The rest of the people who weren’t getting government benefits didn’t want to rock the boat because they didn’t want to be “extremists” or be called “greedy.” Besides, they had enough to eat (actually, too much, in most cases), there were plenty of good reality shows on TV, and they didn’t really understand politics, anyway. All they knew is what they learned in school: government needed more money to do great things for the little guy and business was greedy.
People assumed that the WAB would be looking out for big business. Not true. Big business and small business had radically different interests. Big business could get the government to write regulations and tax laws to put their small-business competition out of business. Big business was run by CEOs who, by and large, were products of the liberal education system and the Seattle cocktail party circuit where one chats about how awful Republicans are.
Small business, on the other hand, actually wanted government to be limited. The taxes, regulations, and stupid paperwork requirements were killing them.
Big business and government got even cozier during the “recession.” At the federal level, the Administration, with ample help from the Republicans, bailed out GM, Chrysler, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and just about all the other big corporations.
The same was true at the state level, but the help was in different forms. Big business in Washington State got all kinds of state contracts for “stimulus money” projects to build roads and government buildings, and to buy many things big business sold. For example, the big car dealers’ association got the state to buy millions of dollars of “fuel-efficient” cars for the state motor pool, which didn’t actually need any new cars. Big business returned the favor, donating almost all their corporate contributions to the ruling Democrats and the few Republicans in office. Big business would help the politicians in other ways, like PR stunts disguised as meetings between business leaders and the Governor with the business leaders praising the Governor. The state returned the favors by imposing requirements on businesses that only large employers could afford to comply with, thus reducing the number of small businesses and thereby reducing the competition big businesses faced.
This was soft fascism; government and large corporations helping each other to the detriment of everyone else. It was still fascism though — just without the little mustache and the genocide.
“Are we the only ones who see what’s going on?” Grant asked Brian one day.
Brian sighed. “Pretty much. Most people don’t know or care what’s going on. They’re pathetic. But they’ll get what they deserve.”
Grant decided to have “the conversation” with Brian.
“You know, Brian, this whole thing is going to come crashing down,” he said. “Soon, too. Maybe a year, maybe five. But, soon.”
Brian looked relieved. Finally someone was saying what he was thinking, but he thought it was too outlandish to say out loud. “I know,” Brian said. “The government is out of money and they can’t stop spending. The only thing that will stop them is bankruptcy. It’s going to get ugly.”
They talked about the civil unrest that would come from the cuts and the protests of all the people dependent on government money. They talked about how the government would crack down on dissenters like them. Not haul them off or anything, just start auditing their taxes and that kind of thing. Soft fascism; not the little mustache stuff.
Grant didn’t tell Brian about the preparations he had been making. It wasn’t time yet. But he did say to Brian, “If things get crazy, we need to stick together. You, me, Tom, and Ben and our families.”
Brian nodded, solemnly. He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation, but he was glad they were.
Chapter 30
Foreign and Domestic
Grant had two ARs; the standard A2 and his customized M4. What to do with the A2? Having two ARs was important. There was a phrase among preppers that “one is none and two is one,” meaning that a backup is always necessary.
At Capitol City Guns, Grant saw a .22 conversion bolt for an AR. Just by popping out the bolt and putting in the .22 bolt, an AR became a .22 rifle. This allowed cheap and realistic training, and provided a lot of fun.
Manda didn’t know about Grant’s guns. She knew he had some but had never seen them. He needed to get her proficient on the AR. “Every girl needs to know how to use one nowadays,” Grant told her.
Cole was still a little spooked by loud noises so Grant would wait to get him shooting. The .22 conversion bolt would be perfect for Manda’s training. It had no recoil and was quiet. What better way to introduce a fifteen year-old to ARs?
“Hey, Manda, want to shoot a real live Army gun?” he asked her one day.
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Do you have one?”
That was the beginning of Grant and Manda’s Sunday afternoons at the shooting range. She quickly became very good with the AR in .22. The light recoil made it perfect for training a new AR shooter. Shooting the AR with the regular 5.56mm ammo after that was no big deal for her. She even learned how to field strip the AR. She loved the fact that she had a thing to do with her dad, and she could keep it secret from her mom. Lisa would have spazzed out if she knew Grant was teaching Manda to shoot an “assault rifle.”
