Chris Abraham

Probability isn’t magical and luck doesn’t build up over time. The world isn’t a slot machine that eventually pays out because your streak is due. Every spin begins fresh. The mechanism doesn’t remember what happened before.

What matters instead is the structure of the wheel.

Imagine a wheel with chambers. Some are empty and one holds the round. Each spin is independent, but the number of empty chambers determines how forgiving the system is. Risk mitigation is essentially the process of adding empty chambers.

A stable routine tends to do that. Going to work, coming home, eating dinner, walking familiar streets, living among known people. None of this eliminates risk, but it spreads the possibilities across more empty spaces. The wheel becomes more forgiving.

Other patterns compress the wheel. When life becomes unstable or unpredictable, the number of empty chambers shrinks. Addiction, chaotic environments, risky encounters, late-night unknowns. There’s no moral judgment in that observation. It simply means the structure of risk has tightened.

If the wheel only has five chambers, then four are empty and one is live. Every spin still resets. Probability still has no memory. But the system contains fewer safe spaces from the beginning.

When things go wrong, people often reach for supernatural explanations. They think fate is against them, that God is punishing them, or that the devil has lured them into a cursed path. But most of the time the explanation is simpler and colder. The structure of the wheel changed.

We all make choices that influence how many chambers exist in our own wheel. Five chambers, six, eight, maybe ten. The more empty chambers there are, the more forgiving the system becomes. The fewer there are, the tighter the odds feel every time the wheel spins.

That isn’t destiny. It isn’t cosmic punishment. It’s risk mitigation, and the geometry of the choices that shape a life.

A few weeks ago, when the Virginia gun bills floating around looked like they were going to impose a 10-round magazine limit with no grandfather clause, I discovered that I apparently had the soul of a revolutionary. I was extremely animated about liberty, property rights, constitutional limits, and the terrifying possibility that magazines I had legally owned for years might suddenly have to be disposed of. I had opinions. I had arguments. I had the tone of someone ready to climb a barricade while humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It turns out nothing awakens a man’s inner patriot faster than the idea that his own gear might become illegal.

Now the latest version coming out of Richmond appears to land somewhere closer to a 15-round limit with a grandfather clause for existing magazines, meaning that if you already own them you can keep them, and the restriction mainly affects future sales or imports after July 1, 2026. In other words, the specific apocalypse I was yelling about mostly evaporated for me personally. And in what political scientists will surely identify as a remarkable coincidence, my revolutionary energy evaporated at exactly the same moment.

The barricades are suddenly much quieter. The drums of liberty have fallen silent. The tricorne hat has gone back in the closet next to the Halloween decorations. If you look closely you may notice that the man who was previously giving speeches about freedom now appears to be gently backing away from the microphone while pretending he had somewhere else to be.

This is the moment where principled people usually say that a law is wrong regardless of whether it affects them personally, and that one must continue fighting on behalf of the broader principle. Those people are admirable and probably carved from sterner material. Unfortunately, I appear to have discovered that my political courage runs on a much simpler operating system.

When the proposal looked like it would force me to scrap my own magazines, I was apparently willing to bring a torch, a drum, and a wagon full of righteous indignation. Now that the compromise version leaves my own pile of metal rectangles alone, my passion for liberty has quietly taken a sabbatical. If there were a revolution forming, I would currently be the guy who showed up with clown shoes, realized the fight had moved two blocks away, and immediately wandered off to buy a sandwich.

So yes, if anyone notices that I was very loud when the bill looked like ten rounds with no grandfather clause and am now suspiciously calm now that it looks like fifteen rounds with grandfathering, that observation would be completely fair. I would love to tell you that my shift reflects some deep constitutional analysis, but the truth is much simpler and much less flattering. The threat moved away from my own backyard, and with it went my sudden burst of heroic principle.

Apparently my activism, my courage, and my revolutionary spirit all share the same magazine capacity. Somewhere between ten and fifteen rounds, they run out.

14 Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.

15 Some of them said, “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.”

16 Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.

17 But he knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house.

18 And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons.

19 If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges.

20 But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

21 When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe.

22 But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils.

23 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

17 Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

18 Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.

19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”