I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: gun violence a fixture in American life

  • the eyes of texas – and the rest of the world – are upon you

    the eyes of texas – and the rest of the world – are upon you


    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.

  • Valentine’s Day murder at local grocery store called senseless

    Valentine’s Day murder at local grocery store called senseless


    “Unfortunately, this is a situation where tempers flared, and someone let anger get the best of them,” Irmo Police Chief Robert Dale said. “One rash decision has impacted the lives of two families and countless others who witnessed this tragic event,” Dale stated. “Senseless is the only word I can think of to describe what happened today.” (Lexington Chronicle, February 14, 2023)

    One woman was killed yesterday by another woman she did not know in the parking lot of a local grocery store fifteen minutes from our home. Random act of violence, right? Who hasn’t gotten angry over another vehicle sliding into a parking spot we were waiting for? Or maybe a new shiny SUV was taking up two parking spaces near the door to the store – that’s an entitled elite being entitled and elite, for God’s sake. Makes me mad just to think about it. My blood boils. Hateful words hurled at the other woman over the parking space or whatever the important issue was at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on Valentine’s Day when someone needed candy or cookies. The shouting between the two women intensified, grew louder. Cell phones taking a video…

    If I had a gun, I’d shoot that bitch.

    Oh, look. I do have a gun. Take this. Trigger pulled. Boom. End of discussion.

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    The killer in the tragedy yesterday was a twenty-three year old woman who turned herself in to the police and has now been charged with murder. The victim was twenty-six years old, did not know her killer, but what happened was known. The casual encounter of the two women led to an “altercation” in the parking lot – an altercation that then escalated to a gun being fired and a life taken. Really, two lives were taken while traumatized witnesses who will also never be the same watched in horror and disbelief.

    Just another Valentine’s Day massacre of someone in America following a mass murder the night before on the campus of Michigan State University where three students were killed and five more seriously wounded by a man who then killed himself which brought the count to four known dead. Anyone who has access to news knows “gun violence is a fixture in American life.” (BBC)

    The population of the United States is currently estimated at 336 million by Worldometer with the number of guns in the US close to 400 million. I can’t wrap my brain around this insanity. The inmates are running the asylum – and they are heavily armed. I can, however, wrap my brain around two young women going to a grocery store on Valentine’s Day with only one surviving to drive away.

    Did the woman with the gun carry it in plain sight of the woman she shot or was it concealed in her purse, her handbag? Did the woman with the gun have a Concealed Weapon Permit for it? That’s for the prosecution and defense to discover in the coming days. However the shooter obtained the gun, however she carried her gun, whether legally or illegally, another woman is dead because she was shot by that gun.

    Molly Ivins was a syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate, Inc. and on March 13, 1993 published a column called Taking a Stab at our Infatuation with Guns. Thirty years later her words sadly continue to be relevant.

    In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster. Those who want guns – whether for target shooting, hunting or potting rattlesnakes (get a hoe) – should be subject to the same restrictions placed on gun owners in England – a nation in which liberty has survived nicely without an armed populace.

    The argument that “guns don’t kill people” is patent nonsense. Anyone who has ever worked in a cop shop knows how many family arguments end in murder because there was a gun in the house. Did the gun kill someone? No. But if there had been no gun, no one would have died. At least not without a good footrace first. Guns do kill...letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane. Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

    You want protection? Get a dog.

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    Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Hopefully.