So, you’re in a movie theater with your wife getting ready to watch an afternoon film, after having a nice “date” lunch, and you decide you need to get a message to your three-year-old daughter for some reason. She’s at daycare. You text. Maybe you just wanted your three-year-old daughter to know that mommy and daddy would be there in time to pick her up. Won’t be late because of the movie.
The next thing you know you’re dead.
You’re dead because another guy, sitting with his wife in the seats behind you, apparently had a major problem with you texting in the dimly lit place, just before the movie was to begin. And the guy in the theater with the major problem was carrying a gun. His manliness thus weaponized, he confronted you and told you to put your phone away. You tried to explain to him about your three-year-old daughter. He wouldn’t have it. He said he was going to get an usher or manager, but he came back alone. And even more irritated. Voices were raised. Soon, so was a gun. His gun. He shot you in your chest, your wife getting hit in the hand because she instinctively tried to shield your body.
And because you and the killer were in stand-your-ground Florida, the killer, a retired police captain, now claims that he feared for his life. His lawyer argues that it was your fault for being the “aggressor.” You apparently tossed a box of popcorn at the killer.
Which, like texting in a theater, can be an offense worthy of death in the National Rifle Association’s America.
Alas, let’s face it. These days, just going to a movie in the National Rifle Association’s America can be deadly.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Jim Wheeler
/ January 15, 2014Interesting how firearms change the equation for anger. Most people would think twice and thrice before engaging in hand-to-hand battle with a stranger who irritated them, or who bullied them as happened yesterday in an Arizona school. But the gun makes a huge difference. One little tug on the trigger and the deed is done. Psychology studies show, I have read, that the mere carrying of a gun alters a person’s psychology. This story seems proof of it.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ January 16, 2014“The gun makes a huge difference” is exactly right. In so many cases, in so many tragic cases, if there had been no gun, things would have ended much differently for all, including the killer, who in this case will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. What a damn waste. And what a damn shame that because of the NRA’s power, we can’t do a thing about it.
Duane
LikeLike
Sedate Me
/ January 17, 2014Ok, finally there’s one Lone Crazed Gunmen I can cheer for.
If I had a loaded gun every time I saw an asshole with a device that I wanted to shoot, well, there’d be a shortage of bullets on this continent.
LikeLike
brucetheeconomist
/ January 18, 2014And yet some think teachers should carry guns. Teaching can be stressful, can you imagine a similar scenario at a school? I sure can.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ January 20, 2014Not only that, Bruce, but imagine a scenario in which a gun-toting teacher accidentally shot a child, whether during an attack by an outside shooter or just by accident when nothing was going on. The likelihood of that happening only increases when more and more teachers are armed. We’ve read recently of instances where school security personnel have left loaded guns in the bathroom and such. Multiply the gun-carrying population in our public schools and who knows what will happen. This is crazy stuff.
LikeLike
King Beauregard
/ January 20, 2014“Hi, I’m Mr. Barnes, the new history teach –”
BLAM BLAM BLAM
“I didn’t recognize the guy, I assumed he was a shooter. I didn’t dare assume he wasn’t!”
LikeLike
King Beauregard
/ January 20, 2014I should point out that Mr. Barnes’s class would be unable to learn from history, and therefore would be doomed to repeat it.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ January 21, 2014Touché!
LikeLike
Sedate Me
/ January 20, 2014Professor Sedate Me would probably have an empty class by semester’s end…and a much redder decor than when classes started.
LikeLike