Random thoughts of a free Black mind

Feb 03, 2024

Editor’s note: Charles W. Cherry II, publisher emeritus of the Florida Courier, died on July 15. The Florida Courier is reprinting some of his popular “Straight, No Chaser commentaries. This column appeared in the Feb. 16, 2018 issue.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High – Add that name to the tragic list of mass school shootings: Columbine High. Sandy Hook Elementary. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly known as Virginia Tech. Marshall County High.

(You may not be aware of the Marshall County High School shooting in Benton, Ky., on Jan. 23, because the 15-year-old gunman killed “only’’ two people and shot “only’’ a total of 14.)

As of the writing of column on late Wednesday night, there have been 12 shootings (including Douglas) since New Year’s Day 2018. Researchers say there’s been an average of one school shooting a week in America since 2013.

I’m listening to all the mainstream talking heads, from Fox News to CNN, and there’s finger-pointing, snap judgments, and Monday-morning quarterbacking going on even before all of the dead bodies have been removed from the school.

They are blaming students for not telling school officials the shooter was a threat. They are blaming school officials for not doing more, despite the fact that the shooter had been expelled from the school.

A Fox commentator even blamed local law enforcement officials for not taking the shooter’s guns away as a consequence of “disturbing” social media posts.

But no one, not even King Don Trump’s most hated “fake news” cable outlet CNN, has said one peep about the fact that NONE of these school shootings happen without somebody – whether a nutcase or a clear-eyed, cold-blooded murderer – gets ahold of just one of the 400 million guns in legal circulation in America.

I just returned from a great trip to Medellin, Colombia. When I mention the city, the first thing most Americans say is, “That place is dangerous and full of drugs and drug cartels. Isn’t that where Pablo Escobar lived?”

I sicc my teeth, roll my eyes, and tell them, “I’m safer walking in downtown Medellin, downtown Accra, Ghana, or downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone (West Africa) at night than I am walking in downtown Miami or Jacksonville. I’ll get shot “Only In America.’’ And as a Black man who’s 6 feet, 4 inches and 235 pounds, I’m doubly at risk for getting shot to death in the “I felt threatened, so I killed him” socalled “stand your ground” Gunshine State.

And that’s the damn truth. Guns are God in this dysfunctionally fearful country and the Second Amendment is America’s Eleventh Commandment. (“Thou shall pry my assault-type weapon only from my cold, dead hands.”)

NOTHING good will come from this latest tragedy. There will be another school shooting next week that most of us will never read about. And the name of the late great savior of Florida’s Everglades, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, will forever be linked with the shedding of innocent blood.

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