Jeb!'s recent blunder whilst addressing the Roseburg school shooting may actually earn him some support from gun lovers who share his cavalier viewpoint on the value of human life. Here is my take on the situation:
Years ago, I pulled out of the parking lot where I worked to meet my husband for lunch. New landscaping had moved a large boulder at the driveway. Unaware of the change, and pulling out in my usual manner, I sideswiped the rock and put a dent in the side of our van. I arrived at my husband's work site in tears. "Are you hurt?", he asked. "No, I'm ok." "Good," he said, clutching me to him in a tight embrace. "Everything else is just stuff."
When Jeb (the guv predecessor of Jeb! the presidential candidate) signed the Stand Your Ground bill into Florida law ten years ago, he overstepped the bounds of "people vs stuff" just a bit. I suppose that landmark event was his arrival upon the slippery slope which he just slid down in the esteem of anyone who holds the value of human life sacred.
Florida already had a justifiable defense law on the books for over a century when they created the new revised version. The old law allowed the use of deadly force if one felt one's life was in danger, as long as deadly force was a last resort. The new "turbo" law has all the bells and whistles. Now a person must only fear for his life, OR that a felony might be committed by force and BAM. Shoot em dead. Thats fine. (apparently for rich white men especially - kind of like in high school, when only football players and such got hall passes during study hall).
As you can see, ten years ago, Bush held "stuff" to be more valuable than people. The "shoot first, ask questions later" spirit of the law helped push forward a new wave of "righteous killing" laws across the nation and fed the spirit of contempt for basic decency we "enjoy" today.
I was not all that surprised when Jeb!'s response to the deaths of nine innocent students in Roseburg last week was ".. look, stuff happens. There's always a crisis. The impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do." His stance does not carry over to instances when someone might be stealing "stuff" by force - in which case, according to the Stand Your Ground law, "doing something", namely, killing people, is apparently "the right thing to do".
Jeb failed as a governor to value people over "stuff" and today as a presidential candidate, his legacy appears to be: When guns are involved, people are the only "stuff" that does not matter.
http://www.husseinandwebber.com/case-work/criminal-defense-articles/floridas-stand-ground-law/
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