3._Finding Peace

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The wallet ended up having almost 4 thousand dollars in it too, pretty good pay for a day of moving furniture.

At that point I had the funds to really get the ball rolling. I went down to Santa Fe and rented a workspace from this dude who owns a BBQ joint. It was literally just a couple storage containers welded together in the parking lot of his restaurant.

Yeah, I don’t know, Santa Fe is weird.

There were 3 other artists renting the space and we each got our own corner.

Two of them were painters, I think, and the other dude made these huge tapestry things out of fabric. Like, found-materials type of stuff. I actually went to one of his shows at a gallery while i was there. I’d tried to stay pretty reclusive while I was there, but this dude was quite insistent, plus he was the nephew of the guy I was renting from, so I figured it would help get me on his good side.

Also, I was gonna need drugs at some point, and he definitely seemed like the kind of guy who knew where to find drugs.

My hair was pretty long from not cutting it for a whole year, and after Memphis I’d really cultivated that disheveled hippy look. It was pretty easy to fit in actually, way easier than needing to be clean cut all the time. It didn’t take any effort at all to look the part of a typical Santa Fe dirtbag. I even started wearing this little necklace with some fucking crystal healing pendant on it.

As far as Quinton and his uncle and the painters and all the woo-woo people at the parties and galleries knew, I was “Scott from Bozeman, Montana” with the red pubey neck beard who made “art” at the workspace.

I ordered the printer a couple days after renting the place, once I was sure The Door That’s Always Supposed To Stay Locked actually stayed locked and that randos off the street weren’t just walking in. I mean, Quinton and his homies were in and out all the time. All hours of the night, on their way to and from parties, but it never seemed sketchy to me, it was just a pitstop for them to redose or pass out for a bit. So I wasn’t worried about anyone fucking with my thousand dollar printer.

I stuck an AirTag on it anyway just in case.

But, I mean, these kids were all really well off, the kind that spend 7 years at a liberal arts college on mom and dad’s dime getting half of a philosophy degree before dropping out to party full time. I doubt the dollar value of anything I had in that space would’ve tempted them even if they’d had a klepto streak. Besides, I stayed right outside in my van at night, or, when I was printing the more obvious parts, I just stayed inside and shot the shit with anyone who came in and kept everything behind a curtain.

It’s actually pretty wild that you can just print all that shit off. Or at least everything except the barrel and a couple springs and screws. But, with the exception of the barrel, all the metal parts you can get at Home Depot for normal crafts and shit—that’s the whole point—they’re not regulated, only lower receivers are, but since you print the lower it doesn’t matter because no one has to know.

And the barrel you don’t even need a license to buy. Which is super convenient because I was gonna do the electrochemical machining process to make one, but the logistics of doing that were a little too complicated. That shared space was pretty small and I was worried the ecm procedure would raise a lot of eyebrows, so I ended up ordering online. I wish I could’ve avoided using my credit card, but it doesn’t really matter at this point I guess, I’ve made it this far. Barrels aren’t even serialized anyways.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I ended up printing 2 of them. The 1st was gonna be a practice build to make sure I got it right, but the FAQs are really, really thorough and basically idiot-proof, so I ended up with two fully functional FGC9s.

You know what that stands for? “Fuck Gun Control 9mm” Cool, huh? And it’s totally legal, that’s the wild part. An entirely legal ghost gun. No serial number. Nothing to connect it to me.

Unless they somehow confiscated it and linked the barrel back to my card purchase, there’s no way they could ever make the link, even that would be super tenuous, there wouldn’t be any real hard proof. Fuck, I could take those things apart and dissolve them in acetate or acetane or whatever if I really wanted to. Or melt ‘em down maybe. Actually, I’ll probably do that after we’re done here and I have some free time.

Oh, but speaking of legal, you know what’s definitely not legal? Silencers.

Yeah, those are a big no-no. I think there’s actually a way you can get them legally, but it’s a really long and convoluted process, and there’s definitely a paper trail if you go that route. But, since I already had a 3D printer, well…

I followed another one of the FAQs to make the silencers, there’s a bunch of different options, but I just went with one specific to the FGC9 that had the best reviews. And coupling those silencers with subsonic ammunition makes for a pretty damn quiet gun.

Subsonic is the key though. ‘Cause when a bullet goes supersonic—a.k.a. breaks the sound barrier—you’re gonna get that sharp crack no matter what. You could have the biggest silencer in the world, and supersonic ammo is still gonna be really loud. It’s not like the movies, where silencers make guns go “pfft pfft” all super quiet. They’re still loud as fuck. Burst-your-eardrums loud, especially if you shoot them inside. Most people don’t know that, did you?

So subsonic ammo plus a good silencer got me quiet enough that the neighbors weren’t immediately gonna call the cops when I started popping off. I got a bunch of 147 grain 9mm. Don’t gotta show an ID for that either, I just walked in with cash and walked out with 2 dozen boxes.

Oh that’s the other thing, you do have to show an ID to buy magazines, and Colorado bans mags that hold more than 10 rounds, so I just printed a bunch of 30 rounders from another online file. I swear there’s a file for everything. They’re not even hard to find, really. It was kind of a pain to make the springs for the mags though, but it’s not like i was doing anything else.

I think all said and done it took a month and a half and cost me just over 3 grand to make 2 FGCs with the silencers and 20 magazines. I guess if you include the printer it was closer to 5 grand.

And then it took maybe another month to make sure everything was working just right. Not because they didn’t work—they actually worked really well—it’s because I kept hopping around to different spots out in the desert to test them out. I didn’t wanna keep shooting in the same place and have the cops or some pissed-off rancher show up.

I found a couple spots way way out there in the middle of nowhere, where I built little mock-ups out of pallets and cardboard so I could practice going around corners and breaching rooms and all that other close quarters combat stuff you see online. But eventually I decided that wasn’t a very good use of my time because I don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s not like some ex-military dude was coaching me on how to clear a room. I know there’s places you can go and train CQB with instructors who are legit Navy SEALs and Delta Force guys, but I was just watching YouTube videos and trying to copy them. It took so long to set up even a single fake hallway, and it was hard to find places with enough natural backstop that I could practice shooting and not worry about killing someone with a stray.

I guess you’ve said “fuck it” and practiced anyway, huh? Who cares if you accidentally kill someone, right?

Whatever, ultimately I just decided to practice mag swaps and clearing jams and drawing from under my jacket. Basic bread-and-butter stuff. I figured I’d kinda wing the rest of it. I wasn’t exactly going up against a well-trained enemy—as you know.

I practiced at night too, so I could get used to everything with the NODs on. They’re weird feeling, definitely cumbersome and kinda awkward for depth perception, but man oh man do they let you see good. Isn’t it crazy you can buy fucking Night. Vision. Goggles. off the internet? Good ones too.

Come to think of it, I got most of my kit off the internet. Zip ties, magazine pouches, 2 point sling, IR laser, that fucking hilarious dildo-gag thing. I could’ve gotten body armor too, but I felt like that would’ve just made me heavy and slow. Also, the really good stuff is, like, 6 grand, and that would’ve been almost the entire rest of my cash. Plus I’ve heard that even if you are wearing body armor, bullets can still break bones and even kill you. I mean, the plan was to get the jump on everyone anyway, right? If anyone actually started shooting back at me it would mean that I’d fucked up pretty bad.

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3.

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