Next, Grant got her shooting the AK. She was good at that, too, but it had more recoil for the fifteen year-old and the folding stock made it harder to aim. However, she could shoot an AK no problem, and she loved it.
It got even better. The AK-47 had a cousin, the AK-74, which was the rifle the Russians used. The AK-74 shot the smaller 5.45 x 39 cartridge, which, like the AR’s 5.56 x 45, had little or no recoil. And AK-74s were light, about half as heavy as an AK-47. On top of all that, the AK-74 had a short “European” sized stock for smaller Europeans.
Light, short stock, and virtually no recoil. The perfect gun for Manda, and any other smaller person. It was a “wives and kids” gun.
The AK-74 was cheap. The Russians made millions of them, and they were about $400. A person could put a cheap red-dot sight on and have a fine rifle with an optic for about $500. Magazines were dirt cheap, about $10 a piece. And, to top it all off, ammo was absurdly cheap. A person could get a metal tin, called a “spam can” because it looked like one and was opened with a can opener, of 1,080 AK-74 rounds for $120. All of this meant that a prepper could get an AK-74 with a basic red-dot sight and over 1,000 rounds of for half the cost of an AR-15 without an optic or any ammunition.
Since they were so cheap, Grant got two AK-74s — one for him and a matching one for Manda. She loved shooting it. One time she said, “Daddy, I did all my homework. Can we go shoot the AK-74s? Please.”
Grant got one spam can at a time with the expense-check envelope money. Pretty soon, he had four spam cans (over 4,000 rounds) at home and another four at the cabin. He got ten magazines for each rifle. It was the cheapest SHTF battle rifle to be found. And it was so much fun to shoot.
Now it was time to tell Manda what was in all those green square cans in the garage marked “5.56” “7.62” and now “5.45.” Grant was glad he gently and slowly broke the news to Manda that her dad was a “survivalist.” He could only imagine if he had just announced one day, “I have stored a bunch of food and guns. I think the world is ending.”
He now considered Manda a full partner in prepping. They talked about the details of their prepping and planned it out together. They also talked about how the country was disintegrating. At least he could talk to one person about this. Too bad it was a fifteen year-old instead of his wife and friends.
Grant had to make sure there was a check on his emotions and that he was making rational decisions. He was dealing with such heavy thoughts — the collapse of the country, food shortages, protecting loved ones from uncontrolled violence — that he had to have something in place to make sure he didn’t overreact. Fear should never rule decision making. Grant figured Manda could be his reality check. Looking to a teenage girl for emotional clarity wasn’t the best option, but given that she was the only one who he could tell about all this, it was his only option.
One day at the shooting range, he said to her, “Manda, I want to make sure I’m approaching prepping rationally. I don’t want to get emotional and buy a bunch of food or guns every time there’s a dip in the stock market. Prepping isn’t a crutch; it’s a logical plan to handle bad times. So here’s the deal. Any time you think I’m not doing something logically, you have permission to say, ‘Dad, you’re wrong.’ But you need to be able to then say, ‘Here’s why.’ Deal?”
Asking a teenager if she wants permission to tell her parent when they’re wrong?
“Of course Daddy,” she said. “Nothing you’ve done so far has been weird.”
It turns out lots of other people, a few million, were having the same concerns as Grant.
Capitol City Guns was lucky to have opened its doors when it did. During the various recent ammo scares, customers felt they needed more guns, ammo, and accessories. They would return to the place where they got their first guns, as they responded to the Federal Reserve’s continued printing of absurd sums of money, the increasing crime rate, and all the other signs of what might be coming scared more and more people. They kept buying guns; lots and lots of guns.
During this time, an estimated one to three million AR-15s were manufactured, sold, and put into American civilians’ hands.
Some thought that there were about as many civilian AR-15s, or maybe more, than the military’s stockpiles of military-version M-16s. Americans bought hundreds of thousands of tactical shotguns and millions of pistols during this same period. Billions of rounds of ammunition were also moved from warehouses to Americans’ gun safes, ammo cans in garages, storage sheds, and sock drawers. All of this didn’t count the tens of millions of scoped hunting rifles and hunting shotguns already existing in the United States. Estimates were that there were over 100 million firearms in the country. They were in closets, night stands, and attics all across the nation.
