#joohn choe

The way you live will change.

At any possible instant you may have to contemplate tragedy, evaluate the risks, and act responsibly, from mundane actions like leaving your home in the morning locked or unlocked (you can never leave it unlocked, ever again) to extremely serious decisions like whether you should escalate a violent situation into a life-or-death one; in almost every case, the answer will be "no".

The lifestyle changes are thorough-going, and profound if you are at all responsible.

You can't have your irresponsible friend over. You can't let people you don't know be in your house alone. You will need to attend safety training that is boring and tedious and taught by, quite often, unbearable blowhards, and you will need to subordinate your natural reflex to call bullshit because what they will teach you is actually correct, which is, this is a very very dangerous object that deserves an almost superstitious degree of safety precautions.

You will engage in extensive and troublesome expense, training and hassle, over an expensive and heavy object which you will not be able to legally even actually use for anything legal outside of a shooting range, besides taking menacing Instagram photos that will make people think you are a poseur. A gun is not a tool for building a shed, chopping down trees, or cleaning your house; it is a dangerous, expensive, heavily-regulated, single-use tool for putting holes in things that you will be responsible for that you cannot use for anything else.

At that shooting range you will only be able to actually shoot it when it is pointing in a safe direction. Unless you engage in additional safety training and just training period you will not be able to do the cool "let's pretend we're John Wick" run and gun stuff I do, and if you do, it will only be with someone literally right over your shoulder making sure you are safe with your gun at all times, after extensive safety training, in extremely controlled circumstances.

In the incredibly unlikely event there is actually call for you to pull your gun out and shoot someone with it in public or private, you are looking at an immense amount of legal trouble, and there is a decent probability that you will go to jail. For every Kyle Rittenhouse, there's a thousand nameless, luckless people rotting in jail who made any number of mistakes from shooting unjustifiably to talking without a lawyer present.

These are the life paths that open up once you bring a gun into your home.

WHO THE SECOND AMENDMENT REALLY PROTECTS

If you are Asian, like me, and you shoot someone in a Black neighborhood, you will not win a prize for being an Official Roof Korean. You will instead be potentially touching off a race riot, and it is very likely, these days, that you will be briefly and globally famous as a really, really stupid person.

It is simply a fact - a regrettable one, but one that has to be acknowledged - that in the current political climate, the Second Amendment, in practice, does not protect you if you are not the right kind of person.

Consider Philando Castile: licensed gun owner, Minnesota concealed carry permit holder, doing literally everything right - he Informed the officer calmly, as required by law, that he was armed, and he was shot dead anyway. The NRA broke their silence only to have their spokeswoman blame Castile for his own death because there was marijuana in his car.

Philando Castile was a licensed gun owner exercising his rights in a concealed carry state and was murdered for it, and the organization that claims to fight for gun owners' rights did nothing to defend him.

This could be you.

Consider what happened this past month in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti was a VA nurse, a licensed gun owner in a concealed carry state, a white person 'using his privilege' to actively and vigorously protest ICE. Videos prove conclusively he was not brandishing his weapon. He was killed anyway, and DHS immediately claimed he had a firearm to justify the shooting.

He got his statement from the NRA. I don't know that it means that much to his family; it wouldn't if I was in their shoes.

Non-white people, liberals and leftists of all backgrounds, and anyone who does not fit the right-wing gun nut stereotype have taken up arms only to be cut down by the state, without a single peep from the NRA in defense of people who ought to be, by all rights, their fallen martyrs.

This is the reality: the kind of people who buy guns thinking they're going to defend against tyranny are the same people the state will not shoot for having guns. There are some people who are supposed to be able to have guns, anywhere they want; and if you are reading this guide, very likely by virtue of your politics alone, you are not those people. The cops are not on your side. The NRA is, historically, not on your side until very recently (and really not that strongly).

This does not mean you cannot own a gun. It means you need to understand what you are actually getting into.

THE APOCALYPSE FANTASY

Let us briefly discuss civil disorder and breakdown-of-society scenarios.

The most significant mistake that people make with regard to guns in planning for such scenarios is to think that their gun will be their primary means of survival. The history of the effective disappearance of law and order suggests that if it actually all goes post-apocalyptic, your gun will be the least important of the survival tools you will have.

- Lack of access to clean drinking water will kill you in 3-7 days.

- Lack of access to food will kill you in two weeks.

- Sleeping outside on the ground will kill you from exposure.

- Lack of hygiene and access to health care means that even minor injuries can snowball into life-threatening ones or leave you permanently maimed or scarred.

You will not be Rick from the Walking Dead. You will be, most likely, like people in Sarajevo when law and order actually stopped in 1992, or some parts of Ukraine during the war from 2022 to now, living in a block-wide commune and pooling resources and safety. In that context, again, your gun will not be your most important survival tool; what you do to make yourself valuable and pleasant to the community so that they don't kick you out will be that.

