Shannon NickinsonIt ought to be enough.
The Florida legal system is in the limelight again this week with the trial of Michael David Dunn, 47, in the shooting death of Jordan Davis, 17.
Davis was one of four teens in a Dodge Durango at a Jacksonville-area convenience store where Dunn and his fiancee had stopped. Dunn, who was in Jacksonville for his son’s wedding, didn’t like their “thug music” and ordered them to turn it down.
One of the teens in the Durango turned down Chief Keef, according to a story in Rolling Stone magazine. But Jordan cranked the music back up. Words were exchanged, including curses. Dunn then pulled his Taurus PT 9 mm and fired at the Durango several times, killing Davis.
According to Rolling Stone, Dunn told police, “They defied my orders. What was I supposed to do if they wouldn’t listen?”
Davis’ killing came after the Trayvon Martin shooting. The media and judicial freak show surrounding the Martin case should have been enough for Floridians to demand that changes be made to our state’s guns and self-defense laws.
But it wasn’t.
A slew of statewide meetings to hear input failed to result in any change to the “stand your ground” law, which was a solution in search of a problem.
“Stand your ground” says a person doesn’t need to retreat before claiming self-defense. Its application has been, shall we say, mired in controversy.
Then last month came Curtis Reeves Jr., 71, a former Tampa police captain and founder of the force’s SWAT team. He is charged with second-degree murder for pulling his .380 semi-automatic pistol and shooting a 43-year-old man who threw popcorn at him during the previews at a movie theater.
Chad Oulson was with his wife and texting their 22-month-old daughter’s caregiver. Oulson’s texting irritated Reeves, who left the theater to complain to management. Apparently unsatisfied with the response he got, he returned and words and popcorn were exchanged.
Then Reeves shot Oulson in the chest.
And still it is not enough.
We are allowing Florida to become the prime example in a society that increasingly lets free-floating anger get the best of it.
I am the daughter of a lifelong hunter. Every man I knew as a child had guns. Not one of them ever took one of those guns along on a trip to a wedding. Or the movies. Guns, I was taught, exist to kill people or animals.
There are other uses — target shooting, skeet shooting — but their primary purpose is to efficiently cause death. My father taught me to handle a .22 semi-automatic pistol. An ex gave me a pistol as a birthday present. He wanted me to have it while I was on assignment, driving alone in isolated pockets of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.
My parents lived 45 minutes away from the nearest state police barracks in rural Pennsylvania, so I was glad that they kept handguns in the house.
In these Florida cases, though, using a gun wasn’t about being a long way from help. These cases have rage and loss of control at their core. And a fundamental lack of appreciation of — or worse, indifference to — the consequences of pulling the trigger.
All you need to do is check the comments section of a media story or social media outlet to see that a whole lot of people are mad as hell and don’t feel like taking it anymore.
The thing is, when Paddy Chayefsky put those words in Peter Finch’s mouth in the movie “Network,” the character is a man losing his mind on live television. And his bosses are keeping him there because it makes great ratings.
It was satire. It was not meant to be adopted as a national manifesto.
Too many people with handguns in their possession don’t even have enough respect for them to keep them properly secured.
Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons told me recently “people would be surprised at the number of guns stolen throughout the area because people keep guns in cars and then they leave the cars unlocked.”
So even here in law-and-order-loving Northwest Florida, too many of us can’t be counted on to store our guns safely.
Leaving your loaded gun in your unlocked car is not doing your part for the rule of law. It is dumb and irresponsible.
Guns are for adults with self-control. They are not for people looking to give orders to teenagers whose music is loud.
They are not for using on a guy who throws popcorn at you. They are not there to give you the courage to follow a kid in a hoodie in the rain.
The world seems scary because we allow a culture of fear to exist. We allow the cloud of formless anger and threat to the “America we used to know” to inform our government, the news we consume and the decisions we make.
We have free will and the gift of critical thinking. Let’s use both more often.
If we did, enough would be enough.
Shannon Nickinson is a columnist and writer who lives in Pensacola, Fla.
