For around two years, I had been looking for a PlayStation 5. Unfortunately for PlayStation, the company released its newest video game console during Covid. Who would have ever thought that the economy of the world would shut down entirely when planning for such a new release? In many places in the world, supply chains have not returned to normal due to massive government interference and their stupid support of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset. That has been particularly true of computer chips, which make the new PlayStation 5 so powerful. So it’s been very difficult to get a new PlayStation 5. Our family has continued playing our old PlayStation 4 over that duration like many people have had to. But I’ve been on the lookout for one for several years and have not been able to find one. There are usually long waiting lists you have to get on to have a chance to buy one. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and all the usual places have been unable to keep them when they do come in, and what they get has usually been a very limited supply. So I was quite shocked when I went to the new Costco in Liberty Township to meet my family on the opening day of November 2022 and saw at the entrance a pallet of PlayStation 5s stacked high for people to grab as they came into the new and wonderful store. I arrived before my family did, and it took me less than a fraction of a second to see the obvious. I grabbed one as people were plucking them from the stack as quickly as they came in, and we bought it that day and have enjoyed it profusely.
Yes, I’m a fan of Costco, even though they are not exactly conservatives. They are known Obama supporters, but they provide excellent service, so I haven’t held that against them. Costco does a lot of great things, and I have been a frequent visitor to the one in Tri-County, Ohio, for many years. When I found out that they were going to build a new Costco in Liberty Township, Ohio, I was very happy because I feel like a lot of people do about Tri-County, Ohio, located between the cities of Sharonville and Springdale, that big government has destroyed the former economic boom town and left it a husk of desperate value. I used to think of Tri-County as one of the greatest economic centers in the United States. I worked there several times in my life, so I know the area’s character well; it’s been a part of my life most of my life. So I’ve seen it in better days. But over the last 10 to 20 years, the progressive policies that came from big government woke policies have left the reputation to be one of crime. To describe it simply in one word, when I think of Tri-County, I think of MTV. The youth have been allowed to run wild and take over the character of the area, and wherever youth go, like mindless locusts, they destroy everything in their path. Older people don’t want to deal with a bunch of slack-jawed kids dressed inappropriately and constantly catcalling women while trying to shop and spend time with their families. But kids don’t have money, but moms who run families do, and those types of moms made Tri-County great.
That is why Costco built a store in Liberty Township, which is everything that Tri-County isn’t, very conservative and safe, and people who live there have money and care about things. It’s not to say that Liberty Township couldn’t become like Tri-County at some point, but the differences couldn’t be more obvious. In Butler County, Ohio, where Liberty Township is, there are over 400,000 residents, most of whom have guns. They either have guns in the home or carry them, and crime is not tolerated the way it has been 6 miles to the south in Tri-County and Sharonville. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Costco realizing that their Tri-County store was being held back because people just didn’t want to be in an area known for crime to shop at their store. So they built a new one, and people were hungry for it. For the first few weeks, there has been a line to get into the store, and people have been flocking to it just to buy goods and services and enjoy the Costco experience. And this new Costco has had everything, a lot more than the Tri-County store had, like PlayStation 5s. As I bought our new PlayStation in the long lines that went to the back of the store, I realized that if the Tri-County store did try to carry the type of items that the new Liberty Township store did, that theft would be the likely result. In Tri-County, with their progressive governments and their big-city attitudes, crime is much more permitted. In Liberty Township, crime isn’t permitted at all. And there are a lot of guns carried by good people who won’t hesitate to use those guns to defend property and persons, which was always the point of the 2nd Amendment.
This is precisely why many of us in the Butler County area have fought the temptation to allow West Chester and Liberty Township to become a city like their neighbors in Sharonville, Springdale, and Forest Park. Bad government happens when it gets too big, and once there are city councils and mayors involved, woke politics starts to attach itself to the decision-making process, and things get out of control. So we have fought for small government in Butler County, and the results are obvious. Butler County communities run much better than communities within the I-275 loop that have fallen for the big government temptation. I could tell stories about my experiences in Mason, where they have a city too, but over time they have had to become much more nibble on their feet to adapt to the pressure exerted by Sycamore Township to their south and Liberty Township to their west. The struggle to keep the government small is hard, but it’s obvious where they manage because when the government is small, there is less bureaucratic nonsense, allowing companies to invest without all the additional trouble. And when you go to the new Costco in LIbety Township and see the lines from people hungry to get in, you can see the obvious quickly. I happened to listen to a few older men standing outside the new Costco, bewildered as to why people were going so crazy over this new store, even days later after it initially opened. And the answer was that a lot of these shoppers were simply sitting at home waiting for something to open near them because they didn’t want to go into Tri-County to deal with the mess there, all the kids with their pants walking around half down, the nasty language, the cars with rap music pouring through closed windows but being so loud that it vibrates the fillings out of people’s teeth. When there is too much government and too much progressive policy, it ruins communities. When there is less, it makes communities better because the kind of people who shop and start businesses can then have a relationship without the government messing it up. And guns help a lot. Where there are lots of guns by private hands, there is much less crime. Where there are less guns, there is a lot more bad behavior. And put simply, that is why the new Costco at Liberty Township is so much better and why communities like Tri-County, Ohio, are failing.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 