To be fair, people who sit texting in movie theaters can be
annoying. I don’t much like them even if they text just during the trailers.
It’s an irritant. They can text before they come to the theater. Or when they
leave it. Or if it’s truly urgent, they can go back to the lobby and text away.
But they don’t, and they make me mad as hell.
But when a retired police captain, 71 year old Curtis
Reeves, pulls out his gat and shoots and kills the guy in the next movie seat
for texting, also shooting the victim’s wife through the hand in the process, I
do think we can fairly say either that movie seat rage has gone too far, or
that Florida’s so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws haven’t gone far enough.
How could they go any further? I’d be surprised if the NRA
hasn’t already done the groundwork. Just as badly as people need a Stand Your
Ground law, we need a Stand Your Seat Law. That law would give moviegoers the
right to take the life of anybody who threatens to interfere with them sitting
in a movie theater and watching the ads for the local ice cream parlor and next
month’s action movies.
In fact, we Americans need lots of other legalized reasons
to shoot one another. How about a Hold Your Parking Place law, so that if
you’re trying to back into a parking spot just as somebody comes along behind
you and tries to push his car’s nose into the same spot, you can blow his head
off?
In New York, we need a Hold Your Cab law, so that nobody can
snatch a taxi away from me by climbing into the rear left hand seat, just as
I’ve reached for the door handle to get in on the rear right hand seat.
Especially not during rush hour. And most especially not during rush hour when
it’s raining. You steal my cab? I shoot you between the eyes.
Of course we need a Hold Your Place In Lane law, and another
Hold Your Place In Line law, one to help you and me prevent automobiles from
cutting in front of our cars, the other to prevent people from cutting into
line at sporting events and yes, movie theaters again. This would assure all of
us that, after shooting the person who tries to take our place in line, we can
shoot somebody else for texting, in the warmth and comfort of the theater.
In fact, wouldn’t it be helpful if we had a Hold Your
Anything and Everything From Anyone and Everybody law, which would allow
anybody to shoot anybody for any reason at all? Or for no reason at all?
I think that’s where the NRA is heading with this. Everybody
will be armed, not only with a gun, but also with the philosophy that nobody on
the planet will be safe until everybody’s dead.
The problem is, while I’m kidding about this, the NRA isn’t.
They don’t seem at all moved by a woman who has been widowed and her three year old child who has been half orphaned by “a good guy with a gun,” who happened to be a retired police
captain in a bad mood who went to the movies. Nor do I expect any NRA outcry of
emotion over the New Mexico school shooting that came in over the Internet just as I
sat down to write this piece.
The trail of tragedy, of innocent people mowed down by
stupid people with guns, is getting to the point where it’ll stretch from here
to the moon and back.
Remember, the only thing that stops a good guy in an ugly
mood is another good guy in an equally ugly mood, especially when both of them
are armed.
Meanwhile, for the delectation of some of us, here’s why
people who own guns should at least be required to pass a basic intelligence
test, Second Amendment or no Second Amendment.
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