For situations involving civil disorder, we have recent data on this: Minneapolis, January 2026. When federal agents started grabbing people off the streets, what stopped them was not armed resistance. It was neighbors who showed up with phones and whistles and followed around ICE and Border Patrol cars, even after being harassed and profiled.

The protests that got ICE agents to retreat, that got CBP commander Greg Bovino pulled out of the Twin Cities, that created "ICE out for Good" as a slogan after they murdered Renée Good, were unarmed. The guns were all on the other side. What the administration feared was being watched, not being shot at. The most powerful weapons those people had were their phones and their empathy, not their guns.

THE SOCIAL COST NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

These are simply the realities of safe gun ownership. If you are doing things right, you will have an exquisitely useless and expensive object that makes people dislike you.

If things actually go badly wrong enough for it to be useful, you will also have much, much bigger problems than not-having a gun.

Anyone can kill each other; that is the awful reality of life. A gun is just a tool that makes it easy for even weaker people to kill people, which, although it's morally somewhat ambiguous by itself, has dimensions in terms of the power that it gives you over other people that is itself a serious, serious ethical responsibility.

There's a lot of these kind of ordinary, everyday consequences, like the (much) higher likelihood that your gun will be used to end your own life or shoot your spouse than to ever be used in any kind of righteous capacity. Adding to the statistics on the frequent, and tragic accidental shootings of children with unsecured guns is also a very, very real possibility.

But let me highlight one that I don't think people really touch on: you will push people away in your life doing this. If someone knows you have a gun, and you ask them to do something, you very very easily end up coercing them. If I'm a neighbor and I ask you to turn down the music, for instance, that is a very very different thing if you know whether I have a gun or not.

Now, this is fine for assholes who walk the world ostentatiously not caring what people think about them think like some childish tough-guy fantasy. For the rest of us this is a formula for being a lonely asshole for the rest of your life, without even knowing it. You will be the scary, intimidating person whom no one likes, not just to the bad people whom you want to intimidate, but to everyone. And that will be what you will simply have to live with.

OK, clear on all that?

You almost certainly do not want to get a gun if you do not have one already as a part of your lifestyle; you will have to live with heightened risk of irreversible tragedy daily if you do own one, as an ordinary aspect of being safe with the dangerous and useless object you now own. When we find what normal is again, whenever that is, if at all ever, you will have essentially disfigured the way you live in exchange for an incredibly small marginal increase in safety.

IF YOU STILL WANT TO WALK DOWN THIS ROAD

Still with me? OK, let's walk through the starter package here.

I'm going to tell you how to get, in car terms, the Toyota Corolla. Not the sleek BMW, not the fancy bells and whistles Lexus, not the obviously-compensating-for-something Hummer.

You're looking for the most basic economical value version to start on. There will be the most instruction for it, the most ammo for it, it will be the most idiot-proof that you can make it, and in the event it all goes really sideways, you want something low-maintenance and reliable, reliable, reliable.

You can start cheap and move on to more advanced stuff later. That's fine. If you start cheap this way, now you will have two guns, and you can give one to your friend, and now you will be two people with two guns, which is vastly better than being one person with one gun.

The kind of reliability you're looking for is "leave in a safe and forget about it for years and it will still work" reliability because, unless you are really into guns and you have about $500-$800 a month for ammunition, range fees, and match entry fees as well as time on your hands to go practice shooting and compete constantly, you will probably end up putting it in a safe and forgetting about it.

So, imagine after a nuclear apocalypse what'll be working.

It's going to be Toyota Corollas and those old indestructible Nokia phones and, like, cockroaches. That's all that'll be left. It's going to be Charlize Theron running around driving a Toyota Corolla shooting cockroaches and talking on her Nokia. That's the kind of reliability you need.

I suggest that the weapon that you want for this type of reliability is not, contradictory to what a lot of people think, a revolver. They are very complex machines that depend on leaf springs and like, this insane level of clockwork and machining. Look at a cutaway of the inside of a grip of a revolver and this is what you will see. Although eight-shot revolvers are available (from Smith & Wesson, for instance), ammunition capacity is still limited compared to what is available for semi-automatics.

Nor is a maximally reliable and usable a shotgun, I'd argue. Shotguns (at least of legal length) cannot be carried concealed, and are significantly more limited in terms of portability than a handgun - unless it goes all post-apocalypse, you are probably not going to be walking down the street carrying a shotgun like Omar from 'The Wire'.

They are also heavy and require a very specific manual of arms for their use. Tactical shotgun skills are things like reloading a full tube from bolt lock back in under 5 seconds, doing a slug changeover from buckshot without ejecting more than one shell, or even knowing what your pattern is at 15 and 25 yards. Like all gun skills, these are perishable skills, and unlike rifle and handgun skills like breath control, trigger control and front sight focus, they are specific to only shotguns.

