Two gentlemen in Florida were having a disagreement. When one man broke off the engagement and walked away, the other man shot him ten times in the back. The wounded man even begged the gunman to stop shooting. Anger and guns don’t mix. The kicker is that in Florida, a “Stand Your Ground” state, the shooter walked away free. “He may have been going for a gun,” was his explanation. “I was afraid for my life.” A round in the air might have gotten his opponent’s attention. Ten slugs sure did.

I don’t want to talk about the NRA or the Second Amendment, though. Bigger brains than mine have weighed in on those complex topics. My question is how travesties like the SYG legislation come to be signed into law in the first place.
This isn’t a problem in Calaveras County. Yet. I’ve heard enough boasts about how local people “know how to defend private property” to worry that it may be a political grenade here soon unless a sudden epidemic of sanity breaks out.

The easy answer is that SYG and Open Carry laws are democracy in action. Only in a political climate ruled by lobbyists and special interest groups could those laws and abominations like Citzens United ever get on the books. “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one” is my favorite bumper sticker. And, as with most humor, there is an ugly undercurrent of truth in that jab at our Supreme Court whose justices are appointed, not voted in. Gun manufacturers and gun shop owners did their homework. They got the vote out and elected conservative politicos that smiled on their agenda. It’s funny, when liberals talk about environment or social issues, it is always their “agenda.” People like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist don’t have agendas; they are just poor misunderstood public servants fighting for our collective well being. If you are a white conservative, of course.

The same people who bludgeon us with the D word (Democracy) are now worried about who votes. The Enterprise printed interesting discussions about how certain groups of people are so indoctrinated that their votes should be discounted. It’s even been implied that some of the brainwashed don’t deserve the vote at all. Some states have cried “foul” at their voting booths and are demanding stricter rules to make people prove they are legal voters. Of course the groups being routed across these democratic speed bumps are minorities, students, women and gays. The GOP couldn’t prove voter fraud, although several GOP governors swore it was happening. Yet, when Al Gore lost his presidential bid under questionable tactic the same group swore it wasn’t happening. Faced with growing group of opponents and their own shrinking party, the only logical way to level the playing field is to make it difficult for those growing masses to get to the polls. Not a pure definition of Democracy but if it was good enough for our Founding, uh, Parents, right? They wrote the book on who could vote.

It reminds me of the old Yves Montand movie “Z.” Yves (code name Z) leads a successful rebellion against the ruling military junta. The junta is run out of town. The people vote and elect a government. The junta returns and the elected government disappears. The crowning irony is the list of verboten human rights that rolls along with the credits. The junta even banned the letter Z from their alphabet. Replace “junta” with the “lobbyists” intend on buying future elections and we have a similar landscape in this country. We just do it with dollars instead of guns.

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks believes that a war on whites has been “…launched by the Democratic Party….claiming that whites hate everybody.” Of course the mastermind of this “war” is our own black president and all of this hatred and racism started just 6 years ago.
Am I advocating change by bloodbath? No. Still, I believe that the powers running our political zoo wouldn’t mind one. They’d call it a threat to the constitution and unleash our own military against the socialists and those too stupid to be allowed to vote correctly. There are no regular Americans, just people of many shades and walks of life. I grew up believing books that said our country celebrated diversity. I went to college and found out exactly how much of a lie that statement was. We can’t pick and choose. We can’t say “Give me back my country” and then add vehemently, “But don’t touch my Social Security” as one citizen yelled at a recent county town hall meeting. It is hard enough getting along in hard times. Add our gun culture and everyone has to duck.

Jerry Tuck is a retired San Andreas resident and an indie author. Contact him at olwhofan@aol.com or use the Contact Form.