The Alternative Universe of GunFirsters
I’m inspired this morning by a column by Will Doolittle. Will, has a long résumé as a newspaperman in Upstate New York, and is a regular contributor to “The Front Page,” a blog by another Upstater Newspaper guy, Ken Tingley. Both are accessible on Substack, and both are worth reading. Will is also accessible at the “MuckRack.”
I suppose anybody who watches real news (which of course excludes viewers of Fox and its fellow travelers) already knows the tragic story of Kaylin Gillis, even if they don't recognize her name. She was one of a group of kids who were on their way to a Saturday night gathering somewhere out in the sticks east of Glens Falls, NY, on April 15. The group – a motorcycle and two cars – turned into a wrong driveway, where they had to go all the way up the long narrow drive to turn around near the house. Presumably enraged or terrified by the intrusion, Kevin Monahan, the old 65-year-old berserker who lived there, came out with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with a slug, and shot Kaylin dead through the window as the car was driving away.
I was looking at my iPad in bed late that night when the news broke. There was no picture of Kaylin yet, but the Washington County Sheriff said he didn't know why it happened, and that he knew Kaylin's family, down in Schuylerville. He told the assembled reporters that “it's a good family.” So I knew she was a White girl. Because when have you ever heard a rural White official describe a Black Family as a “good family?” I'm pretty sure I never have. Anyway, Monahan is being held without bail, and Kaylin's father says he hopes he dies in jail.
I'm cynical enough to think that Kaylin's murder reasonates a little louder across the nation because she was White. But there's no doubt that this killing was even more shocking because just two days earlier another paranoid old White Man in Kansas City, MO, Andrew Lester, shot a 16 year-old Black boy when he mistakenly knocked on the door of Lester's modest but nice little neighborhood brick home. Lester, 84, was arrested following the incident, but was released on bail three hours later. In this case the kid, Ralph Yarl, was not killed, despite being hit in the head by a .32 revolver bullet.
Lester, looking sallow and decrepit and older than his years as he appeared in court, had told officials that he was terrified by Yarl knocking on the door. He didn't say he was frightened because Ralph is a Black kid, but we can very safely take that for granted. In this case, the Sheriff said something really wifty like “there is a racial component to this crime.” Yarl was discharged after a short hospital stay and his mother, a nurse, is caring for him at home.
I have not heard anybody say this is a “good family,” although Yarl's mom is a nurse and Yarl's aunt, Faith Spoonmore, is a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Dr. Spoonmore has appeared numerous times on TV as the family's spokesperson. She is very impressive, with a cheerful and gracious manner, and she's attractive to boot. So I suspect the family is also “good.” Ralph's GoFundMe drive has been extraordinarily successful, with $3.5 million in the bag at the moment. It's not clear what's going to happen to Lester, although I have heard speculation on TV that Missouri's Stand Your Ground or “A Man's Home Is His Castle” laws may apply, and he could end up with nothing more than some added stress and a big legal bill. Probably not much to worry about there, since his GoFundMe drives may be wildly more successful than they should be.
Anyway, there are lots of thematic issues to talk about in these two incidents of hateful terror gone wrong. I've already heard and seen remarks targeted at how flip-city crazy and paranoid people become when they allow Fox and other extremist reactionary disinformation sources to define their reality. But what I actually thought of right off the bat in relation to the Gillis murder are the unmet mental health needs of rural populations, and how people who have those needs are much less likely than urban populations to have access to mental health services … or for cultural reasons are much more likely to refuse services even if they are available.
This is an issue that I deal with day in and day out with my day job, in which I analyze psychosocial assessments done by social workers to describe children and families who need health and mental health care services. This work gives me an inside view of the mental health pathologies and problems that few folks have an opportunity to learn about. My clientele currently consists of more than a thousand kids and their families, and if our enrollments weren't limited by a shortage of social workers, the number would be significantly higher. Geographically, our client base is spread across an enormous chunk of Eastern and Central New York, to include Washington County, where Kaylin was murdered.
In Ralph Yarl's case, there is also an appropriate and righteous discussion about racism. But it goes without saying that the biggest issue taken up by public dialogue is once again gun control.
Some commentators have suggested that we have hit some sort of breaking point, in which most Americans are fed up with the angry and insane paranoia of Second Amendment Nuts who above all else prioritize anarchic notions of their own Wild West Animal Farm right to shoot anybody who makes them nervous or somehow offends their Peyronies Machismo Syndrome. And maybe we are at … some sort … of breaking point. But I really can't imagine what that might look like, given the current makeup of the Supreme Court and the occupation of so many state houses by what at this point can only accurately be conceptualized as either violent Cristo-Nationalist or quite simply Fascist social movements.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed that some sort of compassionate and sane impetus for change can come out of the utterly unprovoked murder of Kaylin Gillis and the attempted murder of Ralph Yarl. I can’t say that I’m very optimistic that it will. The one good thing that is likely to come, I think, is that along with growing realization that Pro-Birth policies are oppressing women, Guns Before People policies will increase awareness of just how ugly and dangerous the GunFirster alternative universe of rightwing authoritarianism really is. And maybe, just maybe, at long last electorates across the country will take an electoral stand against religious and ideological tyranny, and the pendulum will begin to swing back toward some semblance of normalcy.
Meanwhile, congratulations to Will Doolittle for getting it exactly right in today's Front Page blogpost, where he points out just how warped the worldview of GunFirsters is. And I'll just leave this commentary with an excerpt from his piece.
A license should be required for any gun. Gun owners should have to prove they understand the relevant laws by taking a written test and show they know how to use the gun in a practical test. They should be required to carry insurance.
If such tests had existed, Monahan may well have failed them. According to a report in the Albany Times-Union, Washington County’s first assistant district attorney, Christian Morris, said Monahan recently caused a scene in the DMV office when told he had to set up an appointment, and he began taking photos of the workers in the office.
He lacked the temperament to be a responsible gun owner.
A guy named Charlie Kirk, who runs a conservative advocacy organization called Turning Point USA, said recently, after a shooter killed three children and three adults at Christian Covenant School in Nashville, that gun rights are worth the price in blood.
“I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe,” he said.
Rhetoric like Kirk’s gets taken to heart by people like Kevin Monahan, who feel put-upon and see their guns as a way to balance the scales.
Kirk has it backward. It would be better for all of us if the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment reverted back to its plain meaning, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms occurs within the context of a well-regulated militia and does not mean putting shotguns in the hands of violent old men with a grudge against the world.
It would be a far better and more rational deal to have gun ownership well-regulated and Kaylan Gillis still alive. That is an alternate universe in which I would like to live.