"Hey look, it's that gun store all the other ones told me might have 'em....think we could stop by real fast and I'll run up and see if they get 'em? Not often we're in this part of town!"
"Sure, try see if they got 9mil while your up there. If they do, call me and I'll come up too."
I jumped out of the truck and bounded up the two flights of stairs excitedly to the second story tenement, in the heart of downtown Honolulu. I don't go downtown too often, so I was excited to finally get my chance, since I was fortuitously in this particular area, in-between jobs, and I just happened to spot all the signs advertising the one store I'd heard so much about from a multitude of store clerks and dealers from all over the island.
Opening the iron-barred glass door, I felt my pulse quicken as I surveyed the rows and rows of rifles and shotguns, racked and locked all along the walls of the small studio-sized gun dealership. For a few moments, I dared to hope....hope that I had FINALLY found what I had been looking all over the island for, for the past year and a half.
"Howzit brah, you guys get any .22 ammo for sale?"
The local, middle-aged *Hyphenated-Asian-American* store keep in a dress shirt, business slacks and holstered Glock strapped high and tight on his waist, shot me a sour grimace.
"Sorry braddah, I 'aint seen any of dat for a long time."
I knew it.
"No moah .22? Short, long, LR, or Mag?"
"Sorry...brah. It's a different country!"
"No kidding! I heard all da Fedrul Guvahment agencees when put massive ordahs with all da mainland ammo companees, and dey can barely keep up with doze ordahs, instead of givin' enuff to da stores so da regulah folks can buy."
"Yeah, like I said, it's a different country now. Used to be, we would get our whole storage room full of boxes and boxes of all da .22 rounds....and everything else, too."
"You guys no more 9mil, .357, or .44 either?"
"Sorry. We only get 30-06, 30-30, .270, 7mil and .38 special."
"Damn. Every oddah place I go or call, dey all tell me da same ting...dat you da only place on da island dat get any .22 or 9mil...so even you guys no moah?"
"Not in one lo-o-ong time."
"So what, when you tink you might get again?"
"You can always try fo check back later."
"You mean da next shipment?"
"No....da next Prezuhdent."
"Shit, I don't vote, but maybe I should re-registah for da next time, just so I can MAYBE get one chance fo buy some fricken' ammo for my guns!"
Of course, I was just bullshitting for the sake of conversation. I know voting for the Pachyderms in the next Presidential election really won't make a damn bit of difference for our current, almost decade-long ammo famine...it's a different country now. Most of us still pretend it's a Constitutional Republic, but in practice, we are all under the jackboot of Administrative Law and Democracy for all.
"Whatevah you do, jus' no vote for da... D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T."
He soundlessly spelled out that last with his mouth and wincing facial expressions. Almost as if Big Braddah was listening in and stickin' his omnipresent nose into our kuleana.
Can't blame him for being overly-cautious, but I was still somewhat momentarily taken aback.
99.999% of all the *Hyphenated-Asian-American* locals in Hawaii are staunch Union-shill, Liberal Dems, famous for voting a straight Donkey party line, en mass...for generations. I guess despite owning a gun store during the administration of a President who inspired more nationwide gun sales then any administration prior, didn't have a favorable influence on his political opinion regarding the party that has had almost total majority rule in the People's Republic of Hawai'i Nei since Statehood in 1959.
Of course, he's probably upset at how much profit off of the sales for ammunition that he's lost over the last several years, as the demand for ammo is now way higher than the meager supplies that ever get shipped out to our Nation's most remote, Southern State. Looks to me like the anti-Second amendment revolutionaries who have infiltrated our Government, have decided to give up on gun control and focus on ammo control instead.
"Tanks anyways. Aloha, brah!
I shot him a perfunctory shaka, As I dejectedly slouched out of the store, realizing my last hope for finding some ammo for several pieces in my arsenal from a legal O'ahu source, was nothing but a futile, nearly two year long snipe hunt. I heard him wish me luck to my back as I departed.
"You goin' need it, brah."
Fuck this Brave New World Order.
I hereby resolve to cling to my guns and my bible even more than before.
To the rest of the USA-INC., I would offer my sincerest apologies for being from the home state of the most anti-second amendment Presidental administration in my lifetime...
...but then I'm from Hawai'i, not Kenya.