And, contrary to what you may have heard or read, a shotgun is not a magical stick which you can point in the general direction of a threat and expect to neutralize it dramatically with after pulling the trigger; they must be aimed, or more accurately, pointed, commonly without the benefit of a rear sight (with shotguns that have only a 'bead sight' for instance).

Your gun friends will of course have differing and very valid opinions, and gun friends, especially men, always have to let people know their opinions about what gun you should get so they can look all knowledgeable and wise, it's this irritating thing with us, but what I suggest if you really, really, really have to get a gun right now is, budget about $1,600 to $2,000.

You will spend a small portion of that on a cheap, reliable gun and a gun safe which is non-negotiable so that you can store it safely, and the majority of it on ammunition and training.

Since 2020, the regulatory environment for gun ownership has shifted significantly. Here's what you need to know:

RED FLAG GUN LAWS

Twenty-two states plus DC now have some version of these laws. They allow family members, household members, or law enforcement to petition a court to temporarily remove someone's firearms if they're deemed a danger to themselves or others. Maine just passed one in November 2025. If you live in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, or DC, this applies to you.

What this means for you: if someone in your household or family petitions successfully, your guns can be temporarily seized. This is actually a feature, not a bug - the research suggests these laws save roughly one life for every 13-17 orders issued. But you should know the law exists.

Some states (Montana, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia) have passed laws prohibiting red flag enforcement. If you're in one of those states, the calculus is different.

SAFE STORAGE LAWS (WHY YOU NEED A GUN SAFE)

Twenty-six states plus DC now have some form of safe storage or child access prevention law, up from a smaller number in 2020. Illinois strengthened its requirements in July 2025. Hawaii expanded its rules in 2025 and now requires retailers to provide notice about storage laws at point of sale.

The specifics vary wildly by state. Some require storage only when minors might be present. Some require it at all times. Some have specific requirements for what kind of lock or safe you need (California now requires DOJ-approved safes with specific standards). Check your state law. Violation can result in criminal penalties and civil liability if something goes wrong.

Regardless of the legal requirement, it is fundamentally unsafe to have a gun that is not locked away.

VEHICLE STORAGE

Guns stolen from cars are now the largest source of stolen guns in America. On average, at least one gun is stolen from a car every nine minutes. Over half of gun thefts involve firearms stolen from vehicles. Colorado passed a law in 2024 requiring guns in unattended vehicles to be in locked containers out of view. Other states are following.

What this means for you: if you're going to have a gun, you need a plan for what happens when you can't bring it inside. A car is not secure storage. A glove box is not secure storage. A locked case bolted to your car is marginally better.

The best option is just to either have your gun on you, or just leave your gun at home.

SAFE STORAGE IS NOT OPTIONAL

I cannot stress this enough. If you are not going to store your gun securely, do not buy a gun.

The research is very clear: states with strong safe storage laws see up to 78% decreases in unintentional shootings by children. This is children who are alive because a trigger lock existed between them and a gun.

At minimum you need:

- A locking safe or lockbox for home storage

- A plan for securing the gun when you leave the house

- If you have children: a safe that they cannot access, period, full stop, no exceptions

- If you live with someone who struggles with depression, suicidal ideation, or substance abuse: an honest conversation about whether a gun should be in the house at all

More than half of gun owners do not safely store all their firearms. Do not be one of those people.

THE TRAINING PROBLEM

Here's something that's gotten worse since 2020: fewer first-time gun buyers are getting formal training. A 2024 industry study found that only 30% of recent first-time buyers paid for professional training, down from 46% in 2020. Nearly half weren't even offered training at the point of purchase.

This is very, very bad. An untrained person with a gun is not safer than an unarmed person. They are more dangerous, to themselves and everyone around them.

You cannot go without the training. It is basically not only pointless but a lot more dangerous not to have training.

If you don't have the budget for everything at once, get training before you get a gun, if anything. People will let you shoot their guns and try stuff out. Gun friends are into that kind of thing. Figure out if this is even something you want to do before you spend money on equipment.

THE DAD STATEMENT

Let me have just one kind of dad statement at the end of this, OK?

This is grown-up time. Again, I'm not here to tell you to do or not to do a thing, like... that's not... happening. I'm realistic about that. What I can do is tell you about the consequences of things from my experience and what it does to you and your life.

And from that I will tell you that this is a lifestyle change you are talking about that is not to be entered into lightly.

Really think on that and give yourself the most time to think about it before you reach the point of no return and you'll be doing yourself a solid in life.

If what you're really looking for is a way to feel less powerless, consider that the people who have actually pushed back effectively against the current administration have done it with phones and neighbors and showing up. The gun will not make you feel less powerless. It will give you the illusion of control. Those are not the same thing.

Thanks.

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