Pete Kozniak was not happy when Elizabeth Warren was elected president in 2020. His unhappiness turned to despair in 2023 when the new Democrat-majority Senate joined the House in passing the bill that outlawed all but the most basic firearms. If he hadn’t turned over his AR-15, his AK-47 knockoff and his Glock with the 19-shot magazine, he would have been branded a felon and would have been stripped of his deer rifle, .38 revolver and his grandfather’s Colt 1911 as well.
The firearms laws were used as a rallying cry for the Republican party which used them as the central plank of the platform which got their candidate, Octavia Vasquez, elected as president in 2024. During the campaign she was all things for all people and made many heart-rending speeches that centered on her grandparents being poor immigrants who built up a small business empire through the sweat of their brows or the fact that she would make history as the first female person of color to serve in this great nation’s highest office. After she was sworn in, however, the choices she made for her cabinet and her policies made clear that just because she was a woman of color descended from immigrants did not necessarily mean that she had the best interests of women, immigrants or people of color in mind. Pete was pleased. At first he was worried about the prospect of a female president, but when she appointed the head of the NRA to lead the ATF he knew that everything was going to be all right.
But she didn’t roll-back the gun laws or reverse the Democrats’ take-away program. Those who had legal, basic firearms were only issued a limited amount of ammunition each month for shooting at targets or hunting. Each slug fired had to be retrieved and returned for “recycling,” but it meant that every shot fired had to be accounted for. This rankled Pete, who now had a lot of time on his hands as he retired from being the proprietor of PK’s Plumbing. He could no longer get gunpowder, slugs or casings, but he could still order all of the pipes, gaskets, wrenches and pressure fittings that he wanted.
Someone leaked to the authorities that the retired plumber had figured out how to derive potassium nitrate, a key ingredient in gunpowder, from human waste. According to the source, the laboratory where it was produced could be reached through a metal hatch hidden in the back of Pete’s basement. A heavily-armed detachment from the ATF arrived. He opened the basement door and watched them descend to the hatch. They entered the combination that they had forced from him and as soon as the latch was activated, the steel door came flying forward at 600 feet per second killing many on impact. The rest were drowned by years worth of human waste, held in a pressurized container until it was released. For made at home, it was the shit.
Literature in Small Doses 