Police are Now Shooting Licensed Gun Owners – Where is the GOP?

Another morning waking up, and another black man killed by the police. I don’t pretend to understand, I can’t pretend, but how can you not sympathize? How can you not wake up and feel outrage, disgust, animosity, frustration….the words go on, and continue ad nauseum.

I awaken to another police-involved shooting, but this time a legally licensed to carry individual was shot dead by the State. While complying with the officers commands. After notifying the officer he was legally carrying.

Last night, a police officer pulled over Philando Castile, a 32 year old licensed concealed carry gun owner for a broken right taillight. The individual notified the officer he was legally carrying, and that he would be reaching for his identification as requested. The police officer then shot the man four to five times, and claimed Castile was reaching into his pocket as use of force justification.

This is now two shootings in two days, two black men dead, both men having a firearm on them, separated by more than 1700 miles, yet both of which the basic justification is, ‘well, they had a gun on them.’ Never mind that neither man was threatening or even holding their gun. Never mind that Castile was legally licensed to carry.

Just, never mind.

You may not have cared when Michael Brown was unarmed and killed in Ferguson. Or when Eric Gardner was choked to death with an illegal police maneuver in New York City. Or when unarmed Walter Scott was shot in the back while running from a police officer. Or when Corey Jones was shot by an undercover officer responding to a broken down vehicle.

But for God’s sakes, how can you not care now? A police officer just shot and killed a man who acknowledged having a legal firemarm, notified the officer he would be reaching for his identification as requested, and was shot anyway. The State just executed a person for legally using his 2nd Amendment rights.

At what point do we care, where do we draw the line, where is the party of limited government?

We’re the party of limited government, yet we as a party largely continue to turn a blind, unsympathetic eye to the continued excessive use of force and outright executions by the State on its citizens. We are the party of limited government, but god forbid we ever be seen as not supporting the State’s domestic force in ALL matters, as if a badge and a gun makes their character unimpeachable.

We’re the party of the 2nd Amendment, but now at a crossroads: when the ‘law and order’ plank violates the 2nd Amendment rights of an individual citizen and executes him…which way will the party go?

I already know the answer, and I don’t know why I bother asking the question.

This post is disjointed, but so are my emotions. I’m over it, over it all… I’m over waking up to another shooting, another life taken by the State, while identifying with a political party that seems immune to this now-daily occurrence.

How can you not care?

PS I’ve left off the obligatory, ‘of course police are not all bad, it’s less than 1% of the force making them bad apples, etc.’ All that remains true, but we need to wake up.