The American Dream…The Right to Bear Kids & Arms…One Lost Last Night

I’ve mentioned the small town where I live in this blog  before. I’ve compared it to Mayberry RFD. A lot of people do. Last night it wasn’t.

Last night a gunshot rang out into the air amidst the quaint, turn-of-the-century buildings downtown, into the pre-Christmas merriment and into the Friday night frivolity–into a man named Louis who was only trying to live the American dream. He’s not doing that tonight. He’s dead.

I guess the world is getting crazier and, since this is part of the world, we’re certainly not exempt. But I’m sick of it. The whole thing started with something that isn’t isolated, a local bar noted for serving minors. Stetson University is right up the road and this bar has survived and thrived serving the students.

The majority of college students are not over 21, the legal  drinking age in this state. But they’ve kept this watering hole in business for years. So have the local kids who are not known to get along real well with the students. There are fights there every weekend. There are drug deals too. And there’s drunk driving. People have complained to the city. The city has responded but not in a permanent way. The bar changed hands because of the problems but the clientele stayed the same.

I’m told there was a huge commotion when the fight broke out there last night. People were told to leave the bar. A guy working in the restaurant across the street stepped outside to have a look, and a smoke, and got a bullet.

What started as a dream for a man from Holland, who was in the process of becoming an American citizen, ended in a nightmare. People who knew him tell me he had a sad life, growing up overseas. He ended up working on a cruise ship and, while in port in the Florida Keys, he met some people who really cared. They let him work in their restaurant and when they came here they brought him too. They became his family. He lived in the building they own downtown. He worked hard for the people who own the restaurant in the building next door. He had very little.

But he kept going, working toward his citizenship. He must have believed it was going to be worth it. And, because of the unmonitored rights of others, it doesn’t seem like it was. I feel like he’d have been better off back in Amsterdam tonight or on the cruise ship he left many years ago, anywhere but the morgue.

I agree with the right to bear arms. I really do. But, since there seems to be a complete breakdown in society lately, who should have guns? Should it really be these young people who have become so desensitized to the fact that guns kill? They seem oblivious to the fact that these weapons make people go away. Forever.

The shooter has been charged with manslaughter. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you shoot into a crowd of people, you have to be fairly certain someone could die. That’s murder. Today he’s out on $25,000 bail. That’s nothing. 

This one hits close to home. My son is in jail for brandishing a gun outside another bar in the same downtown area. He was on probation, wasn’t supposed to have a gun, bought it at work from someone who stole it. His boss thinks it’s funny that his employees are trafficking stolen guns.  And I can only thank God every single day that it never went off. And when he gets his sentence, it will be deserved. He wasn’t raised to do any such thing.

They drink. They do drugs. They kill people. With cars and guns and knives and daily. Who told them their rights supercede the rights of others? When did this happen? It happened on my watch. It happened on the watch of the parents of the 22 year old shooter who was in town visiting them and will leave town a murderer. And it happened on the watch of every parent with a kid in that group at the bar last night. It’s happening more and more. People are growing up and out of control.

I don’t know much but I do know this: It starts with each one of us. Personally, I won’t be happy until the liquor license for that building is revoked. I won’t be happy until every sleazy bar downtown is closed. You can’t have a sign that isn’t just so but you can have a cave catering to foul behavior every day of the week.

And I’m having a harder time every day being proud to be in a country as out of control as this one, where a hardworking immigrant has to die in the street because of a senseless shot in the dark.