these conditions, I out rank you." Kathy answered. "Now stay out of trouble for an hour or so Bob. I need to see what I can do or our young friend." With that Kathy nodded to both of them and left the room.
"I'm sorry to put you out like this Maria. You really don't have to stay. To tell the truth, a little shut eye sounds good right about now."
"I don't mind. Besides, it can't hurt to have someone keep an eye on you until you are yourself again. You go ahead and nap. Pretend I'm not here."
Bob was already starting to doze off, and didn't answer. With little else to do, she started looking over Bobs' weapons. Her late husband, John, had taught her quite a bit about firearms and she now put that knowledge to the test. Both the pistol he always carried, and the rifle he had spoken of earlier were old, but both weapons were in perfect working order. The pistol was a big heavy .44 Mag. revolver. She knew the type well. John had carried a .357 Mag. when at home, or kept it in his truck while on the road. While the cylinder would hold six rounds, Bob took the usual safety precaution of having the chamber under the hammer empty. The rifle was semi-auto. It was short, but had a powerful scope mounted on top, which told her the rifle would reach further that it appeared to. She looked at a round of ammo she had pulled out of the pocket of Bob's blood soaked and now useless jacket. Like the rifle and pistol, the round was small, but seemed to be
heavier than it should. She knew the power of the weapons, so it didn't surprise her. She was just amazed that anyone would voluntarily carry the heavy pair.
"Don't drop that. I reload them, so it is a little hot."
Maria turned at Bob's voice.
"Hi there, I thought you were going to catch a few winks."
"I was trying. I just can't seem to quite do it. Maybe it's the company. Sit down, lets' talk awhile."
"Thank you. This is quite some cannon you have here. Or maybe I should say cannons. How did you hold on to them when they started picking up all the guns?"
"It was a close thing." Bob admitted. "The truth is, it all comes back to what I've said for years. Know Thy Enemy. If you know what he can and is likely to do under a given circumstance, then you can take counter measures. In this case, I knew that they knew I had weapons. So I turned in the ones they knew about. I hid the rest, along with the ammo for them."
"Stop right there. If you turned in the weapons they knew about, why did you hide the rest, and what made you believe that the government was going to take them?"
"Know Thy Enemy. Ultimately our enemy is Satan. He wants to set up the throne of the antichrist in Jerusalem. While the U.S. was able to come to the aid of Israel, he couldn't do that. So, naturally he had to take America out of the picture. Even during WW II the Japanese knew better than to try to invade America because of the number of privately owned firearms. Firearms represent power, and every dictator in history has always disarmed the people they controlled. Otherwise they wouldn't really have control. The antichrist will be no different in that respect. He can not tolerate any threat to his power.
Now we narrow the focus a bit. If the American people had to be disarmed, how could they do that? How can they identify a gun owner? And what can I do to prevent them from taking my weapons?
Lets' start with the second question. How do they identify gun owners? Of course there were the registration lists. They got visits first. Then anyone that had ever had a hunting license. Then there were also those who the government would identify at gun shows."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I guess living out here you might not have heard of it, but yes it's true. I don't know how long it was going on, but agents from our own government would sit in the parking lot at those shows taking pictures of people and car tags as the people would arrive or leave. In their minds, if you were at a gun show, you must have bought one or more of those unregistered weapons. But those weren't the only ways to find out. Credit card purchases were traced. Magazine subscriptions were another good indicator of a firearms owner. If you don't like guns, why do you have subscriptions for hunting magazines?"
"So how did you avoid all of that?"
"First of all, I paid cash for everything that was even slightly related to firearms. Any weapon I bought was advertised in the local 'Bargain Traders' type magazine, or the local newspaper. They came from private owners, so there was no obligation to register them. I learned as a young man just how far some people would go to get guns out of the hands of Joe and Jane Average. In one bill that was proposed to control cheap easily concealed handguns, back in the sixties, a description of what qualified as a 'Saturday Night Special' as they called them was part of it. That pistol you were looking at is a .44 Magnum. It weighs over six pounds when empty and has a seven and a half inch long barrel. Yet it qualified as a 'Special' under the provisions of that bill. I knew then if I wanted to own a firearm, it had to be unregistered. That was the only way to be sure I could keep them."
"Didn't they get your picture at the gun shows?" Maria asked.
"I didn't go to them. Now consider, if you know you are at risk of losing your weapons, what do you do? By turning in what I had, I knew they would come looking for more. But that bought me some time. So I had to think like they do. How would I find a hidden cache of weapons? Most people aren't going to put their weapons too far out of reach. If they bury them, it won't be too deep. It is too hard to get to them that way. So a metal detector would find them. How do you defeat that? There are ways to do it. For example, instead of making the weapon invisible by burying it, put it in a place where there is so much metal the detector is useless. A junk yard, a rail road line, any metal pipeline, and lots of other places have huge amounts of metal. Tuck a weapon away there, and it is no longer visible. Another option would be to camouflage them. A rifle has a long piece of metal in the barrel. If you put that rifle in a couple of plastic bags, and bury it
right underneath any metal
water or sewage pipes underground, they disappear. The same is true of culverts they put under a driveway. The point is that a detector can't tell the difference between the barrel of a rifle, and the pipe. Since that pipe is going to be very long, clearly it is too long to be a rifle, why dig it up?"
"And so that's what you did, right?"
"Partially. I'm a great fan of the 'hide in plain sight' philosophy."
"'Hide in plain sight'? How do you do that?"
Gently, Bob rolled onto his uninjured side, and answered. "Again, Know Thy Enemy. Most people never learn to expect the unexpected. When I was still quite young, I read a comic book one time that had a fellow being a foster father to his nephews. One day, he brought home some donuts. Knowing that the boys would make short work of them, he hid them. Sure enough, while he was out, the boys came home and could smell the donuts. They tore the place apart looking for them. They never did find them. Why? Because their uncle had put the donuts on a curtain rod and hung it back in place. The boys never saw them. I did something similar with some of my weapons. Now I admit I was lucky according to some people. I believe I was blessed. At any rate, a handgun duct taped to the internal portions of a stove can't be detected by a metal detector, and the people searching for my weapons were under a time limit. They had other places to check. While they did pull out
the drawer under the oven and look inside, the oven itself is too heavy to be easily moved, so they didn't check places that were harder to reach."
"Let's get back to being identified as a gun owner. You mentioned credit cards. What did you mean about that?"
"Just what I said. Credit card companies keep records of all purchases. That includes things like cleaning kits, ammunition, targets, everything. A simple search program for words like those will bring up the name and address of the person who bought those items. So I used cash only. Cash has the advantage of always being the right size, shape, and color. Nobody ever takes it from you and cuts it in half. Except for a very few places, it is accepted everywhere, and nobody ever asks a question. No one ever has to wait for it to clear the bank like a check. And everyone is always happy to accept it."
"Bob you almost sound like you are a very suspicious person. If it weren't for what has happened to this country, I'd have my doubts about you."
"So would I if there wasn't a reason for it. The Bible tells us that we are each given certain gifts. I think The Lord designed it that way to get us to work together, instead of each one for himself. Two of my gifts are observation and discernment. When I saw the first signs that gun registration was coming, I knew confiscation wouldn't be far behind. That's why I never joined any groups that lobbied for gun owners in Washington. It's also why when they came looking for them, they didn't know what to look for. They never knew the number or types of weapons I had or didn't have. If you don't know what to look for, it makes it hard to know where to look."
BW, Vietnam Vet
