by sheila morris
Look, Joe and other folks, number one is that you people are not listening to 61% of American citizens who want a ban on these assault rifles according to a Fox News Poll in April, 2023.
Thoughts and prayers are not enough. Ban the damn assault weapons, ban them all.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Civil war has been declared on American citizens going about their activities of daily life by other American citizens using AR-15s, the chosen weapon of this war.
Is anybody listening?
Ban the damn things. Ban them all.
A thirty-eight year old man accused of murdering five neighbors in Cleveland, Texas was captured in a smaller Texas town called Cut and Shoot that was less than 20 miles from where the crime happened after a massive four day manhunt by a collection of law enforcement organizations.The man lived next door to the victims which included two women aged 21 and 31 respectively, a 25 year old woman and her 9 year old son, and an 18 year old young man. According to the 9 year old’s father, the neighbor walked into their home armed with an AR-15 rifle and began shooting after an altercation between them over a crying baby in his home and the neighbor’s shooting practice in the next door yard.
According to data published by Caroline Covington on July 28, 2022 in the Texas Tribune, Texans purchased more than 1.6 million guns in 2021 which was about 1 gun for every 14 adults in the state. Concurrently in 2021 the Texas legislature passed new laws allowing the open carry of handguns without a license to carry those guns under certain conditions per information provided by the Texas State Law Library. The Wild, Wild West of Hollywood westerns in the 1940s and 50s had returned to those thrilling days of yesteryear but the guns of the 21st. century were more powerful, more accessible, able to kill innocent people much quicker than the ones used in the 1952 Gary Cooper film High Noon.
When Pretty and I had a second home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas from 2010 – 2014 we drove through Cut and Shoot whenever we made one of our countless thousand mile trips between South Carolina and Texas. During that time we used the Cut and Shoot post office as a sign we were almost to Conroe which meant we were less than an hour from Worsham Street. Even our dogs sensed the two day drive south and west was nearing the end when we slowed for the small town speed limit and stopped for several red lights there.
Now the name Cut and Shoot is infamous as the town where the Cleveland mass shooter was captured. The little town that got its name from a fight between two (who’s suprised?) religious groups, the home of ostensibly the only person with any claim to fame (professional heavyweight boxer Roy Harris) would achieve notoriety as the place where a middle-aged man with an AR-15 who killed five of his younger neighbors in Cleveland was found hiding in a closet in a house there.
I really don’t care if the people killed and/or the killer were shades of black, brown, white, or mix-ish; what I do care about is that somebody somewhere had an AR-15 rifle and a temper. Everyone has a temper to some degree – even our fifteen month old granddaughter Molly gets mad when she hears the word No, and she feels free to act out by throwing whatever is in her hand to the ground as hard as she can.
But not everyone has an AR-15 rifle, and in my opinion not everyone should.
Ban the damn things. Ban them all.
The card was given to me by my good friend Bing at dinner in our favorite Mexican restaurant last night where she and another good friend Meghan treated Pretty and me to a delicious meal. Yummy!
The card came with this book for our granddaughters – nothing is better than a delightful “message” book for an activist’s granddaughters. I loved it – and will love reading it to them. If you haven’t read it, you must. The words of wisdom work for all of us regardless of our ages.
I must say thank you to everyone who has bombarded me with good wishes during what became my 77th. birthday month! You have made this a super time, as our three year old Ella says when she reaches for hyperbole. I couldn’t say it better myself.
Onward.
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Slava Ukraini. For the children.
When I began my great escape from the familiar including what I felt at the time was the root of the war between good and evil that was constantly being waged within myself, a battle royale in which I never emerged the winner, the odyssey that began in Houston, Texas with the ultimate destination being the farthest place I could find on a map of the United States, I was twenty-two years old. The destination I chose was 3,000 miles across the country to the city of Seattle, Washington in the Pacific Northwest. The year was 1968.
The circuitous route took two weeks and included two nights in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada. I had high hopes for evil to prevail in my inner warfare. When I arrived there late one night, my first thought was I had entered the land of the midnight sun – the lights were the brightest I had ever seen…the people hustling from casino to casino on the Strip, the hotel marquees, the energy exploding everywhere. This young lesbian from rural southeast Texas was overwhelmed but excited to be there.
The next day I learned I could afford two shows that night in the hotels if I didn’t lose all my money at the blackjack tables in their casinos. It was a close call, but I managed to save just enough for one early show and one midnight show. The twenty-two year old lesbian opted for the midnight show at the Tropicana Hotel, the Folies Bergere, because someone had told her the women danced around with nothing but feathers on. That story turned out to be true. Mesmerizing.
The early dinner show I saw was at Caesar’s Palace headlined by one of my favorite singers. His name was Harry Belafonte. I can’t remember the calypso songs or the other ballads he sang that night in my maiden Las Vegas show experience, but I remember to this day fifty-five years later his presence on the stage that belonged to him – the way he made me feel his music with him, that he sang especially for me. His smile was beautiful, contagious, somehow uplifting. The man moved with a power that would rival Moses parting the Red Sea; he was magnificent. He exuded a sexual confidence that made me think I might be straight. I loved him when he was young before I loved him more for who he became.
This morning on the Today show Al Roker told a great story about Belafonte who at one point in his life wanted to rent an apartment in New York City. The landlord refused the lease because he was Black. Belafonte responded by buying the entire building and giving the penthouse to his friend Lena Horne.
Mindful to the end that he grew up in poverty, Belafonte did not think of himself as an artist who became an activist, but an activist who happened to be an artist.
“When you grow up, son,″ Belafonte remembered his mother telling him, “never go to bed at night knowing that there was something you could have done during the day to strike a blow against injustice and you didn’t do it.″
Former Associated Press writer Mike Stewart contributed to this report dated October 25, 2023.
Harry Belafonte was a living legend for his good deeds and blows struck against injustice, yet I will remember the most handsome man I ever saw in person in a time long ago and far away whose show was much more entertaining than the women wearing nothing but feathers.
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Pretty and I will remember your passing on April 25th. Pretty’s mother died on that day in 1998. My mother died on that same day in 2012.
Rest in peace, Harry Belafonte. As you once said, “You can cage the singer, but not the song.”
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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