Not only guns and ammo, but sophisticated gear was flying off the shelves. Stores like Capitol City were stocked with night vision scopes and body armor. There were millions of extremely well-armed American civilians. Most of them were not trained as soldiers, but they had decent gear and could train later.
The military and law enforcement knew this. The vast majority of them never thought about trying to take over the country. However, a tiny percentage of them — the political ones who wanted to get promoted — planned out how to do it under the guise of “contingency planning.” Those planning a takeover realized that it wouldn’t be a cakewalk. It would be a nasty, brutal civil war with guerillas killing them for years and years. No army — not even the U.S., which had the most powerful military in the history of the Earth — could possibly take over and occupy the country.
Another reason it would be hard for the military to totally take over is that many in the military and law enforcement hated the politicians who would order them to try to take control. It would be a hard sell for a politician to tell a soldier or cop, “Go kill your neighbors and stand a good chance of getting killed yourself — all so I can have more power.” Of course, some in the military or law enforcement would use the “crisis” as an excuse to grab their own power. It had happened for all of human history; America was no exception to the laws of human behavior and history.
Others would be in-between. Some in the military and law enforcement would go along with the politicians at first; there would probably some genuine crises to protect people against. But after a while, they would increasingly refuse to shoot and imprison Americans if that’s what they were ordered to do. Therefore, eventually most in the military and law enforcement would probably not be part of an attempted takeover. In fact, a good portion of them would actively fight against the politicians trying it.
Special Forces Ted was one of them. He was a member of Oath Keepers, as were many of his Special Forces buddies.
It would be safe to assume that something as simple as pledging to keep an oath to uphold the Constitution wouldn’t be too controversial. But it was. The progressive politicians hated Oath Keepers. They thought Oath Keepers were violent right-wing militia nut jobs bent on taking over America via a coup.
One day, Grant went to Capitol City and found Chip and Special Forces Ted in the shop making some ARs. Now that Ted was retired and divorced, he spent most of his time there. Grant had apparently interrupted them in some deep conversation. Ted wanted to change the subject but Chip wanted to continue with it in front of Grant.
Chip said to Ted, “Go ahead, man, you can trust Grant. Tell him what you were telling me.”
Ted paused. He didn’t want to keep talking. Finally, he reluctantly said, “I’m organizing an Oath Keepers group in my old unit. There are lots of us who think something bad is going to happen.” Ted paused and chose his words carefully, “We didn’t sign up to take over our own country. We signed up to protect it. We will. Enemies foreign and domestic. Domestic.”
Grant was stunned to hear this. An American soldier saying out loud that he was concerned that the government was thinking of taking over by force and other soldiers would have to get involved to stop it. The part that wasn’t surprising, at least to Grant, was that soldiers had to think about this. Grant knew things were collapsing. Those Green Berets knew it, too. They received the briefings on what was happening.
Now that Ted was warming up to the idea of trusting Grant, he got on a roll about Oath Keepers. He explained to Grant that at least half of the guys in his old unit were Oath Keepers, or wanted to join. The other half were either “not into politics” or were so young that they didn’t fully appreciate what an unlawful order was. The young guys hadn’t been deployed to hellholes around the world, like the older guys had, where it was the norm for power-hungry politicians to use force against the civilian population. Of the half not immediately interested in Oath Keepers, Ted figured about half of them (about a quarter of the unit) would be open to it, especially if the rest of the unit was. The remaining men in the unit were either not interested or, in a few cases, were “ladder climbers” who would follow just about any order to advance in rank. Ted couldn’t think of any ladder climbers in his former unit, but he had to admit that when times got tough some guys would just follow orders. Ted explained that the more elite a unit was, and Special Forces was certainly at the top of that list, the more open the unit was to Oath Keepers. Mid-level infantry units would have many good Oath Keepers, but also had a higher percentage of guys who joined for a free college education. The lower level units, especially the non-combat support units, had a majority of guys who treated the Army as just another job. Guys like that would probably follow orders just to keep their jobs. But, a unit full of Army administrative specialists isn’t too fearsome compared to a couple of Green Berets.