Mourning in America...

The Friday Flashpoints!

As this week ends, a few things that I love, like, or dislike ...

***I have struggled to find my footing this week because like many of my fellow Americans, the carnage from the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, one in which 19 little children and two adults were murdered, has saddened me beyond words. 

“Dislike” is too weak to define how I feel about America's killing fields so, suffice it to say that I actually despise these indiscriminate acts of violence...

***Interestingly enough, it was in elementary school when I first learned the damage that weapons can do to flesh; I got my first BB gun, a Daisy Red Ryder, for Christmas in 1980—I was eight years old. I got a more potent Daisy 880 Powerline pellet rifle in 1982—when I was 10 years old. By 11, I was using my father's .22 rifle on hunts with him and my maternal Williams family elders in rural North Florida and our hauls, all skinned and cleaned by us and delivered to my Great Aunt Sarah Williams to cook, let me know early on that squeezing those triggers could definitely end a life. 

Those experiences allowed me to have an immense respect for the potency of weapons, so much so that I have never, not even once in my life, been angry enough to point a weapon at a human being—let alone squeeze the trigger. But having squeezed triggers on squirrels, rabbits, and deer a time or several, I do know that such decisions are deliberate—not haphazard or due to "mental illness," as is the common excuse these days each time some young man points and squeezes the trigger at men, women, and yes, children. 

I dislike that...

***Barely 24 hours after teacher Irma Garcia was killed along with 20 other souls at Robb Elementary, her husband of almost 25 years, Joe Garcia, died of a heart attack.

Joe was 50-years-old—my same age; Irma was 46. They leave to mourn their passing four children ranging in ages from 23 to 13 years old. 

Lord, have mercy upon the Garcia children and all of the families grappling with the losses of loved ones due to gun violence across America...

***When I was learning how to hunt and respect the power of firearms as a child, I had no clue that some day I would spend time as a lawyer who handled murder and wrongful death claims. I couldn't foresee that at the age of 26, that I would be dispatched to an autopsy at the local coroner's office by my former boss, then State Attorney Willie Meggs, to learn by observing the autopsy process and, when the black body bag was unzipped, would see the lifeless remains of the late Terrie Bell, a young lady who had attended FAMU High School with me in the 1980's. I didn't utter a word as my fellow young prosecutors silently shed tears, threw up their breakfast and coffee, or ran out of the morgue once that saw in the medical examiner's right hand got to sawing.

That was my first autopsy, but it wouldn't be my last...

As a child, I couldn't foresee that some day my old Morehouse roommate, Richard Alan, and I would handle a matter that involved a young man who was shot reportedly seven times by Fugitive Task Force officers who claimed that they saw a weapon when they attempted to arrest him at his girlfriend's trailer home near Tallahassee. His family members claimed that he had been shot in the back, so we met one of our other friends, Al Hall, at his funeral home the morning that the body arrived from the medical examiner's office so that we could make our own observations about entry and exit wounds. 

As we helped Al remove the decedent's body from the bag, I distinctly remember how the blood gushed like we had just unwrapped a fresh side of beef; his torso was literally ripped to shreds in some places due to the close range shots that were fired by the police. As we turned the body over to allow our investigator to take photos, a shell ejected, making that the eighth bullet—not the seventh—that took that young man's life. As tough as Rich and I were (and remain), we were disturbed by what we saw that Saturday morning, so much that we met another friend of ours, Kenny Taite, at a nearby bar and downed multiple shots of Jack Daniels over the next several hours in a futile effort to ease our minds.

It would not be the last time that I sought straight talk from Jack Daniels as in the decade that followed, I would observe quadruple homicide murder scenes, and single or double victim murder scenes. I would review autopsy photos of slain victims ranging in ages from ages two to 73-years-old. I would observe scores of bodies that had been shot to shreds, or, stabbed beyond recognition, or, beaten with tire irons, or, doused with gasoline and burned alive, or, run over by motor vehicles, or, deliberately drowned, or, deliberately dismembered post-mortem, or, left to fester and decompose in woods, ravines, or abandoned trailers. 

I've seen it all, and what I've seen not only haunts me every single day of my life, but it gives me perspective on the fragility of life—and the macabre reality of violent deaths! Thus, when I read that DNA was needed to identify victims at Robb Elementary this week, I was not surprised because, again, I know first hand what AR-15's and other high powered weapons can do to human flesh at close range. 

Conversely, what really angers me is that those gun loving politicians, the ones bought and sold by the NRA, never have to observe such faces of death up close and personal—and I don't like that...

***One of the biggest fallacies about police officers in America is that their primary job is to "fight crime;" while that is true in some respects, where violent crime is concerned, the police are often information gatherers who show up to document why this person or these persons were killed. 

But every so often, like during an active shooting incident, police officers are charged with the task of showing that all of that military-styled training, and all of those high priced military-grade weapons, are good for something other than a "tough-guy" photo-op. And while many officers have placed their lives on the line and acted courageously during active shooter incidents, every so often, others show a cowardice that prevents them from acting. 

We saw this happen a few years ago when a deputy sheriff in Parkland, Florida refused to engage the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School shooter, and there are reports that police officers in Uvalde, Texas, like the ones shown below, waited damn near an hour outside while the shooter went about killing victims inside the school. 

I definitely don't like that...

***I know that I am hard on Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker because while I am not a racist, a sexist, or a religious bigot, I do have a STRONG bias against dumb and ignorant asses. I do, I really do, and I refuse to apologize for holding folks who won't read and study to improve themselves in utter contempt!

After this week's deadly shooting in Texas, CNN reporter Manu Raju asked Walker, "do you support any new gun laws in the wake of this Texas shooting?”

Walker, with that dumb grin affixed on his face, replied: “What I like to — what I like to do is see it and everything and stuff..."

Huh??? “See it and everything and stuff?” This from the man who falsely claimed that he was the class valedictorian? Well, it got worse, as the very next day, Walker said:

"Cain killed Abel and that's a problem that we have. What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation -- what about getting a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that and we can stop that that way. But yet they want to just continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights."

Say what, 😆? Walker's gibberish would be comical but for the fact that he has a legit chance to beat incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), the brilliant graduate of Morehouse College and pastor of Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Yes, the same church that was once led by another brilliant Morehouse Man, Dr. Martin Luther King, who quipped: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Indeed! Lest we forget...

Happy Birthday Strike!

Wishing a very Happy Birthday to my good Brother Laverne "Strike" Washington.

I had no clue when I joined the Kappa League as a 9th grader back in 1986 that I would be blessed with an adviser who would play a major role in my maturation from boyhood to manhood during those four years. But beyond that, as my own father was one of Strike's mentors, he, in turn, became mine and his advice, guidance, love, and support continue right up to this very day! 

Trust, when life goes left for Hobbs, Strike is always right there ready to help right the ship and for that, I am humbly grateful!

So Happy Birthday, good Brother Strike, and may all the days of your life be as much of a blessing for you as you have been to me and so many Nupes, Kappa Leaguers, and Prince Hall Freemasons through the years!

Thank you for subscribing to the Hobbservation Point—have a blessed Memorial Day weekeend!