America is afraid. It is a scared country filled with scared people, all desperately wishing they weren’t so scared all the time. It is a place that was built on fear, thrives on fear, at times excels because of fear. This is a fact it would rather ignore.

Americans are taught that there is nobody coming to save them, that at all times they are on their own. The property that forms the backbone of their concept of liberty could be stripped from them at any minute. It is through this lens that property becomes equivalent with life, the protecting of one at times being seen as protecting the other.

America is an armed country. It is a country drowning in bullet casings, where guns outnumber people. There are fewer and fewer safeguards in place controlling who can own a gun, where they can carry a gun, who has the right to tell them to put their gun down.

Scared and invincible is a terrible combination. Together they form a reality in which a knock on the wrong door, approaching the wrong car, turning into the wrong driveway, can be a fatal mistake. Together they form a cycle that has left broken bodies and families strewn across the landscape as far as the eye can see.

Andrew Lester, 84, was a paranoid man, according to his grandson. Lester opened fire twice on Ralph Yarl, 16, when the Black teen mistakenly rang his doorbell last Thursday as he attempted to pick up his younger siblings from a neighbor. Klint Lundwig later told the Kansas City Star that his grandfather in the past few years had become caught up in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia” that “further radicalized him in a lot of ways.” Black bodies are always to be feared in a place like America, no matter their age.

It is not a coincidence that gun sales have spiked in recent years based on fear that has often been packaged and sold as a product for people like Lester to consume. President Barack Obama became the first Black man elected president; gun sales climbed higher. Children shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary sparked calls for new regulations; gun sales climbed higher still. A deadly new virus prompted governments to ask people to stay home and businesses to close down to save lives; gun sales climbed higher than ever.

Kaylin Gillis was sitting in the passenger seat of a friend’s car when they turned into a driveway they thought belonged to a friend in upstate New York. The 65-year-old who actually owned it, Kevin Monahan, fired twice. One bullet struck 20-year-old Gillis in the neck. She was pronounced dead several miles away after the group recovered cell phone service and could dial 911.

. . . . owning a gun does not actually negate fear. It simply adds new ones or acts as a conduit to project those fears violently outward. Even American police, who are armed to the teeth, frequently justify lethal force based on the presence of a gun or the belief that their own weapon could be seized. It doesn’t matter if the gun is owned legally, as in the case of Philando Castle in 2016, or if the owned gun never came close to the other person’s fingers; in that moment, the illusion of invincibility is shattered. That is what matters in the moment, and the law is built to give credence to that fear for officers and property owners alike.

. . . . “An armed society is a polite society,” is a quote from science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein’s “Beyond This Horizon,” often invoked in support of this quest. The story is set in a world where gun duels over honor are common and the knowledge that a challenge could come over any slight. This is the utopia that many gun rights activists believe will be borne of their efforts. But the world Heinlein describes is a world in which the rules of such fights are strictly formalized. There is room for aggression to be relieved absent violence.

Both sides being armed does not change the equation, either. Earlier this month, authorities in Florida filed charges against one of two fathers who exchanged fire during a road rage incident last October, each with children in their cars. The first was deemed to be acting in self-defense, despite hitting a 5-year-old girl in the leg. The second was charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault for returning fire, collapsing a 14-year-old girl’s lung. And yet Florida Republicans this month advanced bills that would allow for gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Even this is not enough for many gun activists, who insist that the right to openly carry arms is the only way to guarantee the wielders can walk down the streets fully unafraid.

This is paired with a disdain for any requirements related to training or safety before owning a gun

Sow the seeds of class envy and perceived discrimination and paranoid democrats will cry to disarm the honest person. 

. . . . In 2012, it was a quick trip to a convenience store. The teenager was 17 and he was on his way back to his father’s place with a bottle of juice and a bag of Skittles. He was wearing a hoodie. His name was Trayvon Martin.

And a 28-year-old neighbor, George Zimmerman, claimed he was acting in self-defense when he shot Trayvon.

There had been a series of robberies in the area. He said he shot Trayvon because he was afraid. He feared bodily harm. Months passed before Zimmerman was actually arrested and charged. Zimmerman was not charged on the spot because police said they could not disprove his version of the events: That he was defending himself; That he stood his ground.

After weeks of protesters sounding the alarm, Zimmerman was finally charged with second degree murder. Eventually, he was acquitted.

In 2020, a 25-year-old Black man went for an afternoon jog in a coastal Georgia town. His workout caught the attention of three local men who grabbed their guns, hopped in a truck and began to follow the jogger. The men said there had been a string of robberies in the area. They said they were scared. They said they thought the jogger was the thief.

The jogger was Ahmaud Arbery. The men chased him down, and shot him dead. Still, they also walked away from that shooting as free men. They claimed they were defending themselves under the state’s stand your ground laws.

“Stand your ground” laws exploded after 2012, when Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. Laws in at least 28 states and Puerto Rico allow that there is no duty to retreat an attacker in any place in which one is lawfully present. Instead, a person who reasonably believes they are in danger of death or serious harm can use deadly force.

But that law tends to exacerbate some potentially fatal racial disparities. First, there is the question of whose presence in this country is often deemed suspicious or questionable, and whose rarely is.

And then there is how the law is applied. According to the Urban Institute, when white Americans in a “Stand your ground” state shoot a Black person dead and claim self-defense, the killing is ruled a justifiable homicide 34% of the time.

Which brings us to last week, on April 14. A Black 16-year-old is sent on a quick trip to pick up his twin little brothers, both 11 years old. He rang the doorbell, but he had the wrong address for the house in Kansas City, Missouri. Another state with a stand your ground law.

The 84-year-old white homeowner, Andrew Lester, claims he thought it was a break-in and was ‘“scared to death” due to “the male’s size” and his own advanced age. For the record, the “male” in this case is a high school student named Ralph Yarl.

Lester claims that, because he was scared to death, he immediately shot Yarl in the head through a glass door. Ralph was taken to the hospital where he received surgery to remove the bullets. He was eventually released and is recovering at home.

Lester, for his part, was detained the night of the shooting but then released hours later, with no charges. He claimed self-defense in a stand your ground state.

After a weekend of protests, Lester was finally charged on Monday with felony assault and armed criminal action. His decision to shoot follows a clear pattern in stand your ground states: A white gunman shoots a Black child or young man because of misplaced suspicion and fear.

In the case of George Zimmerman, the law kept him out of prison. Will Andrew Lester walk free as well?

Using your phone whilst driving is already illegal. Banning gun ownership for mentally unstable people from owning firearms would be the right thing. Btw, I was rear-ended by a teenager who was eating her breakfast whilst she was driving. That does not mean we should ban people from eating breakfast. We should ban people who are eating/drinking whilst they are driving.