The Lafayette Theater Shooting Is Why I Carry Everywhere I Go

I don’t know about you, but I carry a gun everywhere I go. I know it sounds a wee bit paranoid, but when going to watch a movie during the dog days of summer potentially puts me at risk of getting shot by some Motel 6 drifter with a Paul Bunyan-sized ax to grind, then call me crazy but … I’m packing heat so numb-nuts can’t send me to an early meet-n-greet with Jesus. Either that or I’m just going to keep it parked at my house and watch Netflix. With a gun.

Yep, thanks to whiny and violent dipsticks no place is safe in the United States of Acrimony. Seemingly, there’s no lack of Housers, Holmes or Michael Browns in our land who’ll go from zero to Mad Max on your noggin for looking at them weird or because “the voices” told them to do so. Ergo … I’m packing.

Indeed, places that were pretty much a given a few years ago, that you could go to without fear of having a 125 grain hollow point coursing through your lung tissue, are now potential killing fields.

For instance, church: you can’t even go to church any more without keeping one eye open during the worship service because Jedediah’s now leering at you after you crapped on his interpretation of Daniel’s 70th week during prophecy class. It’s a madhouse folks. A frickin' madhouse. So … I’m packing.

Check this out. A couple of years ago, when I lived in South Florida, I went out to run some errands one sunny morning and had to fill up my FJ Cruiser; and per my ritual, I brought my little friend, Mr. Smith & Wesson, along for the ride.

As I was pumping fuel into my FJ, I noticed this thug off to my far right shaking down customers for cash at the other pumps. Some folks gave this young, shirtless wonder some of their hard earned drachmas and others didn’t.

When one lady failed to give said mooch some money, he commenced to dropping more F-bombs on her than Rosie does when she misses her 5 p.m. feeding. He got all up in her grill, y'all. I think that's how you say it. Oh, I forgot to tell you … this gas station wasn’t in the “hood.” It was in Aventura, surrounded by very nice homes and multi-million dollar yachts. Y’know … a “safe place.” Anyway, back to my story.

The dude is now approaching moi all ramped up and gesticulating wildly while talking to himself. Which I took to mean he's on crack and he’s whacked. Now, since I don’t play the shakedown game, as soon as he looked at me and started coming in my direction I gave him a nice and Christian “go-to-hell look,” then lifted up my black T-shirt and showed him my AirLite S&W chambered for the .357 Magnum round – and you know what? It had this amazing effect on him. All of a sudden his eyes grew big, like Buckwheat's when he saw a ghost, and he instantly sobered up and got the heck out of Dodge.

Please, allow me to underscore my point again: I was in a fabulous neighborhood, at 8:30 in the morning, and the crap was hitting the fan; which screams to me in these Wild West days … you just never know when it's going to go down. You. Never. Know.