I have the feeling this guy was serious. If for no other reason than that he stopped responding. I feel like if it was a joke he would’ve kept responding and di

I have the feeling this guy was serious. If for no other reason than that he stopped responding. I feel like if it was a joke he would’ve kept responding and dialing up the ridiculousness. He also seemed pretty authentically earnest. There are a bunch of people in American gun culture who are obsessed with “preparedness”. Some of these people may have a kernel of reason (maybe they live in a rough neighborhood and have a small sidearm that they hope they never have to use). But any culture like this has its exemplars, people who fixate on preparing for outlandishly rare severe scenarios, but lack the competency to actually do so properly. Like, if this guy was actually dealing with violence at his workplace regularly or even once a year, he wouldn’t be talking in the future conditional tense (“if there’s an incident cops will let us…”, “I’m worried that someone might try to…”), he’d be talking in the present progressive tense (“when there’s an incident the cops usually tell us we can…”, “When someone tries to shoot me I generally…”). In all likelihood he’s a mall cop in a town that probably has very little gun crime but had one tragic shooting 10 years ago, and he has become obsessed with being prepared for the next one.